Last month DEFCAD was launched to host firearm related 3D printer models after Thingverse implemented site-wide censorship. Cody Wilson, the man behind Defense Distributed, is working on a new endeavor, a commercial version of DefCAD aimed at the free distribution of 3D models and bypassing copyright laws:
Wilson said DefCAD will become a for-profit corporation that will act as a one-stop search engine for “3D printable models” of just about anything. In other words, DefCAD hopes to be an expanded version of the physibles section on the Pirate Bay.
“It maintains all the present features but we step it up a notch,” Wilson told Ars. “The Pirate Bay has the right idea with physibles, but increasingly the fight is going to be about physical copyright—we want to build one of the tools early.”
And like the Pirate Bay, which has thumbed its nose at corporations, copyright, and the legal system for digital goods, Wilson suggests DefCAD would do the same for physical objects as much as possible.
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“Help us turn DefCAD into the world’s first unblockable, open-source search engine for 3D printable parts,” Wilson narrates in the video. “There will be no takedowns. Ever.”
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Wilson acknowledged that like the Pirate Bay, there are “contingency plans” to incorporate or move his operations to other countries not as affected by the DMCA. He specifically mentioned Slovakia, Russia and Singapore as “places we could go.”
The commercial DefCAD site is up and looking for crowd sourced funding. While I admit that this venture may not turn out and there is always the chance that this endeavor is a scam I believe Cody had demonstrated his sincerity by setting up DefCAD.org and developing a 3D printable AR-15 lower. Due to those facts alone dropped them $50.00 because I believe in the cause. I, like Code, am a crypto-anarchist and believe a world where voluntary interactions, not coercive interactions, are the norm:
So what’s Wilson’s endgame? He describes himself as a “crypto-anarchist” who follows the teachings of 19th-century French anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.
“I believe in revolution—not the capital-R ‘Revolution,’ but I’m all for the next thing,” Wilson said. “No one can imagine the end of neo-liberal democracy. I don’t believe in socialism from above, but socialism from below. It doesn’t matter what it is, the point is that it’s not imposed. It will be what it needs to look like. [Society will be] based not on coercion but cooperation—I’m a desperate romantic. If any of these things are possible, I don’t want to believe in anything else. I want to see if these are real and can work.”
His viewpoint isn’t that dissimilar from my own:
The revolution won’t be violent, it won’t involve fighting in the streets, it won’t involved people rising up and overthrowing the governments of the world. What the revolution will involve is the continuous decentralization of power. Technology will continue to evolve in a manner that empowers individuals to separate themselves from their rulers. Powerful corporations who have enjoyed protection from competition through the state’s decrees will lose their power as an ever growing number of people are able to replicate their goods from the safety of their own homes. Enforcing patents and regulations will become impossible. As people begin to fabricate needed goods themselves the large corporations and the state will bring in less wealth. People will no longer be forced to buy goods from politically connected corporations or pay sales tax to the state.
3D printers stand to be one of the greatest tools ever devise for stripping power from the handful of centralized entities that currently hold it. The state’s laws become more and more irrelevant as people become less and less reliant on it and its cronies. Gun control laws would be meaningless in a world where any individual can easily fabricate whatever firearm they want. Wealth raked in through sales tax would dwindle as individuals are able to make needed goods themselves. Couple 3D printer technology with anonymizing tools such as Tor and you have a world where information cannot be censored, tied to any specific individuals, and goods can be shipped from designers to customers free of the state’s watchful eye.
We will not achieve liberty, in the firearms community or in general, through political involvement. Begging those in power to cede their power is a foolhardy strategy that is doom from the start. When you involve yourself in politics you involve yourself in a system that was designed and can be redesigned at any time by those currently in power. Playing outside of the political system allows you to play by your own set or rules. Instead of begging those in power for liberty you can develop ways to entirely bypass their tyranny. If you want to ensure the state cannot ban firearms, magazines, or other related accessories it would behoove you to do whatever is in your power to ensure 3D printer technology advances.