SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 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.