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Judge allows temporary ban on 3D-printed gun files to continue
A federal judge in Seattle has ruled against Defense Distributed, imposing a preliminary injunction requiring the company to keep its 3D-printed gun files offline for now.
US District Judge Robert Lasnik found in his Monday ruling that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed based on their argument that the Department of State, in allowing for a modification of federal export law, had unwittingly run afoul of a different law, the Administrative Procedure Act. In essence, the judge found that because the Department of State did not formally notify Congress when it modified the United States Munitions List, the previous legal settlement that Defense Distributed struck with the Department of State—which allowed publication of the files—is invalid.
As Ars has reported, Defense Distributed is the Texas-based company involved in a years-long lawsuit with the Department of State over publication of those files and making them available to foreigners. The company runs DEFCAD, perhaps the best-known online repository of gun files.
[...] Judge Lasnik's ruling today only briefly addressed the fact that the files are already available on numerous sites, including Github, The Pirate Bay, and more. These files have circulated online since their original publication back in 2013. (Recently, new mirrors of the files have begun to pop up.) "It is not clear how available the nine files are: the possibility that a cybernaut with a BitTorrent protocol will be able to find a file in the dark or remote recesses of the Internet does not make the posting to Defense Distributed's site harmless," he wrote.
Will legalnauts with gavels smack down this injunction?
Previously: Landmark Legal Shift for 3D-Printed Guns
[Updated] Defense Distributed Releasing Gun Plans, President Trump "Looking Into" It
Related: The $1,200 Machine That Lets Anyone Make a Metal Gun at Home
FedEx Refuses to Ship Defense Distributed's Ghost Gunner CNC Mill
(Score: 1, Troll) by ilPapa on Tuesday August 28 2018, @12:36AM (14 children)
That depends on how badly you want to torture the concept of "speech".
Though, you might have a case for there being a freedom of religion issue, considering guns and Americans are involved.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 28 2018, @12:42AM (5 children)
Badly? How is providing instructions on how to build something not speech? Providing instructions on how to build a bomb is Constitutionally protected. Is sending data over the Internet speech? Is your post speech? Is it only speech if it uses a standard human language? That seems like a messy conclusion that would lead to an free speech absolute nightmare.
Of course this qualifies as free speech. The only thing I'm thankful of is that all the files are already out there, and no one can really stop it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 28 2018, @03:30AM
We are coining a "new" term to get around all that. Thought crime!
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday August 28 2018, @09:46AM
Specifically The Hydrogen Bomb [progressive.org].
A graduate student who'd done a summer internship at a bomb lab gave a Progressive reporter one of those back of the napkin sketches that we all keep going on about.
Of course the Feds sued to block its publication but the Supremes ruled for the progressive.
I don't know what happened to that student. Sucks to have been him I expect.
Note that the plutonium rod is somewhat conical. The sphere at the top is a plutonium pit. The top part is a conventional plutonium implosion bomb. The X-rays reflect off the inside surface of the casing then a processing called Radiative Transfer heats and pressurizes the Tritium and Deuterium of which the styrofoam in the bottom part is partially composed of.
That imploded the plutonium cone, with its energy and pressure being enough to lead the D and the T to fuse.
At the very last minute the Feds quite desperately begged the Progressive not to publish that cone but to depict a cylinder instead.
Now the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has the H.
Some wiser head than mine DECLASSIFIED ALL BUT ONE OF THE MANHATTAN'S PROJECT SECRETS in 1965, I expect because the Chinese had just tested. You can even by The Los Alamos Primer from Amazon.
That one still secret item is the design of the initiator. At just the right instant when the plutonium pit is at its minimum size, the initiator releases a burst of Neutrons so as to get the cascade reaction to go really, really well.
When I read about the initiator in Richard Rhodes' The Making Of The Atomic Bomb I said to myself, "That just _has_ to work a certain way". By the time I completed Graduate Quantum Mechanics I am quite certain I knew enough to have designed that initiator with the help of the UCSC Science Library as well as the 386 box that I owned in the Fall of 1994.
"Wiser heads".
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 28 2018, @05:48PM
The Judge in this case agrees with you. It's just that the Trump admin screwed up the implementation. If they can manage to actually do their jobs properly the judge expects this temporary order to be lifted.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Tuesday August 28 2018, @07:21PM (1 child)
If that's the only thing you're thankful of, you're living a very sad life.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @03:56PM
Why? I value freedom of speech, so it makes sense. Or are you pedantically taking issue with my use of the word "only"?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Tuesday August 28 2018, @06:28AM (5 children)
What is a CAD file if not speech? It conveys an idea in three dimension in a format that can be inspected visually. It is nothing more than graphic art, very often of a functional object. If a CAD file is not speech, neither is something a person draws in Inkscape or Gimp or Photoshop -- this paint programs operate in two dimension but how does adding a third dimension make a CAD file any less the output of a person's imagination and intellect?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 28 2018, @03:05PM (1 child)
A proprietary file format?
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday September 06 2018, @02:10AM
FreeCAD
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday August 28 2018, @05:29PM
If the guts of PGP's code are free speech, then it's hard to make the argument that a Cad model or blueprint aren't free speech.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday August 28 2018, @06:11PM (1 child)
That battle was lost before the 1st amendment right to free speech even existed thanks to concepts like copyright. You *never* had a right to freely distribute CAD files or other forms of schematics or creative works in this country. You can't say there can be no censorship, because the censorship already exists and always has. At this point we can only argue about the degree.
Not that I disagree with you in theory...but arguing about an absolute right to free speech isn't likely to be productive, since that right has NEVER been legally recognized.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 28 2018, @10:45PM
So does the government automatically own the copyright to speech it doesn't like? Else the objection isn't very relevant. One can have a great degree of free speech in the presence of copyright and such.
(Score: 3, Funny) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday August 28 2018, @09:36AM
That was ruled just recently, I found out about the ruling only just now.
In Florida and I expect a few other places, the City Councils banned the public feeding of homeless people. That led to such absurdities as a 95 year old man being arrested for ladling soup.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday August 28 2018, @01:39PM
What if instead of a digital file, I printed the precise engineering drawings and specs in a booklet. With sufficient details that someone could get an off the shelf software package, enter the design into their software and then 3D print it.
Why would that be any different than a book on gardening? (even if your garden has illegal plants)
Would we ban books?
Finally, it all seems so academic anyway when it is so easy to obtain an unregistered gun and, as a country, we seem to like it that way.
The people who rely on government handouts and refuse to work should be kicked out of congress.