Downloadable guns and the futility of trying to remove something from the internet

[Dominus Atheos]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/31/us/3d-pr ... index.html

Someone posted a blueprint on the internet that you can turn into a gun in the comfort of your own home with a 3d printer, which costs a few hundred dollars.

The ease by which you can do this causing massive amounts of salt to be spilled by people all over the media today, and 20 state attorney generals are suing to block the files on the original source. I assume no one asked Barbra Streisand or the RIAA how well that went for them when they tried to do it.

It went about this well: 76606502819AC86AC6B67B0C98595EB976142F3B

That's an info hash for bittorrent, also called a magnet link. Type that alphanumeric sequence into a bittorrent client, and in a few moments you will have said blueprint. Throwing the original source in jail won't have any effect on those files.

[Dominus Atheos]

PS: I fucking don't like censorship. There is no such thing as knowledge or information that is so inherently dangerous that the government can throw people in jail for sharing it. If the government even threatens to do that, it should be considered a moral duty to share that information.

[AniThyng]

PS: I fucking don't like censorship. There is no such thing as knowledge or information that is so inherently dangerous that the government can throw people in jail for sharing it. If the government even threatens to do that, it should be considered a moral duty to share that information.

That's all fine and dandy for gun blueprints but CP seems to be the obvious counterpoint to there being no such thing as information that the government routinely jails people for sharing.

[Dominus Atheos]

I hadn't thought of child pornography as "information". Maybe it is?

[Dominus Atheos]

Edit: Child pornographers get thrown in jail because of the horrific things involved in creating it and discouraging other people from creating more of it; and of a desire to "discourage" pedophilia by denying "fuel" for their fantasies. Neither of which are literally the content on it's own. No one wants to arrest our parents for all the naked baby photos they have of us, even though the information contained is the same as CP.

[Ace Pace]

PS: I fucking don't like censorship. There is no such thing as knowledge or information that is so inherently dangerous that the government can throw people in jail for sharing it. If the government even threatens to do that, it should be considered a moral duty to share that information.

So, NBC blueprints and blueprints for constructing the facilities, is perfectly sane to help spread? I just want to understand if you're really no limits.

[Dominus Atheos]

PS: I fucking don't like censorship. There is no such thing as knowledge or information that is so inherently dangerous that the government can throw people in jail for sharing it. If the government even threatens to do that, it should be considered a moral duty to share that information.

So, NBC blueprints and blueprints for constructing the facilities, is perfectly sane to help spread? I just want to understand if you're really no limits.

How many years of jail would you suggest for publicly releasing that stuff? If something is a crime, it has to have a punishment. It's not about whether it being shared is bad idea or even completely insane, it's about how much you are willing to punish someone for it.

[Dominus Atheos]

And since we're apparently going to get into the weeds on this, my exceptions would be if you work for the government and it is part of your job to keep secrets.

Unless the government is doing something bad and you are a whistleblower, then it's fine.

Also spys, spys are bad. Bad intent is bad.

Probably some other things, if I think of any more I'll get back to you.

[Jub]

PS: I fucking don't like censorship. There is no such thing as knowledge or information that is so inherently dangerous that the government can throw people in jail for sharing it. If the government even threatens to do that, it should be considered a moral duty to share that information.

So, NBC blueprints and blueprints for constructing the facilities, is perfectly sane to help spread? I just want to understand if you're really no limits.

With stuff like that, most people would have zero use for it, most of those with a use for it will lack the resources to use the info, and the remainder will almost always already have access to the equivalent anyway. That's not to say that kind of stuff should be spread, the off chance that it ends up in the hands of somebody with the means and motive who only lacked the know-how is still a massive risk for literally no gain.

On a smaller scale, what if full manufacturing for the F-22 and it's production facilities leaked? It's still a state level secret but with less world-ending impact than in your NBC scenario. Is that stuff that should be illegal to share or is the risk low enough that freedom of information should trump that consideration?

[AniThyng]

Edit: Child pornographers get thrown in jail because of the horrific things involved in creating it and discouraging other people from creating more of it; and of a desire to "discourage" pedophilia by denying "fuel" for their fantasies. Neither of which are literally the content on it's own. No one wants to arrest our parents for all the naked baby photos they have of us, even though the information contained is the same as CP.

The laws clearly extend to possession and distribution, it's not restricted to creation. Intent is definitely a factor, as evidenced by the difference between art and porn or the parent's baby pictures case but at the end of the day the charge is still related to the act of distributing or restricting information we as a society consider to be illegal and immoral.

[Jub]

The laws clearly extend to possession and distribution, it's not restricted to creation. Intent is definitely a factor, as evidenced by the difference between art and porn or the parent's baby pictures case but at the end of the day the charge is still related to the act of distributing or restricting information we as a society consider to be illegal and immoral.

And Russia is cracking down on the LGBT community with laws that are to 'protect the children' so broad anything that community writes could be a crime. What any given state and its citizens deem legal or moral shouldn't have any bearing on a free and neutral internet.

[Dominus Atheos]

Edit: Child pornographers get thrown in jail because of the horrific things involved in creating it and discouraging other people from creating more of it; and of a desire to "discourage" pedophilia by denying "fuel" for their fantasies. Neither of which are literally the content on it's own. No one wants to arrest our parents for all the naked baby photos they have of us, even though the information contained is the same as CP.

The laws clearly extend to possession and distribution, it's not restricted to creation. Intent is definitely a factor, as evidenced by the difference between art and porn or the parent's baby pictures case but at the end of the day the charge is still related to the act of distributing or restricting information we as a society consider to be illegal and immoral.

And I'm telling you it's not. The charge is not just about the content, It's about how that content was created and what it will be used for in the future.

Let's say a video of a young boy urinating into a toilet gets posted on facebook. If its posted by the boys mother and it's titled "finally potty trained!!!" then I would say that that's not child pornogaphy and the mother shouldn't be arrested.

If the exact same video is posted by NAMBLA, it's totally cp.

[madd0ct0r]

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/31/us/3d-pr ... index.html

Someone posted a blueprint on the internet that you can turn into a gun in the comfort of your own home with a 3d printer, which costs a few hundred dollars.

The ease by which you can do this causing massive amounts of salt to be spilled by people all over the media today, and 20 state attorney generals are suing to block the files on the original source. I assume no one asked Barbra Streisand or the RIAA how well that went for them when they tried to do it.

It went about this well: 76606502819AC86AC6B67B0C98595EB976142F3B

That's an info hash for bittorrent, also called a magnet link. Type that alphanumeric sequence into a bittorrent client, and in a few moments you will have said blueprint. Throwing the original source in jail won't have any effect on those files.

Morally, would I be wrong to distribute a few hundred subtle variants of this that will fail in various interesting and unpredicatably dangeorus ways? A 3d printed gun that burns "twat" into your trigger finger from exaust gasses should reduce the fun for the gangs.

[Zixinus]

It is a case of the legal mindset trying to enforce laws that were made in different reality. This is not a new thing. That the law fails to realize that the spread of knowledge cannot be stopped by laws is also not new.

To note, there are blueprints and such for WW2 era guns (and I'm pretty sure for more modern guns too, especially the various AKs simply due to how widespread they are). Of course, the upcost of making guns (and not very good guns) that way is still order of magnitudes higher than putting it into a 3D printer. Personally, if you want to restrict guns, trying to go after the weapon is secondary. The true focus should be at regulating ammunition. Without ammunition, a gun is useless.

What has to be kept in mind is that the 3D printer is still using materials that 3D printers use. This is plastics and polymers on-par with Legos. They will not be able to shoot as many rounds as a proper gun and potentially explode in the user's hands.

An interesting point about this:
An overview to a gun made out of hardware store goods.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIhGCRIQnCA[/youtube]

So all this is really new news being really old news.

Morally, would I be wrong to distribute a few hundred subtle variants of this that will fail in various interesting and unpredicatably dangeorus ways? A 3d printed gun that burns "twat" into your trigger finger from exaust gasses should reduce the fun for the gangs.

It will probably do that anyway. The plastics used by 3D printers aren't designed to withstand small explosions like gun barrels and receivers do.

[Elheru Aran]

The problem with restricting access to ammunition is that you can make black powder fairly easily, and it might actually be better as it isn't as powerful as modern powders. Failure could also be helped by putting the load in a thick printed cartridge and making the pistol single shot break open actions with thick barrels and robust components.

[Zixinus]

You forget about primers. Primers are not that easy to make and making a gun work without primers increases its complexity. This is not even getting into making actual cartridges. It also increases costs and decreases the effectiveness of the weapons produced, compared to proper ammunition.

Yes, you can compensate in design for inferior material. You are still building with inferior materials. The fact that you need to massively decrease fire-rate by making the action single-shot is also significant.

Again, for a few thousand dollars you can just buy (probably illegally even) a regular gun that will likely be vastly superior to a 3D printed one. 3D printed guns aren't even TRYING to be superior, that is not the point behind them.

Sidenote: could a mod please fix the youtube link I made in an earlier post?

[Lonestar]

That's all fine and dandy for gun blueprints but CP seems to be the obvious counterpoint to there being no such thing as information that the government routinely jails people for sharing.

I would say that there is a wide fuckin' gulf between CP(which is inherently oppressive because no child can consent) and the plans for a one-shot .380 gun that may or may not explode in your hand.

[Formless]

You forget about primers. Primers are not that easy to make and making a gun work without primers increases its complexity. This is not even getting into making actual cartridges. It also increases costs and decreases the effectiveness of the weapons produced, compared to proper ammunition.

Actually, it is well known among shooters that you can make primers out of the chemicals in match heads and the striker chemicals on the match box. The main catch is that the resulting composition is rather sensitive and dangerous, but it can be made pretty easily.

But besides that, electrical priming isn't really that complicated, especially in a black powder firearm. Certainly any complexity is offset by both the safety of electrical ignition and by the low cost over time. See this guy's design for a practical example. And while he is only shooting small .22 caliber balls (#4 buckshot, really), the two historical weapons he took inspiration from were both full scale musket/air rifle designs, so it could almost certainly scale up. Also, people are still coming up with caseless ammo technologies still with electronic firing mechanisms.

Then there is that time Daisy made a .22 caliber firearm using caseless ammo, which the inventor made possible by using compressed air as a priming mechanism. Seriously. Turns out that if you put compressed air through an oturator with enough pressure and you can heat it up to high enough temperatures to ignite gunpowder compositions. And it isn't even that complicated! It just requires precision tooling, which is why the inventor went to an airgun company if Forgotten Weapons is to be believed. Probably the only reason the technology didn't take off is because Daisy didn't technically have the legal licensing to make firearms, and decided against getting that license after the ATF stepped in and stopped production of the guns. Also, caseless ammo has other issues to consider, even though the guns did work. But it Daisy could make the technology work, it probably wouldn't be hard for someone else to make it work, possibly even an amateur, and especially if they discard the caseless ammo aspect of the design.

[Formless]

Ghetto edit: For reference on the caseless ammo reference, see this design and the company making it. Not sure if its a practical design and calling something that fits five shots into a metal box "caseless" might be stretching the definition a bit, but there you go.

[Elheru Aran]

You forget about primers. Primers are not that easy to make and making a gun work without primers increases its complexity. This is not even getting into making actual cartridges. It also increases costs and decreases the effectiveness of the weapons produced, compared to proper ammunition.

Actually, it is well known among shooters that you can make primers out of the chemicals in match heads and the striker chemicals on the match box. The main catch is that the resulting composition is rather sensitive and dangerous, but it can be made pretty easily.

Yeah, my older brother hunted regularly when we were in Africa with a locally made blackpowder shotgun. He made his own percussion caps out of... yup, match heads. Also made his own lead shot by melting bits of lead (probably out of car batteries) over a bucket of water, which I don't recommend, but honestly there are only so many ways to make something that goes bang. If they could figure out gunpowder and fireworks I don't know how many hundreds of years ago, it can't be that hard when you can order basic chemicals on the Internet.

[The Romulan Republic]

The laws clearly extend to possession and distribution, it's not restricted to creation. Intent is definitely a factor, as evidenced by the difference between art and porn or the parent's baby pictures case but at the end of the day the charge is still related to the act of distributing or restricting information we as a society consider to be illegal and immoral.

And Russia is cracking down on the LGBT community with laws that are to 'protect the children' so broad anything that community writes could be a crime. What any given state and its citizens deem legal or moral shouldn't have any bearing on a free and neutral internet.

To be ideologically consistent, then, you should be completely okay with the possession and distribution of child pornography, snuff films, revenge porn, etc. being legal. Is that the case?

Also, it seems like this is getting into slippery slope fallacy territory: that ANY restriction on freedom of expression or freedom of information on the internet whatsoever will open the door for despotism and oppression of minority rights. In which case, logically, you should also be opposed to:

-Classification of any information by the government, including the identities and locations of undercover agents and police officers.

-Laws protecting the identity of underage offenders or victims in criminal cases.

-Witness protection programs.

-Laws against fraud.

-Laws against identity theft.

-Laws against advocating/inciting criminal acts.

-Being able to sue someone for defamation or plagarism.

-Secret ballots in elections (which are there to prevent authoritarian governments or individuals from coercing voters in the exercise of their freedoms- not so simple now, is it?).

I am generally a strong advocate of freedom of expression- more than most people on the Left*, probably. For example, I don't think people should be jailed simply for identifying as a Neo-Nazi or flying a swastika (though if they ever go beyond talk to acting on Nazi views, or directly inciting others to do so, then may the boot of the law descend on them and crush them like the vermin that they are). I'm generally opposed to any limits on political speech barring fairly blatant incitement/advocacy of violence, fraud, or defamation of individual private citizens.

But even I recognize that there are some reasonable limits.

Here's a good rule of thumb: the moment you are adopting a "zero tolerance" policy on any issue as broad and as complicated as censorship, on either side, you are probably wrong.

Edits: Added a few more examples of information that should be subject to legal restrictions, just to emphasize what a bad idea it is to apply an overly-broad brush to this issue.

*Not that the Right is any more supportive of free speech as a rule- the typical Rightist uses "free speech" to oppose things like hate speech laws and defend bigoted speech, then whines to high heaven about how they're being censored and oppressed if someone calls them, say, a fucking racist piece of shit. No, assholes, you're not being censored if someone expresses an opposing view, even if they do it in an insulting manner. Freedom of speech is a two-way street. You can be a scumbag, and I can call you a scumbag. That's how it works.

[AniThyng]

That's all fine and dandy for gun blueprints but CP seems to be the obvious counterpoint to there being no such thing as information that the government routinely jails people for sharing.

I would say that there is a wide fuckin' gulf between CP(which is inherently oppressive because no child can consent) and the plans for a one-shot .380 gun that may or may not explode in your hand.

Sure, it's a wide gulf, but clearly there is a line in the sand we draw where we say "these information/data/images" are ok and "these other information/data/images are not ok and possession and distribution are not ok, almost without exemption."

[The Romulan Republic]

Yeah.

Personally I feel that distributing plans for easy home manufacture of firearms over the internet is irresponsible and should probably be illegal, but I'm less bothered by that than by the overreacting arguments of people insisting that there should be NO restrictions whatsoever, which is at best a poorly-thought-out argument based on a slippery slope fallacy. Like I said, I'm pretty much a supporter of freedom of expression, even of opinions I find contemptible and dangerous, but there have to be some limits, because there are situations where speech can be used to actively incite or facilitate serious crimes.

This kind of gets to the central dilemma of politics, and arguably of civilization in general- how far can you allow one person's rights to extend before they begin to infringe on another person's rights? For example, freedom of religion cannot extend to legalizing slavery or human sacrifice, because that would violate other peoples' right to life. That's why an absolutist position on even something as important as free speech is dangerous- because its impossible for anyone to have absolute freedom. The best you can do is try to maximize freedom for everyone, by allowing people to have as much freedom as possible without allowing them to do things that would actively infringe on peoples' rights.

[Jub]

I guess this is where we ask about cartoons/comics that depict what, if it were filmed or photographed, would be child porn. Some places have made this illegal, others haven't taken a stance, and others have made it clearly legal. There's obviously a large gulf between images compiled by a person and actually harming a child, but when one talks about free information on the internet this is a place to talk about where the line should be drawn. If you 'support' this being allowed, supported in quotes because you can agree that it's creepy but not in itself worthy of being illegal or overly immoral, would you still support it if instead of drawings it was real photos or film but with a perfect doll replica or extremely lifelike CGI? What if this art was so good it became impossible to distinguish it from something that a real child was harmed to make?

[Formless]

Okay, look, I'm going to stop you both right there. Its painfully obvious neither of you understand the psychology of pedophiles because if you did you would drop the CP comparison as an extreme case that doesn't have anything to do with the thread or the larger issue of censorship. Its the equivalent of jumping straight to a Hitler comparison. CP is completely unique from the various topics you two have been comparing it to for one reason : CP doesn't just harm the children photographed, it causes further harm by normalizing the pedophile's interest in children and thus encouraging bad behavior in the future. Yes, this is probably even true of drawn pornographic imagery because pedophiles are that kind of fucked up. Note that from a psychologist's perspective, the CP hurts the pedophile themselves in this regard. This isn't an effect you see with other kinds of pornography even when it depicts deviant sexuality including themes of non-consent. This is because normal consumers of pornography A) have an instinctive aversion to sexual images of minors under a certain age and B) don't have the underlying psychological problems of a pedophile to overcome that aversion, which importantly includes a serious tendency towards self-deception and rationalization. So in other words, the only people who would want to look at child pornography are people who shouldn't look at child pornography.

But critically, this does NOT say anything about the general merits of censorship because child pornography is almost unique in its known, direct, psychologically and sociologically studied link to psychological harm and victimization of real people. This is something that real forensic experts have studied and it does not merely come down to a correlation like gun accessibility and violence is correlated. Its a direct harm. Very few things besides perhaps snuff films are comparable to CP. So don't fucking bother, and stop shitting up the thread with this ignorant bullshit. Please. Its embarrassing to both of you.