Pirate Bay Takes Over Distribution of Censored 3D Printable Gun

[The Straight Story]

A few days after the blueprints for the world’s first printable gun were published online, Defense Distributed has been asked by the State Department to pull them down, citing possible arms trafficking violations. The blueprints, however, are still available on The Pirate Bay and many other file-sharing sites, which adds a 3D chapter to the IP enforcement debate.The Pirate Bay says it welcomes the blueprints and has no intention of taking the files down.

3d-goneIn late 2012 the 3D blueprint website Thingiverse decided to ban 3D gun designs, citing their terms of service which clearly prohibit files used to make weapons.

Enter DEFCAD, a site dedicated to hosting designs that have been banned at Thingiverse. Namely, the entirely printable 3D gun design which clocked up more than 100,000 downloads within its first two days of release.

This did not sit well with the Department of State Office of Defense Trade Controls who kindly requested that DEFCAD remove the availability of the 3D printable gun documents, enthusiastically named “The Liberator,” citing a possible violation of International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-takes-over-distribution-of-censored-3d-printable-gun-130510/

[Nye Bevan]

1. Personally I would worry more about home-made bombs,

for which instructions are freely available on the internet, than about crappy plastic guns.

[DetlefK]

2. Those bombs at least leave traces. Imagine the following scenario:

Somebody prints a gun, one-shot, high caliber, maybe several barrels.
Kills somebody.
Takes the gun back home. Melts it down.

Without fingerprints, DNA or other remnants, how are you gonna find that guy?
Of course, there might be some ballistic traces that the shot was fired from a plastic-gun, but the problem is ANYBODY could have made or bought that gun. And the gun won't show up again years from now in a dumpster or in a lake or in another crime.

[sofa king]

3. Worse than that...

... Attempting to impede the distribution of the design has ensured that it proliferates far more than it would have, by turning the file into a torrent that will be freely shared around the world exactly because someone doesn't want people to have it.

Before the State Department intervened it was reported that there were 100,000 downloads of the design. By this time tomorrow it will have been shared a million times through the torrents announced on Pirate Bay.

But before you throw up your hands and scream, "why would the State Department be that stupid?" consider this: This is only the first of an endless series of these designs. It is barely functional and far from perfect. Its fail rate is unknown, but may well be very high. So of all the designs that are to emerge in the coming months and years, this is the one you want everyone to have, if they're going to have one. You plant your flag on this one, work your way through protocols and procedures to (try and fail to) stamp out the proliferation of it, and hope that you've learned something by the time something really dangerous comes along, which it certainly will.

I personally do not think that the mass-proliferation of 3D printers and the weapons they can make can be stopped, for as soon as a printer design can make all of its own components, that design will grow exponentially like bacteria in a petri dish and completely change the 21st Century, not entirely for the better.

Rather, we are going to have to find a way to keep people from doing awful things with the devices we shall be unable to prevent from proliferating. We should start now.

[Occulus]

4. It occurs to me that the only way to combat this may be to poison the well.

Deliberately corrupted designs that look authentic might not print correctly or, more nefariously, might print what only appears to be a working unit. There are ways and ways to do this which I won't go too far into detail with here, but all 3D modelers can do things like flip face normals (the normal is the imaginary line perpendicular to each face's "front&quot , include "empty" objects, and so forth.

It occurs to me that most gun nuts are not also 3D model designers, or have ever once worked with 3D modeling software. For all that it's free and can export to a format these printers understand via a plugin, Blender is difficult to use for the beginner and requires time to master. Gunners would rather shoot than click, and Blender is a bit more... um... intellectual a pursuit of a particular kind than I imagine many of them spend time on.

Some of those changes could make the design dangerous, and we wouldn't want gun nuts printing plastic guns that are dangerously compromised against their owners. No, we wouldn't want that at all.



"we are going to have to find a way to keep people from doing awful things with the devices we shall be unable to prevent from proliferating. We should start now."

The only way I can see to do that is to lock 3D printing to a proprietary, encrypted, closed-source format, which would necessitate handing the whole thing over to one or more private companies. This would lock out Blender users entirely, and a very large part of the point of 3D printing (you could argue, the entire point) is to be able to create your own stuff at will. I don't want a company like Shapeways to be the only legal means to use a 3D printer in the US, for all that Shapeways is made of win.

[TampaAnimusVortex]

9. Wouldnt work - the comment section on the pirate bay is alive and well.

As well as on most torrent sites... Torrent downloaders and uploaders are already very well versed at handling people "poisoning the well" with virus filled software and have adapted. As soon as it's detected, people generally post comments about it and smart people generally read the comments before downloading. This usually results in compromised torrents getting downloaded less than non-compromised torrents - and since people favor the higher downloaded files, the compromised ones tend to get weeded out. Is it perfect, no... but so far it's worked pretty well to filter out not only compromised software, but also DRM protected video and audio.

Good luck forcing people into closed sourced formats also... it was tried with the music industry and failed there also. There are tons of very smart people that will tear apart, sidestep, work around, find loopholes, and generally defeat any protection you could possibly imagine with it comes to trying to protect digital data.

Forcing companies into proprietary formats kills innovation for one.
The US government has no jurisdiction believe it or not outside their borders on the other hand.

3D printing diagrams will remain free just like music and videos currently are. There is nothing you or they will ever be able to do about it. Governments are not omnipotent.

[Xithras]

13. Its not just the comments

Poisoned files don't get seeded and tend to vanish quickly anyway. The number of seeds available is usually a good indicator of the quality and reliability of the file. The 3d gun file has almost 3000 seeders right now, which would be hard for a "poisoned well" file to match.

[backwoodsbob]

36. so you want to kill people who do this?

seriously....you think it's a good idea to fake the blueprints and cause people to make something that will explode and kill them?...really?

[Posteritatis]

47. I taught myself the basics of Blender in a couple of weeks.

I'm not terribly interested in firearms beyond an abstract level (and live in a country where they're tightly regulated anyway); that said, a couple friends I have stateside who are into them as a hobby both know their way around machine shops and CAD software.

Anyone moderately competent in the use of 3D software would notice flipped normals or whatnot at a glance, and there's no way to prevent someone from pointing that out once it's caught.

Also, there's no way - none, nada, period - to require anyone to only use a proprietary format for anything. Regulating that's just not going to happen, would be questionably legal at best, and would be circumvented within days if not hours of the idea being seriously raised.

This genie's out of the bottle, it has been for some time, and the only way to even attempt to put it back in would be to criminalize possession of 3D printers entirely, something which will probably be attempted but has no business happening.

[Junkdrawer]

7. Betcha dollars-to-donuts it's the polymers that are regulated....

consumers will get soft plastics - industrial users will get the advanced almost-as-strong-as-metal polymers.

That and the DPI resolution.

[Egalitarian Thug]

5. Imagine not living in fear of the incredibly unlikely?

The facts are that the overwhelming number of murders are committed by involved parties and they are caught because of that. In the rare cases of random homicides, unless the perpetrator is caught in or immediately after the act, there is virtually no chance of ever being caught.

[kudzu22]

18. I'm not a cop but I don't think many crimes are solved the CSI way

by analyzing bullets and casings under a microscope and then consulting big ominous database. You can shoot someone today and leave no ballistic evidence -- use a shotgun.

As for how to catch the one-shot plastic killer -- I'd suggest witnesses and video cameras.

[jberryhill]

30. Witnesses, video cameras

...and the contents of his computer and ISP records.

[kudzu22]

33. And the fact that he has a 3-D printer

[jberryhill]

29. There are plenty of shootings where the gun is disposed of

There are enough shootings in which the shooter disposes of the gun in a river, dumpster or other place where it is never found, and in which convictions are obtained.

"Without fingerprints, DNA or other remnants" - Are you serious?

How about his IP address access log, courtesy of his ISP?

How about his drives, or even static memory built into the printer? A lot of people don't realize that a lot of even 2D printers and copy machines have onboard memory used for caching data, and some of them have quit a bit. Some have gone to small mechanical drives to a good chunk of flash memory.

All things being equal - the guy who bought a black market gun, or has long had one tucked away, and throws it into the river leaves less of a potential forensic trail than the guy who downloaded and printed his gun.

[TnDem]

55. Sure....

And when the downloader went to a neighborhood McDonalds for Wi-Fi and downloaded it that way, what then?

And when these printers become so prolific, that every yard sale has one,( 5-10 years maybe?), what then.

Folks never consider the criminal mind when it is tuned up for action...

[Travis_0004]

32. The same thing is possible with todays guns

Somebody buys a gun, shoots somebody. They then melt down the barrel and firing pin with a welding torch. Installs a new barrel and firing pin. The gun will no longer match any balistic evidence. On my handgun I can remove the barrel in about 10 seconds.

I would argue that welding torches are easier to get a hold of and cheaper than 3d printers, yet we don't have any major problems now.

[krispos42]

49. Except that people can also make guns now, in their basements, using conventional tools

In fact, I have a file that tells how to make an machine pistol out of plumbing parts you can buy and sheetmetal you form around wooden mandrels.

The barrel isn't rifled, but as a close-range weapon it would be impressive.


And it probably would be that hard for me to figure out how to make a plastic zip-gun that could fire a .22. McMaster-Carr or my local hardware store probably has everything I need to do it... Delrin, drill bits, taps, dies, springs, etc.


I think people are worrying too much about it.

[Jenoch]

51. If someone 'prints' a 3D plastic hifh caliber gun

and shoots it at somebody, fingerprints will not be needed, there will be pkenty of DNA, blood, and body oarts of the shooter left behind.

[Egalitarian Thug]

6. Information is free. n/t

[Junkdrawer]

8. As GravityCollapse put it: This is why we can't have nice things.

Put industrial power into the hands of US consumers and the gunners will make sure it's withdrawn.

[TampaAnimusVortex]

14. No, it's the inverse.

The anti-gunners are the ones willing to hand over police state powers to ensure the guy next door doesn't get his hand on a gun.

So far Ive seen calls for outlawing 3D printers entirely, calls for requiring Digital rights management of CAD designs, proprietary hard coding of all 3D printers on the planet to prevent them from printing "illicit" designs... What's next? Should there be a government agency where every CAD drawing is registered by the CAD approval board?

Exactly do how people think the government is going to regulate files that are outside their regulatory domain, which on the internet is a click that look just like any other click? Nothing is going to get withdrawn.... because it cant. It's as outside the realm of their control as is trying to regulate the wind.

[Junkdrawer]

15. 3D printers are just barely out there and what's the first thing you guys do:

"Let's print a gun"

Guess what kids: Mom and Dad aren't going to let you do that.

And every OTHER use for 3D printers will suffer.

Great. Just Fucking great. So mature.

[TampaAnimusVortex]

16. See, your language gives away your thinking.

"Guess what kids: Mom and Dad aren't going to let you do that. "

The government isn't your mommy and daddy and free men and women aren't children. The psychology involved that automatically goes to this mental space is very telling indeed.

Again, my post was not directed at rather people printed guns with 3D printers, but instead rather the anti-gunners would be willing to hand over police state powers to the government to prevent them from doing so. It sounds from the tone of general hysteria of your post that you would be one of those willing to do so.

Exactly what steps are you willing to allow the government to take to prevent it from happening?

[Junkdrawer]

19. What the hell do you guys expect goverments AROUND THE WORLD to do?

Let cheap untracable firearms proliferate?

I call you kids because you're displaying that type of maturity.

Grow up.

[kudzu22]

21. Zip guns have been around for a century

and they are untraceable, and far cheaper than this thing. The difference here is that it's made of plastic.

[TampaAnimusVortex]

38. I'm still waiting on you to quit sidestepping the question...

Exactly what steps are you willing to allow the government to take to prevent it from happening?

[Junkdrawer]

41. Hopefully WE'LL use a scalpel and not a meat ax....

to protect ourselves from asshats.

As I said upthread, resolution and polymers will probably be where things start.

More here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022826028

[TampaAnimusVortex]

42. Interesting - so you want to outlaw recycling technology now.

So the ability to grind off my previously printed out plastic items and reuse them is off limits, like with this technology - or some evolution of it...

http://www.3ders.org/articles/20130302-recyclebot-turning-old-milk-jugs-into-3d-printer-feedstock.html

[Junkdrawer]

44. BTW: Do you know what I mean by maturity?

People have (at least) three ages:

1.) A Chronological Age (todays date - date of birth)

2.) A Mental Age (Chronological Age x IQ)

3.) An Emotional Age (how much are you able to consider the needs of others)

It's the last one that concerns me. From what I'm reading, "you guys" are almost freakish in your lack of emotional maturity. You seem to not to give two shits about anyone or anything beyond your own petty asses and your access to the latest destructive toys.

Living in an emotionally immature state is EXTREMELY painful. It's like you're a perpetual adolescent. And it's destructive to all those who know you and love you.

I pity you.

[TnDem]

57. +100000

This person gets the prize for rational understanding versus emotion...

[The Straight Story]

17. "you guys"

There are some of us out there who want the government to butt out of our business - from abortion to guns to smoking to what we drink.

"us guys" are the folks who don't spend all day being afraid of our fellow citizens. Our government has done more harm with their arms than the people here have.

You can already make a gun at home. Should we ban drill presses/etc because some use them to make things you don't personally like?

When I was a kid my friend and I made some pretty interesting things (including one item where we cut up a bo staff , hollowed out part of it, and attached the two parts with 100lb test line that we were able to use to cut through pumpkins and such. To anyone else it looked just like a small piece of wood, but it could have been lethal.

We made (well not my friend, but me and my cousins) tennis ball cannons. On new year's eve we shot dad's guns at some cans when midnight rolled around.

So what if people make some guns with 3d printers? We have laws against using them to harm others, you can't shoot them in city limits, etc and so on. People with pressure cookers worry me more at this point

We have over 300 hundred million people here in the US - and there are, and always will be, a small percent of them who want to harm others and will find a way to do so. They don't represent the majority, but they get the most press.

[Demo_Chris]

22. well said nt

[Junkdrawer]

23. "When I was a kid"....

That's changed? Could have fooled me.

[Electric Monk]

24. Go right ahead and drink methanol if it floats your libertarian boat.

And if you want gov't totally uninvolved in abortions, send your daughter to some back alley practitioner.

You've got it totally backwards. You can have those things relatively safely BECAUSE of gov't intervention, not in spite of it.

Same with smoking and guns. Big tobacco can't load their cigs with asbestos even if they want to, and gun manufacturers can't sell you one that blows up in your hand right away. Because of regulations and government.



Libertarians are incredibly naive.

[Junkdrawer]

25. Thanks. I guess all we can do is hope maturity....

comes along and smacks these little-boys-with-firecrackers upside the head.

But I'm not holding my breath.

[The Straight Story]

28. Ah, the libertarian label

We have the government already involved in many things, which I have always been in favor of.

The question is how much is too much?

I can't buy a 16oz soda because of too much sugar, but I can buy 3 8oz ones? That seems dumb to me.

The government already has restrictions in place - ones that I agree with - on guns and their use. Very few abuse those restrictions and are punished when they do.

When it comes to abortion, I am fine with the government setting standards. Same as I am for pollution, etc and so on.

There is a difference between control and standards. You set standards for what can be in a cigarette - ok, I am fine with that. You want to tell me I can't smoke in a bar - a place people choose to go to? I have problems with that. Want to say no smoking in hospitals and grocery stores because people need to go there? I am fine with that.

Labeling someone a libertarian or bringing up their personal past, as you have done before, to deflect from an argument the person made does nothing towards advancing your personal ideals and why they should be implemented.

I look for balance and try to apply the same principles across the board. I can't think of any gun laws that would have stopped sandy hook or the shooting in Colorado. We already have laws in place to punish those who shoot people, laws against taking guns into schools, etc - most gun owners obey these laws and are not a problem.

Regulations, laws, are good and have their place - but they won't solve all of our problems and people who want to punish the many based on what the few do is not going to solve any issues. To be against ideas born out of emotional responses does not make one a libertarian.

[TampaAnimusVortex]

39. It's always easier to start name calling than actually argue facts...

Obviously everyone was arguing for the complete dismantlement of every law... didn't you know everyone here was an anarchist?

I think that's called a "straw man argument" isn't it?

[Posteritatis]

46. They've been out there for awhile.

People on, say, DU didn't start regularly flipping out about them until the media glommed onto the gun thing and pushed that to the point where you can't talk about the technology on mainstream news without exclusively talking about firearms.

[Logical]

10. I hate piracy of copyrighted materials but am OK with this. The government should not dictate this.

[davidpdx]

40. I feel the opposite

I don't give a crap about piracy of copyright materials, but I would rather see the torrent communities voluntarily pull stuff like this down because it detracts from the true purpose of the sites. Allowing gun or even bomb making plans will give authorities a better excuse to see it as a creditable threat.

[Logical]

43. So stealing music and movies is OK with you? How nice. Shoplifting fan I assume also. n-t

[davidpdx]

53. False assumption

No, I honestly don't see it as theft. Most of the stuff I watch and delete. I don't sell or distribute anything I download. Personally I would rather watch it on Hulu or one of the network's websites, but I am outside the US therefore everything is blocked. It would be nice if the entertainment industry would find a better way, but then again it's all about the almighty dollar.

[Logical]

58. LOL, I love how people justify stealing video and music.....

"Most of the stuff I watch and delete" which means some of it you watch and fucking keep.
Which is 100% stealing.
Which you I guess are clueless about someone not making money off your theft.
If you are cheap and a criminal that is fine. Just don't try to justify it by saying that the industry is at fault because they are not meeting your demands.
It is no different than the people who say they shoplift because the stores charge too much.

[davidpdx]

60. So if I'm outside the US how am I suppose to watch TV?

(for the moment putting aside movies) Could the networks not allow those in other countries to watch their programs after they air? Would that not cut down on pirating of TV shows? Where would the demand be? The answer is the only demand would be the people who copy and sell the programs.

I'll make the same argument about movies. South Korea had (it now might have been lifted due to the KFTA) a movie screen quota in which only a certain number of foreign films are shown each month. If they are showing Iron Man 3 (note I haven't seen the movie nor do I care about it) on 4-5 screens that takes up a significant portion of the quota. There are plenty of movies that don't fit the market and will never be shown here (any documentary pretty much, although Fahrenheit 9/11 was shown and I did see it in the theater).

Technology could be used fix the problem. Ah, but they have. Amazon streams movies and TV shows. But wait a second....

5. LIMITED TO U.S.

Due to restrictions placed on us by our content providers, we are currently only able to make the Service available to customers located in the United States. We regret that you may not use the Service if you are outside of the United States. "United States" refers to the 48 contiguous United States, the District of Columbia, Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_3757_aivtou?nodeId=200026970

So my question again, is why won't content providers fix the problem? Never mind I know what your answer will be.

[Agony]

11. it is time for a society where it does not matter who has a gun

once I thought that is what we were doing here...

[Bosonic]

12. Also made it onto usenet

[kudzu22]

20. It's so cute

that the government thinks they can get a file back from the internet. Once it's out there, it's out there.

[X_Digger]

26. The funny thing is that the state dept think they have the regulatory power to do this..

A random firearm not developed by/for the military, with no ITAR-scope parts (stealth, crypto, communication, etc) isn't subject to ITAR regulation.

Otherwise, tech plans and blueprints of every civilian gun wouldn't be available on the net.

I can find and download plans to mill out my own 1911, AR-15, AK-47, etc.

If we're lucky, this won't be used as a cudgel come election time.

[Posteritatis]

48. They were probably banking on the site they leaned on not knowing about that. (nt)

[Politicalboi]

27. Then why don't they fine the people who download it

We can't print money without getting caught, this should be no different. I know we would only be taking about the US till other countries see them pop up and want them gone too. Hopefully enough accidents will deter people from making them too.

[Newest Reality]

31. I think the answer to that

may lie in the fact that the file is merely information. It is not a tangible thing or an actual gun. The person who downloads it has to have the means to print the gun and then do so.

That's something to think about because the most dangerous precedent to set is to be able to start with banning one kind of information, (even by fining people, etc.) which opens the door for more.

When you print money, you have an actual, tangible thing that you then could use, so that is different.

[Travis_0004]

34. What are you going to charge them with?

Counterfeiting is a crime, and its illegal. If I go to google image seach and type in 20 dollar bill, I can save a picture of a 20 bill, and its not illegal. Only when I try to print it and pass it off as real.

Also, even if somebody makes a 3d printed gun, making your own gun is not illegal. There are a few machinist out there that have made guns, or more commonly, made the receiver for a gun (the part that is considered a firearm.)

[Posteritatis]

45. The only thing they can be charged with is imaginary crimethink. (nt)

[baldguy]

35. They have several versions of the Anarchist Cookbook, too.

But it's interesting that they don't like to host child porn. I guess their crusade for freedom of speech isn't as absolute as they pretend it is.

[Junkdrawer]

37. I'd LOVE to see these idiots go back to their HS reunion....

and tell their chronological age peers that they spend their days distributing 3D plans so pre-teens can print off plastic guns and blow their hands off trying to fire it.

And I just want them to know that when their grown up friends look at them like they're immature asses with horns growing out of their foreheads ---- their friends are right.

[Liberal_in_LA]

50. fed are scrubbing the web of the plans. not sure how successful theyll be

[mwrguy]

52. Libertardians throwing a tantrum

Throw one or two of them in prison and see how quickly the rest stop seeding.

[dairydog91]

54. And after that, let's do the same thing with potheads!

Just throw a few in prison and everyone else will stop smoking it.

[Junkdrawer]

56. Gunners and potheads are much closer than you may think.....

Both are in the toils of an addiction.

I think I finally get "the Liberator". It's trying to 'liberate' you from your dependency on gun manufacturers.

IOW: 3D printed guns = growing pot at home

It's also why cold-water-on-an-erection threads like this:

If you can 3D print a gun at home, you're welcome to shoot me with it

doesn't attract many gunner responses.

[dairydog91]

59. Why would I care?

I was responding to "make an example of them" proposals. Posturing and "make an example of a few of them" policies don't do much more than appeal to a tribalistic urge to attack members of an enemy tribe. They certainly don't make for effective laws which actually result in real prohibition, as the War on Pot shows so well. The US government has been "making examples" of drug sellers and users for decade and decade, and if anything the availability of drugs has only increased.