joeross.me

Andy Greenberg at Forbes:

Once the file is online, anyone will be able to download and print the gun in the privacy of their garage, legally or not, with no serial number, background check, or other regulatory hurdles. “You can print a lethal device,” Wilson told me last summer. “It’s kind of scary, but that’s what we’re aiming to show.”

Law student Cody Wilson has added some steel to make it detectable and lawful, and gotten the appropriate firearms manufacturing license. But that doesn’t mean the world at large will do the same when Wilson uploads the files needed to print the gun to the internet.

I often write about how technology has made the cost of copying trivial, while the laws on the books still hail from a time when the cost of copying was non-trivial. When it comes to audio and video copyright, that triviality can be economically disruptive at best, and can disturb entire industries at worst. But when it comes to weapons, that triviality to copy is downright dangerous.