Remember how Defense Distributed’s Cody Wilson released schematics for the world’s first 3D printed gun, The Liberator? The genie is out of the bottle but the US government is still making him pull the plans from his site.
Defcad.org
The Defense Distributed file site, Defcad.org, posted the redlined message at 2PM Eastern
Both the company and its Twitter account claim that they were instructed by the US Department of Defense Trade Controls to pull the files, along with other files related to 3D printed items, from public access.
#DEFCAD has gone dark at the request of the Department of Defense Trade Controls. Take it up with the Secretary of State.
— Defense Distributed (@DefDist) May 9, 2013
The kit to 3D print a version of the gun had been downloaded over 200,000 times in the matter of a few days from official releases alone. The Pirate Bay also includes torrents of the relevant files that are currently some of the most popular 3D printed files ever hosted on the service.
Wilson explained why 3D printed weapons are his cause in an interview with PC Magazine saying, “I just wanted to create it and then make as much of an impact as possible with mainstreaming some of these ideas.”
The office of the Secretary of State has not released any comment about the burgeoning controversy.