Intellectual Property Rights & the Next Revolution: The Effects of 3D Printed Guns
The next manufacturing revolution is underway, and it isn’t in the warehouse of a multi-billion dollar manufacturing conglomerate. The next manufacturing revolution can be found in the bedrooms, garages, or basements of tinkering hobbyists and engineers that are turning digital bits into physical atoms, a process known as 3D printing.
Since the 1980s large corporations have utilized 3D printing in a variety of enterprise applications which require large investments and advanced skill sets. Today, 3D printing is on the cusp of revolutionizing on-demand manufacturing, democratizing creation for households around the world by becoming increasingly faster, easier, and more affordable. The rapid advancements in 3D printing can be attributed to its open-source community of engineers and the lax government regulation of intellectual property surrounding 3D printing; however, the development and distribution of the 3D printed gun is garnishing political attention that could largely impact intellectual property rights and the future of 3D printing.
The process of 3D printing is as simple as downloading and printing a PDF document. 3D printing involves the printer successively laying down material via the control of computer-aided designs (or CAD files) to render a physical object. The technology that 3D printing utilizes is known as additive manufacturing (AM) because of the method in which it constructs objects from the ground up. The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) describes the process as,
“Joining materials to make objects from 3D model data (CAD files), usually layer upon layer, as opposed to subtractive manufacturing technologies, such as traditional manufacturing.”
The benefits of additive manufacturing versus subtractive manufacturing are profound. Editor Jeff Yoders of Line/Shape/Space, a manufacturing design publication, describes the pitfalls of subtractive manufacturing by saying,
“The process creates leftover material that may not be reusable, can require design changes just for the manufacturing process, and involves costly hours of machining time.”
All of the pitfalls that Yoders addresses can be solved by additive manufacturing, thus creating a easier, cheaper, and more accessible method of manufacturing for enterprise or household consumers. Terry Wohlers, in 2011 published, Additive Manufacturing and 3D Printing State of the Industry Annual Worldwide Progress Report, describes the impact of these advancements, saying,
“Low-cost 3D printers affect both the professional and consumer markets… (The Price) Taking additive manufacturing mainstream more than any other single development. 3D printers have helped spread the technology and made it more accessible to students, researchers, do-it-yourself enthusiasts, hobbyists, inventors, and entrepreneurs.”
Wohlers Associates, a consultant company that specializes in rapid production and additive manufacturing, speculates that it took the 3D printing industry “20 years to reach $1 billion in size.” In the company’s 2013 3D printer sales report was the detailed growth of the “low-cost ‘personal’ 3D printer market segment.” From 2008 to 2011, it was calculated that the segment grew 346% each year, worth $2.204 billion by 2011. Canalys, a information technology company, predicts that by 2018 the “personal” 3D printer market will reach $16.2B, attaining a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 45.7%.
The revolution that is underway because of 3D printing is akin to the revolution that was sparked by personal computers in the early 1990s. The U.S. Department of Commerce, in their 35th edition of the U.S. Industrial Outlook Almanac, described the 1990s as a time of “significant change for the computer industry” as the market was beginning to ubiquitously associate computers as the “information appliance.” Personal computing in the 1990s was dominated by Apple and Microsoft, comparable with today’s personal 3D printer companies Makerbot and FormLabs. Apple came to fruition from the Homebrew Computer Club, which is described by Michael Weinberg, Vice President of a nonprofit advocacy group that represents consumers on technology issues, as, “a relatively small, technically proficient group, all intrigued by the potential of great new technology.” This ethos allows for innovation that is motivated by goals and not profit. Weinberg says,
“They share their discoveries and creations, and are more focused on what is possible than on what happens after they achieve it.”
Comparatively, a founder of “personal” 3D printers, RepRap, “an open source effort to create a machine that can build itself,” laid the open-source foundation for MakerBot, a 3D printer manufacturer whose initial mission was to “maintain a repository of its own open source hardware as well as Thingiverse, a user-generated database of 3D models.” All three of these companies; Apple, RepRap, and Makerbot, were founded around the same operating ideologies of innovation, openness, and the ability to answer the question “why” they were doing what they were doing.
Beyond the ethos that surrounded the initial design teams of Apple and Makerbot, their evolutionary history as companies is also shockingly similar. Both Apple and Makerbot became more proprietary in nature after garnishing the approval of the free market. The two men in charge of business development for both companies, Apple’s Steve Jobs, and Makerbot’s Bre Pettis, became the face of personal computers and personal 3D printers during their prospective revolutions, despite both companies loosing their founding engineers. In addition, Steve Jobs was described by Andy Hertzfeld, co-creator of the Mac, in his book entitled Revolution in the Valley as an “asshole” to work for. Meanwhile, Bre Pettis was also described as an “asshole” to work for by a founding MakerBot engineer in the 2014 Netflix original documentary, Print the Legend.
Outside the similarities of corporate structure and personal entrepreneurial stories, the 3D printer movement is in the midst of disrupting everything, much-like the personal computer industry in the mid-90s. Once personal computers started to impact a variety of market sectors, and began to change the way that information was disseminated among humanity, entrenched interests called upon the United States government to implement legislation to combat so-called, “piracy” and “theft” online. The U.S. government responded by creating the DMCA, or the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1996, which, as described by the U.S. Copyright Office, “creates necessary safeguards to protect the rights of copyright holders against the relentless onslaught of new piracy technologies.” In other words, the United States government is going to prosecute those that innovate, thus they have no chance to eat entrenched vendors lunches, and are supporting the “traditional model” of software development at the expense of the “open source model” of software development, explains Theodore C. McCullough, author of Understanding the Impact of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act on the Open Source Model of Software Development published in, Seattle Universities, Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act has spawned conversations asking the question, “what is fair-use?” Millennials have fought against all impending copyright legislation online since the DMCA, such as Stop Online Piracy Act, Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act, and most recently, network neutrality legislation which received a record breaking 5 million comments to the FCC, thus protecting millennial’s ability to discuss, create, and innovate.
The number one similarity between 3D printers and personal computers may be that they will be censored by the government through entrenched interests before reaching a mainstream market which can actively fight against restraints. Despite the innovation, and potential to innovate, 3D printers have gained mainstream popularity at the same time as the 3D printed gun amongst the largest gun control legislation enactment in American history. During 2012, Gallup surveyed Americans asking, “Do you feel that the laws covering the sales of firearms should be more strict?” From those surveyed, 58% said yes, the largest increase since 2000 after the Columbine shootings when 66% of people felt the laws covering the sale of firearms should be more strict.
However, that is not to say that the 3D printer is dead before it has arrived, or even that 3D printed guns are dead. That is because the 3D printer has one advantage that the computer never originally had: the internet. The most widely distributed and free platform the world has ever seen has left the Department of Homeland Security issuing a memo about 3D printed guns to law enforcement stating, “Limiting access may be impossible,” due to the nature of the network the files are on.
3D printed guns have been around for years via numerous online anonymous sources that hosted the CAD files; however today 3D printed guns have gained mainstream attention from a project entitled, Defense Distributed, founded by Cody Wilson a 26 year-old free-market anarchist, information anarchist, and gun-right activist. Wilson’s mission was to develop and publish an open-source gun design that he dubbed to be a, “Wiki-weapon” via his Defense Distributed website. The website gained national attention after publishing its first fully 3D printed operational pistol titled, “Liberator” gathering attention from Vice Media, a youth media company, which produced and shot a documentary surrounding Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed, entitled, “3D Printed Guns (Documentary)” which accumulated 10 Million views on YouTube. Soon after The New York Times’s, Nick Bilton, editor of the Bits Blog, published an article entitled, “The Rise of 3-D Printed Guns.” Directly after the media attention, Stratasys, a enterprise-level 3D printer manufacturer, repossessed Wilson’s leased, unopened 3D printer citing their intended use policy. Bilton, The New York Times’ editor, called Wilson after his meeting with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, who stated that having a lower receiver, the part which houses a firearm’s operating parts, without being licensed is illegal. However, since Wilson manufactured the part himself, it was completely legal. About a month later, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms issued Cody Wilson a Federal Firearms License to manufacture and sell 3D printed guns. Wilson, however, refuses to sell.
Defense Distributed also design and manufacture magazines and extended magazines, which are illegal, for fully and semi-automatic weapons. In Vice’s 3D Printed Guns documentary Wilsons says, “Magazines prove the point even more than lower receiver that you cannot ban a box and springs.” Bilton responds in the documentary saying, “Cody’s 24. When I was 24 years old, I was reading books about Israel and Gaza and believed that was this kind of conspiracy and that. And it’s part of who we are, what we do. It just happens that Cody has decided to stick with guns as his thing that he’s going to fight for. He believes that he’s doing the right thing and that he is perpetuating this kind of technology and looking at what it will be.” Despite the media’s attention-grabbing spin that Defense Distributed is a evil arms supplier, Wilson doesn’t seem to be interested in just 3D printed guns, or just 3D printing for that matter. Rather, Wilson seems to be interested in transparency and freedom of information. The 3D printed gun acts as a driver to gain attention around the idea that it’s impossible to limit knowledge, objects, or perform any type of censorship in the vastly connected global world of tomorrow.
An anonymous Defense Distributed representative in the Vice documentary, says,
“Guns are a tool, like any other tool. It is completely restrictive upon their intended use to determine their ill.”
In the case of Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed, the intended use of their guns were to drive a political conversation around intellectual property and the freedom of information. Wilson says,
“I don’t think we’re Utopians. I think the real Utopia is the idea that we can go back to the 1990s, and everything will be perfect forever. All we’re saying is, no, you can’t. Now there’s the Internet.”
The gun may be just a tool, but so is the 3D printer, thus the policy of intended use applies for the printer as it does the gun, if the gun is deemed ill. Contrary is any type of intended use policy unacceptable because of its limitations on innovation and human potential?
Originally published at www.krate.co.
