The long-standing legal war between the US government and entrepreneur Cody Wilson, who now has the full right to freely distribute materials needed for 3D printing of small arms, has ended.
This story began several years ago when Cody Wilson, the owner and founder of the Defense Distributed project, managed to create and print the first working model of a single-shot Liberator pistol on a 3D printer. He uploaded his drawings to his personal website, from where anyone could download them. In just a few days, hundreds of thousands of people took advantage of this right, after which the information was uploaded to the network as torrent files.
Cody Wilson vs. US government
Wilson laid out the drawings of the "Liberator" on May 5, 2013, and on May 9 the American authorities ordered the entrepreneur to remove them, threatening otherwise with millions of fines. The United States Department of State's Department of Control of the Trafficking in Circuits considered that Wilson, by his actions, violated several laws at once, including AECA and ITAR. The businessman was promised to be charged with the illegal export of weapons, since not only American citizens downloaded his files.
Wilson complied with the requirements, but filed a lawsuit about the infringement of their rights to freely disseminate information and carry weapons. A few months ago, the officials had to offer the businessman a deal, which they almost recognized as being right.
The settlement agreement was recorded in court documents. In it, the US Department of Justice recognizes that the ban on the proliferation of blueprints of weapons on the Internet is an encroachment on freedom of speech, which must be lifted. The Office promised to change the rules of the international arms trade. However, so far all these innovations concern far from all “trunks” - weapons that exceed 50 gauge do not fall under it.
Need a gun - so print it
Inspired by the victory, Wilson, with tripled forces, began to make up for lost time. He launched a new site Defcad.com with drawings of weapons that can be printed on a printer. Moreover, his numerous supporters help the entrepreneur to fill in this resource, who send him home-made weapons drawings. Its spectrum is quite wide: from single-shot pistols to automatic rifles.
Wilson plans to create on the basis of this site a real library of drawings of printed weapons.
