Pirate Bay Takes Over Distribution of Censored 3D Printable Gun

[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.