Defense Distributed, the Texas-based company specializing in
3-D-printed plastic firearms, took down its downloadable files on
Thursday at the request of the State Department's Directorate of Defense
Trade Control Compliance. The company posted a blueprint for the first
fully-operational printed plastic handgun, "The Liberator," on Monday at
its site, DEFCAD; the file was downloaded more than a 100,000 times in
its first three days.
In a letter to the company's founder, Cody Wilson, the State
Department alleged that the Defense Distributed's file-sharing service
violated the terms of the Arms Export Control Act, and demanded that it
take down 10 of its files, including the Liberator, within three weeks.
"Our theory's a good one, but I just didn't ask them and I didn't
tell them what we were gonna do," Wilson, a University of Texas law
student, told Mother Jones. "So I think it's gonna end up being
alright, but for now they're asserting information control over the
technical data, because the Arms Information Control Act governs not
just actual arms, but technical data, pictures, anything related to
arms."
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