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The Dangers of California’s Legislation to Censor 3D Printing (www.eff.org)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 129 points 4 months ago (20 children)

From who are these awful ideas in California governing coming from

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  • [–] [S] 63 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 child)

    The lobbying power of tech companies that profit from proprietary technology and feel threatened by open source. The same people who are behind DRM on everything from ebooks and music to printer inks, and legal restrictions on repairing the devices you own.

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  • [–] 24 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (14 children)

    Anti-gun/gun control lobby would be my first guess. You can basically print all the serialized parts (the part required for registration) for most any gun then get the rest of the parts and assemble it yourself. The gun parts don't necessarily even need to be based on an actual manufactured gun, there are designs for completely homemade guns down to the barrel using parts you can easily pick up at any hardware store. Then there are also people who are printing parts that can turn some semi-automatic guns into selectable fully automatic.

    Problem is the plans are already in the wild for printing gun parts and for open source printers. I don't know what good would accomplish to deter people from printing when the person targeted is already motivated enough to print one to begin with.

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  • [–] 51 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Making a gun is already illegal in California and Washington. This stupid law won't make any difference. If someone is willing to break the law to make a gun, they probably are not going to follow this law either. 3D printed guns are rarely used to commit crimes anyways. It takes a lot of time and effort to get one to work well.

    This is probably about companies like Bamboo Labs wanting an excuse to lock down printers even more. It will also make it difficult or impossible for smaller companies to sell 3D printers in California to get rid of competition.

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  • [–] 17 points 4 months ago

    Yeah, kinda reminds me of when Sony music put a rootkit virus on their music CDs except this time it's going through the state governments to encrypted things. This also feels as dumb as making math illegal in terms of outlawing encryption or making some numbers illegal because when arranged in a certain way they are an .stl file for a copyrighted character or an .mp3 file for a song.

    This is just making something that is already illegal more illegal and opening a massive hole for government and corpo spying.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Nope. This is actually an anti right to repair bill. The gun narrative is just the trojan horse, just like they're doing with ID verification.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    I just remember the earliest opposition to 3D printing becoming readily available to the mass public at cheap prices was the gun control lobby. They're an "old" enemy to the hobby. I think this is more of an anti-privacy issue than anti-ownership/right to repair, but it is certainly both.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago* (6 children)

    Could you also just make these same parts out steel or aluminum? Seems like a weird arbitrary line to essentially say what material you can make them out of and what equipment you can use. Or are benchtop CNCs gonna be banned next?

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago* (4 children)

    Not sure about the California bill, but the similar shit out of Washington state does have language for subtractive manufacturing as well as additive. They basically are targeting any computer controlled manufacturing.

    It all feels so obviously stupid when there are people on the internet selling partially complete metal parts with instructions for how to finish them completely unrestricted. They obviously aren't worried about stopping the "ghost gun problem", they are worried about people having the means of production and the right to repair things they own.

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    • [–] 100 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    Do nothing about school shootings. Destroy hobbies and manufacturing instead. America is rotting from the inside.

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    • [–] 49 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    But like.. are they going to prohibit all forms of melding materials into a shape? You can make a shank out of a stick rubbed on a rock ffs.

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    • [–] 35 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    Back when 3D printers were brand-new, I was at a college event where the Engineering Club had one on display. I stopped to watch it, and spoke with the kid who had built it. He was a Freshman, and had built it during the previous summer, because he wanted to come to college and make an instant splash in the Engineering Department.

    He certainly succeeded, because he was the one in the booth that everybody wanted to talk to, while the upperclassmen that hadn't accomplished anything, sat in the back of the booth and glowered at the Freshman upstart.

    So anyway, if they ban them, we'll just build them.

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  • [–] 20 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    I believe the entire goal of RepRap was to build a machine that could build all the parts needed to build another machine. Most of the parts for a lot of machines are either 3d printable or bog-standard off-the-shelf parts that could be used for millions of other things. I have a feeling the really scary target would be software, something similar to the draconian age-verification BS being run around.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Targetting commercial offers would not cut it though. They would have to make octoprint, open source firmware etc a crime. A lot of printer run exclusively on non-commercial software and on Chinese control boards, with or without raspberry pi.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    That's kind of what they already want to do, or are trying to do with this legislation. And the age verification stuff has no exception for open-source. The people behind this stuff absolutely want to kill any and all open source, both hardware and software.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    This is called the proliferation of technology, its useless to fight it, and also one of humanities greatest existential threats.

    Sooner or later building a nuke in your backyard is going to be just as easy.

    Just FYI, I am full pro 3d printer, love mine. Looking into a second one now.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago

    Sooner or later building a nuke in your backyard is going to be just as easy.

    No. Even if you would get your hands of enough base material (impossible and would also be bigger than your backyard in volume). The energy you need for sorting the isotopes would be more than you could pull out of your power wires.

    This isnt a question about technology but physics and energy, no matter how good consumer tech gets. NO you wont build a nuke in your backyard.

    The same way as you will never build a moon rocket in your backyard, some things just require a fixed amount of energy, and putting that amount of energy in your backyard just wont happen.

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    • [–] 32 points 4 months ago*

    jesus fucking christ the kind of person who has a machine dialled in enough to print a functional weapon that will actually work and not come apart in their hands or blow off their face is the sort of person who will also have the means and wherewithal to obtain a conventional weapon. And they will most likely turn to the latter if they want to do harm.

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    [–] 25 points 4 months ago (7 children)

    Is California just gone fucking mad after newscum? What is up with all these fucked up legislations against private freedom?

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    [–] 21 points 4 months ago

    It wont stop anyone looking to print a silencer. It will just make it closed source and pay per print. Its a idiots solution.

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    [–] 10 points 4 months ago* (18 children)

    So try and ban 3D printing guns, because that's too dangerous. But still sell guns at wallmarkt to be bought without background checks? I have the feeling something is a little off here...

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    • [–] 7 points 4 months ago

    That's one way do deal with the traffic: just make your state so shitty place to live that everyone moves elsewhere.

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    [–] 7 points 4 months ago

    This is just madness. What the hell is Newsom thinking/drinking?

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    [–] 4 points 4 months ago*

    they took the fucking dragon slinky

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    [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    Just wait till they hear about my old Bridgeport!

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