Three-dimensional printing is often seen as a key component for a new economy in which consumers simply "print" off products, rather than ordering them online or trudging through the aisles of the store. The idea of both customizing and producing new goods from the comfort of the home suggests a very different world of shopping.

Yet, that long view has also been met with resistance. Many fear that the technology could decimate key industries like manufacturing, retail and shipping. In other cases, as with any new technology set loose, critics fear that it could have other dire consequences, especially without proper regulation.

Those concerns found a poster child at the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Texas, this week.

A Texas law student, Cody Wilson, used the SXSW showcase to present a new website, - a search engine designed to provide unfettered access to files that dictate 3-D designs. The site, he said, will provide an unrestricted channel to the designs of any potential product, from a hammer to a prosthetic limb. (The technology to actually produce many goods is still a ways off, however.)

What raised eyebrows about Defcad was Wilson and the group behind it. Called Defense Distributed, the Texas group is home to the "Wiki Weapon Project," an effort to develop files to print off weapons, such as assault rifles like the AR-15, the model used in the Newtown, Conn., massacre.

The files for printing guns are among those being made accessible via Defcad.

'Crypto-anarchist logic'

Wilson views Defcad and his activism as steps toward a utopian society, free of the constraints of intellectual property laws and government regulation. The point is not guns for everyone, he said, but the freedom of knowledge and creation for everyone.

"I can't tell you exactly what that new world will look like, but I see features that it will have," he said over the phone from Austin on Tuesday. He notes that for all the government's talk, Congress is short on action - and that has allowed what he believes to be more enlightened views to take hold. "Crypto-anarchist logic is bleeding into the world," Wilson said.

When confronted with the notion that many people would not see their utopia involving assault rifles, he points to the country's current laws and how easy it is to acquire a gun.

"You (are) already living in that world," he said.

Technology rising

3-D printing is accomplished in a number of ways. The most common is a process called "additive printing" where a nozzle emits layer on top of layer of substrate - say liquid plastic or aluminum - and eventually constructs a new object. With the proper file type, a computer tells the printer how to make the object.

The technology is one of the key components of the burgeoning "DIY" or "Maker" culture. As costs have plummeted for circuitry and other hardware, and the Internet has allowed anyone, anywhere to share files, tools available for closet inventors have flourished.

Companies that provide cheap DIY technology - including Arduino, which makes cheap circuit boards; Stratasys, which make 3-D printers; and Shapeways, which provide an Amazon-like market for 3-D-printed objects - have taken off. Amateurs are building everything from low-orbit satellites to automatic dog feeders to drones, often for less than $500.

On the Defense Distributed site, Wilson says, files for parts of its "Wiki-Weapon Project" have been downloaded 400,000 times.


In December, Wired named Wilson one of the 15 most dangerous people in the world, a title he shared with Syrian president Bashar Assad, among others.

Yet, so far, Defense Distributed's actions are legal, since it is giving away the designs, not selling any parts.

"An unlicensed individual may make a "firearm" ... for his own personal use, but not for sale or distribution," according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., is pushing a new version of a bill called the Undetectable Firearms Act, which would increase regulation of plastic guns and those made with 3-D printers.

Defense Distributed has already printed off plastic components for assault rifles, including the so-called lower receiver, which houses the gun's critical machinery and is what the government tracks with serial numbers. Plastic isn't the idea material for guns, but 3-D printing with metal is also developing rapidly.

In a moody YouTube video released in concert with his SXSW presentation, Wilson explains that the group is against all forms of copyright and intellectual property restrictions and regulation in all of its forms."

He argues that for 3-D printing to be a successful technology, "it will be because it allows us to make the important things. Not trinkets, not lawn gnomes. But the things that institutions and industries have an interest in keeping from us. Things like access, medical devices, drugs, goods, guns."

Copyright concerns has been set up as a for-profit business, primarily supported through advertisements, but the site had received more than $12,000 in donations by Tuesday afternoon and hopes to raise $100,000 before officially launching next month.

The model of an open network of 3-D printable designs isn't the first. MakerBot, which sells 3-D printers, operates a site full of 3-D designs called Thingaverse. It removed designs for parts of weapons in December.

Wilson makes it clear that Defcad won't censor designs.

"There will be no takedowns. Ever," he says.

Wilson has said repeatedly that he will work within the law, but his proclamation means that Defcad is likely to run afoul of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which criminalizes the distribution of copyrighted works. Copyright holders can issue takedown notices if they feel their intellectual property is being infringed, by say, a copycat gun design.

"Defcad will be doomed if sticks to its plan to ignore DMCA takedowns," noted ACLU security analyst Chris Soghoian. "Flouting copyright law is more dangerous than sharing 3-D gun designs."

Wilson praises the model of The Pirate Bay - a site that facilitated the trade of copyrighted music and videos - but admits that he still has some more work to do before he understands exactly how his business will operate within the bounds of the law.

"I need to do more reading there," he said.
