3D censorship: weapon or speech?

• Author: Doherty, Brian
• Position: Citings - Brief article

CAN A country that claims to have free speech and a right to bear arms forbid communications about how to make a gun? Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed, along with the Second Amendment Foundation, in May filed a federal lawsuit in Texas to establish that the answer is "no."

In May 2013, the State Department ordered Wilson, under threat of prosecution for illegally exporting munitions, to remove files from his servers that contain instructions for making the plastic pistol his organization had designed. Wilson complied, but he believes putting software on the Internet that helps a 3D printer make a fragile plastic pistol should be protected under both the First and Second Amendments. Definitions of what munitions export laws actually forbid are slippery, though. Years later, the State Department still...