After court order, 3D-printed gun pioneer now sells pay-what-you-want CAD files

[friendly_iconoclast]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/in-defiance-of-court-order-3d-printed-gun-pioneer-starts-selling-cad-files/

AUSTIN, Texas—During what he called his first ever press conference, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson announced Tuesday that he would continue to comply with a federal court order forbidding him from internationally publishing CAD files of firearms. Wilson said he would also begin selling copies of his 3D-printed gun files for a "suggested price" of $10 each.

The files, crucially, will be transmitted to customers "on a DD-branded flash drive" in the United States. Wilson also mentioned looking into customer email and secure download links...

...On Monday, Judge Lasnik ordered that the files must stay offline in order to comply with American export law.

By selling them only to people in the United States, Wilson and Defense Distributed have found a way to still comply with the judge's order...

Some of the more relevant comments at the link:

Wilson is in compliance with the order, which says nothing about his ability to sell or distribute within the US.

-Bet the file will be on TPB* within a matter of days.

--The plans have been on TPB for months, if not years already.

---Haaah! I had a feeling this was a dog and pony show for public and politicians. And that the reality was these files have been available online as of about 5 minutes after someone finalized them.

*TPB= The Pirate Bay, a notorious (and so far unstoppable) torrent site

Indeed, this court order is virtue signaling of the first water and will undoubtedly deter DIY gun making about as
effectively as Operation Pipe Dreams 'deterred' cannabis use:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pipe_Dreams

Operation Pipe Dreams
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Operation Pipe Dreams was the code-name for a U.S. nationwide investigation in 2003 targeting businesses selling drug paraphernalia, mostly marijuana pipes and bongs, under a little-used statute (21 U.S.C. § 863(a)). Due to the reluctance of state law-enforcement agencies to contribute resources to the operation, most cases were filed in Iowa and Pennsylvania, taking advantage of the statute's prohibition on the use of "the mails or any other facility of interstate commerce to transport drug paraphernalia."[1]

Hundreds of businesses and homes were raided as a result of Operation Pipe Dreams.[2] Fifty five people were named in indictments and charged with trafficking of illegal drug paraphernalia. While 54 of the 55 individuals charged were sentenced to fines and home detentions, actor Tommy Chong was sentenced September 11, 2003, to 9 months in a federal prison, a fine of $20,000, forfeiture of $103,000, and a year of probation. Chong was charged for his part in financing and promoting Chong Glass Works/Nice Dreams, California-based companies started by his son Paris. Unlike most shops selling bongs, Nice Dreams specialized in selling high-end bongs as collectible works of art. The Chong Glass Works employed 25 glass blowers who were paid $30/hour to produce 100 pipes a day.

Nice Dreams had a policy in place for refusing to sell bongs to states where the statute was being enforced. Federal agents, disguised as head-shop owners, pressured Paris Chong to sell them his pipes and deliver them through the mail to a fictitious shop in the Pittsburgh suburb of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania. When Paris persistently refused, agents went to the place of business in person and ordered a massive quantity of out of stock merchandise. The merchandise was crafted but not picked up and sat idle in the warehouse as federal agents again pressured Paris to ship it. To get the merchandise out of his warehouse, Paris eventually agreed to ship it. In a Plea bargain, Chong agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute drug paraphernalia in exchange for non-prosecution of his wife, Shelby, and his son, Paris. Federal Prosecution admitted to being harsher on Chong in retaliation, citing Chong's movies as trivializing "law enforcement efforts to combat drug trafficking and use."[3]

The estimated cost of Operation Pipe Dreams was over $12 million and included the resources of 2,000 law enforcement officers.

[PoliticAverse]

1. All the attempts to ban this have just resulted in a huge amount of free publicity for this guy.

The courts will eventually rule this is protected by the first amendment just like all the other printed publications
of gun plans currently being sold are.

[friendly_iconoclast]

2. No shit- seems none of those attorney generals or the judge ever heard of the Streisand Effect:

https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2013/04/15/what-is-the-streisand-effect

What is the Streisand effect?

ON APRIL 6th Wikimedia France, the local chapter of the Wikimedia movement that runs Wikipedia, put out a rather strange press release. It alleged that it had been contacted by the Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur (DCRI), France's domestic spy agency, which was unhappy with an article on the French-language version of Wikipedia about Pierre-sur-Haute, a military radio base run by the French air force. The spooks wanted the article amended to remove what they claimed was classified information. When the Wikipedians refused, the DRCI is alleged to have hauled a French Wikipedia editor into its offices and forced him to delete the entire article, on pain of immediate arrest. Instead of hiding the information, this made the story spread around the world—a textbook example of what internet aficionados call the Streisand Effect.

Named after the American singer and actress Barbra Streisand, the Streisand Effect describes how efforts to suppress a juicy piece of online information can backfire and end up making things worse for the would-be censor. Ms Streisand inadvertently gave her name to the phenomenon in 2003, when she sued the California Coastal Records Project, which maintains an online photographic archive of almost the entire California coastline, on the grounds that its pictures included shots of her cliffside Malibu mansion, and thus invaded her privacy.

That raised hackles online. The internet's history is steeped in West Coast cyber-libertariansim, and Ms Streisand (herself generally sympathetic to the liberal left) was scorned for what was seen as a frivolous suit that was harmful to freedom of speech. As the links proliferated, thousands of people saw the pictures of Ms Streisand's house—far more than would otherwise ever have bothered to browse through the CCRP's archives. By the time a judge eventually threw the suit out, Ms Streisand's privacy had been far more thoroughly compromised than it would have been had she and her lawyers left the CCRP alone.

A similar thing has now happened to French intelligence. It is hard to imagine that many people are gripped by the intricacies of French military communications. Had the DRCI simply kept quiet, then the offending article would probably have languished in perpetual obscurity. Instead, the restored article became the most-viewed page on the French version of Wikipedia and was also translated into other languages. And the whole affair ended up being covered in English-language news sources as well. Such as, ahem, this blog post.