How far off is a consumer product that has been “locked down” but otherwise capable of printing devices of increasingly larger scales of destruction?
Are we not already on this trajectory?
The purpose of my comment? Reductio ad absurdum.
I’m quite surprised at the negative response to be honest. The original comment put no limits on their claims that “utilizing technology” should be regulated.
Do people not read comments as a linear progression of call and response?
Not yet...
You can also easily build a drone with a GPS from commonly available parts, then strap a bomb to it made from match heads and PVC pipe and give it a destination to fly to.
There are an insane number of ways anyone moderately intelligent can cause a massive loss to human life if that is their goal.
We should be thankful most violent types are not smart enough to do anything worse than pull a trigger.
The only way to stop humans from hurting each other is strap us all in solitary confinement VR pods.
(I'm on your side, btw fwiw! But I still don't like dripping sarcasm insinuating other perspectives are clearly stupid!:)
If the result sounds in any way remarkable, then that only illustrates that the original is remarkable in exactly the same way, which is of course the point of the exercise.
Maybe you aren't a fan, but they are certainly in non-trivially good company.
Can you cite that? It's pretty clear that freedom of "speech" isn't limited to literal verbal speech. I'm not sure I've ever seen the suggestion that the authors of the constitution were overly concerned with the literal mechanism of printing, so much as the ability of the citizens to publish information.
So we end up in this weird land because originalism and conservatism usually agree and so too progressivism and liberalism to the point where the lines of thought shape how more than the courts think of issues. But both sides end up having to do tricky mental gymnastics on this particular issue to resolve the two. But this is, of course, silly. It appeals only to the lizard brain who when faced with decisions far beyond the ability for humans to understand or are effectively arbitrary need a made up framework on which to post-hoc justify what are really just gut feelings.
When the answer to what path better is more obvious like "should people be allowed to buy a bazooka at Walmart" nobody is out here asking if the founders would have intended it, everyone just goes, "oh fuck no" and we move on.
The word press quite literally meant printing press. People did not refer to journalists specifically as "the press" until around 1868: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/art...
You’re the one who keeps bringing up the terms journalists and journalism. It’s not clear to me why the constitution predating those terms implies that “press” was meant literally.
They of course couldn't have envisioned alternative mediums that the "press" might alternatively refer to. They couldn't have predicted radio, television, and the internet as alternative forms of "publication". There was the spoken word and the written word and that's all there was for thousands of years. The press simply made the written word more scalable.
I understand that Constitutional rights are interpreted by Courts to carry meaning through progressions in technology or society norms. Clearly the spirit of the "freedom of the press" is partly an implied "right to publish" as you say, and as the 9th amendment underscores, the enumeration of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
There is no mention of "distributing news and information" with regards to "freedom of the press" in the Constitution. It simply says that Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press. It doesn't justify it or give a reason for it. It's held to be self evident. It should be understood that the U.S. was founded on the principle of "liberty by default". There is no need to justify liberty. The purpose of the bill of rights was to provide extra protections against the egregiousness of government, to preserve liberty, but not to box it in and define it for all time to mean "these specific things."
Clearly the founders couldn't foresee the advent of 3D printing, either. However, milling machines and molds very much did exist. It would be equally unthinkable to the founders to enable the government to restrict the usage of mills and molds on the basis that they might be used to produce arms (another right they saw fit to enumerate), as it would be to restrict 3D printing.
On the basis of the 1st, 2nd, and 9th amendments, and the principles of liberty itself; the 3D printing press should remain as equally free as the 2D printing press.
That’s fine, but it seems disingenuous to present that opinion as if it’s a factual statement about how the constitution was written or has been interpreted by courts.
I’m not aware of any case law that’s suggested the 1st amendment’s freedom of press implies anything about mills or molds, nor do you seem to have any rational for why “the press” should be literal but “speech” wouldn’t be, other than you think that’s how they should be interpreted.
It is a fact that "the press" in the first amendment referred to the printing press. That is indisputable. That courts have expanded that at times or attempted to hone in on its meanings over the centuries is irrelevant to that fact or to my point.
It is an opinion, that goes without saying, when I offer: "The 3D printing presses should remain equally free."
The right to speak, the right to pursue happiness, the right to print freely on a press, the right to bear arms, the right to liberty, these are all enumerated rights. These are more than enough to cover the right to print in 3D, nevermind that these enumerations are non-exhaustive.
"Printing presses shall be free except as to false facts published maliciously either to injure the reputation of another (whether followed by pecuniary damages or not) or to expose him to the punishment of the law." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes for a Constitution, 1794.
"Printing presses shall be subject to no other restraint than liableness to legal prosecution for false facts printed and published." --Thomas Jefferson: Draft of Virginia Constitution, 1783. ME 2:298, Papers 6:304
"A declaration that the Federal Government will never restrain the presses from printing anything they please will not take away the liability of the printers for false facts printed." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1788. ME 7:98
"The light which has been shed on mankind by the art of printing has eminently changed the condition of the world... And while printing is preserved, it can no more recede than the sun return on his course." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1823. ME 15:465
"The art of printing alone and the vast dissemination of books will maintain the mind where it is and raise the conquering ruffians to the level of the conquered instead of degrading these to that of their conquerors." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1821. ME 15:334
"The art of printing secures us against the retrogradation of reason and information." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Paganel, 1811. ME 13:37
It's relatively easy to detect modern US currency, it doesn't vary by much, and if you were to vary it a lot, it'd be an obvious counterfeit. Firearms don't operate like that. They are all wildly different designs with different complex parts. Even if you wrote something to detect the current models that are out there, they could be easily changed to be identically functional but unrecognizable.