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THIS WEEK MARKS the two-year anniversary since Cody Wilson, the inventor of the world’s first 3-D printable gun, received a letter from the State Department demanding that he remove the blueprints for his plastic-printed firearm from the internet. The alternative: face possible prosecution for violating regulations that forbid the international export of unapproved arms.
Now Wilson is challenging that letter. And in doing so, he’s picking a fight that could pit proponents of gun control and defenders of free speech against each other in an age when the line between a lethal weapon and a collection of bits is blurrier than ever before.
Wilson’s gun manufacturing advocacy group Defense Distributed, along with the gun rights group the Second Amendment Foundation, on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the State Department and several of its officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry. In their complaint, they claim that a State Department agency called the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) violated their first amendment right to free speech by telling Defense Distributed that it couldn’t publish a 3-D printable file for its one-shot plastic pistol known as the Liberator, along with a collection of other printable gun parts, on its website.
In its 2013 letter to Defense Distributed, the DDTC cited a long-controversial set of regulations known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which controls whether and how Americans can sell weapons beyond U.S. borders. By merely posting a 3-D-printable file to a website, in other words, the DDTC claimed Defense Distributed had potentially violated arms export controls—just as if it had shipped a crate of AR-15s to, say, Mexico. But the group’s lawsuit now argues that whether or not the Liberator is a weapon, its blueprints are “speech,” and that Americans’ freedom of speech is protected online—even when that speech can be used to make a gun with just a few clicks.
http://www.wired.com/2015/05/3-d-printed-gun-lawsuit-starts-war-arms-control-free-speech/
Here’s the full complaint from Defense Distributed: https://www.scribd.com/doc/264435890/Defense-Distributed-et-al-v-U-S-Dept-of-State
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Fauxlosopher on Saturday May 09 2015, @01:57PM
I could take this opportunity to detail a multitude of repugnant decisions reached by vaunted courts, all of which should give a thinking person pause as to entrusting "interpretation" of a document's plain language to a single instutiton which also derives its power from said document (Dred Scott vs Sandford; Marbury vs Madison; Buck vs Bell; Wickard vs Filburn; DC vs Heller)...
Instead, I will note that you have not addressed what I wrote and therefore will repeat myself: the totality of judicial authority is limited to be no more than its originating source, and that source is the authority inherent to a single individual. I've stated my claim and pointed you to writings that make claims of historical fact, ready and waiting for you to find specific fault with them.
(Score: 2) by naubol on Saturday May 09 2015, @02:40PM
Marbury v Madison is widely hailed as one of the most important cases in the history of common law anywhere, and not for the practical effect of its ruling. Judicial review and courts of last resort have been eagerly imported by many other nation states. People on both sides of the current ideological divide in America are emphatically for judicial review. Even senators who say that the courts are legislating would agree that judicial review is a necessary element of a modern democracy. Of the three branches of government, historically the courts have maintained the highest approval ratings. The court is fallible and history has correctly judged the dred scott decision to be wrong on the elements, however it may have been the right tactical move by a fledgling state with serious internal problems. To get from A to Z you have to pass through B, and Dred Scot may have been B.
Marbury feels particularly unfair to cite as repugnant because Marshall was likely using an issue that he had to agree with in order to establish a much much larger prize, judicial review.
If you want a list of excellent supreme court decisions (by my lights):
Marbury v Madison
Miranda v. Arizona
Baker v Carr
Griswold v Connecticut
Lawrence v Texas
Brown v Board
Reno v ACLU
US v Windsor
Boumediene v. Bush
And... I'm hoping... Obergefell v Hodges will join their ranks, soon.
The court has definitely succumbed to tyranny a few times, plessy, dred scott, bucks, bush v gore, Korematsu, blah blah but they've also, over time, corrected many of their mistakes and helped guide US politics away from many tyrannical positions. What is more, they've provided a way to resolve disputes over quotidian matters which do not surface in daily speech. I suspect that the courts will eventually rule that the OP is a violation of free speech. What's more, it might not become a commonly cited case by armchair pedants like you and me, but such cases become bricks in a jurisprudence that is one of the best in the world and certainly has been copied by many modern democracies.
I feel that your emotional comment regarding the multitude of repugnant decisions is implying that the courts are a failed institution, a framing I would emphatically reject and for which I think you would find little consensus, which brings me back to my point. A point, I feel, that you didn't deal with. The constitution cannot be exact, and attempts at making it a more literal document would water down its value. Thus, interpretation is necessary by someone. This currently is done by all three branches of government. If the courts were to so seriously err in their interpretation, there are provisions for impeachment in that document. Interpretation being necessary, there are more opinions about how to do it than there are sitting federal justices, and I'm not so sure this is a bad thing. To disagree, and believe the matter to be straightforward and easy, is to be willfully ignorant and arrogant.
(Score: 1) by Fauxlosopher on Saturday May 09 2015, @03:31PM
Let me be as plain and direct as possible: in all matters where US courts and judicial decisions are used to impose upon people beyond what is permitted by the authority possessed by a single random individual, actions taken by government agents in response to such overreaching judicial arguments are literally criminal.
Arguing over an unlawful action's fine details or whether or not it was beneficial does not change the underlying issue of the action being unlawful. Majority opinion does not shape the nature of reality. Plenty of folks in the North, South, and around the world thought (and still do) think that human slavery was fine and dandy.