The California proposed law to control 3D printers is no longer proposed: it’s the law.
We’ve been following this story for months now, and the outcome seems to be something that satisfies all parties.
A quick recap: increasing gun violence in certain US states has legislators scrambling to provide a solution — or at least appear to solve the problem. Encouraged by certain special interest groups and service providers, legislators in several US states introduced legislation to control what 3D printers can print.
The general concept is that some software / service / something will magically detect a weapon or weapon parts about to be printed on a device, and then stop that from happening. This sounds good in concept, but it has a number of fatal issues. There is no possible way to perform this detection on a reliable basis, since geometries of weapon parts are often identical to non-weapon parts. The best example would be a model of a hand drill, which somewhat resembles a weapon. If you let it pass the test, then weapon designers would simply make their weapons look like drills. This approach cannot work.
Then there’s the matter of being able to use a tool freely for whatever purpose you require, something that is quite important in the US.
Nevertheless, California legislators went ahead with their bill, and last week it was finally signed by the governor, making it actual law in California.
The catch is that at the last moment the legislation was quietly changed. The major change was that the implementation would be delayed until an external standards agency, ASTM, comes up with a formal definition of how this could work.
But it cannot work. Ever. So ASTM will never issue such a standard. Therefore, the bill is effectively neutered.
But it’s mission accomplished for the legislators, who can proudly state that they were behind the anti-violence bill.
An excellent recap of the entire situation was provided by David Tobin, who has been leading the fight against bills of this type. Definitely worth a watch:
While the California bill is effectively a nothingburger, there are other states that are now contemplating similar laws. It is quite possible that those legislators don’t understand the situation and pass a bill that does not have something like the California 3D printing loophole. In those jurisdictions, sales and use of 3D printers will certainly be affected.
It’s in the interest of any 3D printer operator in the US to monitor their state legislature for any similar efforts and take action as Tobin did.
If not, then there will be 3D printing issues.
