It’s starting to look dark for the future of desktop 3D printing.
This began with the work in several US states to control the 3D printing of illegal weapons, which have increased in most areas, according to numerous reports.
While there shouldn’t be much issue with the idea of stopping such activities, how these legislatures are doing so is going to become a very large issue for anyone in the 3D print world.
The problem is that at least two states, New York and California, include passages in their legislation that require 3D printers to use “blocking software” to magically detect and block any attempt to print a weapon.
This publication and others in the 3D print space have previously published many stories explaining how this is literally impossible to do in any technical method imaginable. Yet this is what many state legislators believe will work. New York has actually passed the legislation, while California is still debating it.
Some 3D printer operators believe that this will all go away once state technical teams realize this simply won’t work.
But I’m not so sure.
In the past couple of weeks, I am seeing an avalanche of news stories about this topic, far, far more than usual. Along with the usual “someone was caught with 3D printed weapons” stories, we now see stories discussing the legislation.
If you read them, they almost all fail to describe the mess that will result in the 3D print world if the rules are implemented as designed.
The rules require blocking technology, which would require all 3D printers to be constantly online and all submitted jobs to be checked with a service. Major 3D printer manufacturers will implement their own services, and smaller ones will use third-party checkers that will pop up soon. Many, many jobs will be falsely marked positive and prevented from printing. In addition, this means all your designs will be sent to another site, compromising privacy.
Some 3D printer manufacturers will simply stop selling products in those states to avoid all the issues.
The legislation also does not carve out exceptions for actual manufacturers using additive manufacturing equipment. This means their proprietary industrial designs will be sent offsite to who knows where for checking. I have no idea how this will work for companies that require secrecy, especially those in regulated industries.
Open source 3D printing projects will either stop, change to use third-party checking services, or block US access. Since most of today’s 3D print technology is based on open-source tools, you can imagine how stifling this will be to any future progress.
Would all this actually happen? Given that many of the stories I’ve read recently are from mainstream outlets, and that they don’t understand or even talk about these issues, I expect the majority population to be “OK” with the legislation. There are widespread misunderstandings of what 3D printing is and how it actually works.
Even worse, after all this carnage has been launched, the perps will be easily able to bypass all this regulation. Nothing will be accomplished other than destruction.
And somebody getting some votes from misinformed people.
