New York’s New 3D Printing Law, As Written, Is Extremely Harmful And Annoying
from the first-do-no-harm dept
The good folks over at Adafruit are raising the alarm about a new New York State 3D printing law that could greatly imperil the public’s freedom to tinker and could generally make life way more annoying for the schools, libraries, hospitals, small businesses, hobbyists, and garages that utilize 3D printers.
New York’s 2026–2027 executive budget bill (S.9005 / A.10005) includes language requiring that all 3D printers operating in the state need to include software or firmware that scans every print file through a “firearms blueprint detection algorithm” and then locks the hardware up so it refuses to print anything it flags as a potential firearm or firearm component.
As Adafruit’s Phillip Torrone notes, the key problem here is it’s largely impossible to detect firearms from geometry alone:
“A firearms blueprint detection algorithm would need to identify every possible firearm component from raw STL/GCODE files, while not flagging pipes, tubes, blocks, brackets, gears, or any of the millions of legitimate shapes that happen to share geometric properties with gun parts. This is a classification problem with enormous false positive and false negative rates.”
NY’s new law would apply to open source firmware like Marlin, Klipper, and RepRap, which are generally maintained by volunteers without the resources for compliance. As well as office printers that never touch the internet, or CNC milling machines that can basically generate any shape you can imagine.
Torrone goes on to explain how the bill could be dramatically improved by exempting open source firmware, and focusing more concretely on the intent to create fire-arms, instead of waging an impossible enforcement war on ambiguous shapes. They’re also recommending limited liability for retailers, schools, and libraries, and the elimination of mandatory file scanning:
“But the answer to misuse isn’t surveillance built into the tool itself. We don’t require table saws to scan wood for weapon shapes. We don’t require lathes to phone home before turning metal. We prosecute people who make illegal things, not people who own tools.
The Open Source 3D printing community probably does not know about this. OSHWA and other open source advocacy orgs have ignored many of the things we really need their help with. That needs to change. This bill is in early stages — the working group hasn’t even convened yet. There’s time to work together, in the open, for amendments that make sense.”
Random aside: it’s worth reminding folks that this proposal comes on the heels of a recently passed New York State “right to repair” law (supposed to make it easier and cheaper to repair technology you own) that Governor Kathy Hochul basically lobotomized at lobbyist behest after it was passed, ensuring it doesn’t actually protect anybody’s freedom to tinker.
Filed Under: 3d printer, 3d printing, consumers, hobbyists, legislation, new york, new york state, tinker
Comments on “New York’s New 3D Printing Law, As Written, Is Extremely Harmful And Annoying”
Maybe Chris Rock was right, and what we need is bullet control rather than gun control.
Other guns are fine, but possibly 3D printing one is a huge danger, with millions of 3D-printed guns flooding the streets annually.
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Regular guns seem to “flood the street annually” just fine. Not sure this represents a “huge danger”
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We’re a long way off from millions of 3d-printed guns (annually). The current number is probably a few hundred thousand.
Wouldn’t it be easier to track where barrels, fire control groups and bolt assemblies are going than to have a printer interpret the frame, housings and grips?
There are cosplayers that print up fake guns and props. If they manage to bypass software that can lock up a printer, you know damn well gun makers will find a way to bypass it as well.
Voters in new york state. Don’t like this? Stop being lazy imbeciles, and voting for idiots. Otherwise go fuck yourselves.
Harmful and annoying, sure, but is it too much to hope in today’s legal environment that it’s also unconstitutional? To me it’s like requiring that laser printers include filters against unprotected speech such as libel or incitement to violence. The false positives and pre-publication suppression alone would be enough to kill such a law as unconstitutional (I expect), so why should it not be the same for 3D printers?
I expect some will say it’s because 3D printers are used to make functional items, but anyone who’s 3D printed a Baby Yoda or flexi dragon knows printing purely or primarily expressive works is a major part of the 3D printing world.
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They do, in fact, include filters. It’s unclear whether any laws require that, but the rumor is that various governments pressured the manufacturers. Search for “EURion constellation”, a feature that prevents some printers, scanners, copiers, and proprietary image editors from working with data they detect as money. That’s usually not the only data that triggers currency detection.
And most color laser printers include yellow tracking dots, also the apparent result of government pressure. If you’re looking to publish some data like The Federalist Papers anonymously, do it from a monochrome printer. Preferably an old one purchased from a thrift store in cash.
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CAD files for gun parts, unlike currency, don’t carry identifying markings like the EURion constellation. Identifying what is or isn’t a “gun part” is an entirely different challenge and pretty much impossible to do reliably.
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I wonder what would happen if the EURion constellation became part of the ICE uniform.
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The question of whether code is speech is an important one, but courts have been slow to see it. Bernstein v. United States was dismissed after the government loosened regulations, with the court saying there was no longer a concrete threat. Similarly, Green v. Department of Justice was dismissed after the government granted a 3-year exemption for one specific activity in question, and apparently the court didn’t otherwise view talking about copyright restriction systems as “speech”.
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It’s not just the code that runs the printer but also the content being printed. A document printer that by law stops you from printing “seditious” texts, for example, would constitute a kind of digitally-enforced prior restraint on speech. Even if the law were limited to stopping the printing of actual unprotected speech, there is no way to do this reliably in such a way that it doesn’t affect protected speech.
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Apparently a court ruled the other day some computer code wasn’t protected by the First Amendment, so I guess it will only be unconstitutional if so found by a court.
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That’s happened a number of times, such as with DeCSS (when 2600 Magazine published it). I wonder if courts would understand better if a person published the code in a court filing. Or would they then limit public access to the filing?
no more 3D guns for you!
WA. has already passed a BS law that does the same thing! now NY. is just playing follow the leader! while other states have some sort of 3D gun ban. it is all still infringement on rights! as for the morons making these incoherent laws. they have ZERO idea how a 3D printer works! most 3D printers use an arduino mega for fuck sakes! no wifi! no bluetooth! and 2 way’s to get files to print! a micro SD card and (gasp!) a USB cable connected to a computer! while there are some that can connect wirelessly. there’s still no room left for some BS object scanner program! WA. thinking that they are smarter then a rock has demanded that a database be created! so the next time you want to print anything! the printer needs to call daddy government for permission to print that!
if a criminal want’s a gun! they will get a gun! all these BS laws do is make gun grabber feel safe while stepping on everyone’s liberty!
those that trade liberty for safety deserve neither!
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Unfortunately, most politicians operate on the principle that it’s super easy to legislate a mandate to “make magic box do thing”, regardless of the possibility of such.
This is “do something” and “nerd harder” performative bullshit. A lathe is an unregulated piece of equipment more useful to making a firearm component than a 3D printer and they’re not proposing anything on that front. Sure, you could 3D print gun parts. But they aren’t all that reliable, for the same reason you can’t 3D print a 3D printer entirely. You can print parts of course (and people do), but the need to have heat tolerant parts like the hotend and extruder typically requires metal. The filament is meant to melt at certain temperatures (and PLA is common specifically because it has a low melting temperature).
The is series-of-tubes/not-a-bug-truck stupidity about a topic the legislators clearly don’t understand.
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FWIW, the internet isn’t a bug truck either…
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I’ve seen 3D printers printing things of titanium at a very high precision; but those are not the machines you’ll get for cheap or find at most homes.
Problem is that it is, except for the most obvious cases, impossible to determine what a component is going to be used for: the demand is for the printer to understand the operators intentions based on the model being downloaded.
it should be no surprise that American government politicians feel entitled to “regulate” any and all aspects of society.
if they can & do regulate the size of your personal home toilet-flush — their de facto rule-makiing power is unlimited.
California and Washington are trying to do the same thing.
Government-mandated scanning of illegal material turns private actors into government actors, and warrantless surveillance by government actors violates the Fourth Amendment.
Ah yes. 3d printed guns. The menace of our society. Is anyone even bothering to gather statistics on how many violent crimes are committed with 3D printed guns? I found some weasely stats on “3d printed guns found at crime scenes” which is just about the most evasive statistic name imaginable right next to “officer involved shooting” but even that is so vanishingly low that it warrants no attention.
I’d be willing to bet that more violent crime is perpetrated with 200 year old smooth-bore muskets than 3d printed guns.
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Not that I know of—perhaps because, so far, the killing of Brian Thompson is the only case I’ve even heard about, and that’s still not a confirmed fact. Guns 3-D printed from plastic are about as likely to injure the shooter as the target.
If you’re old enough, you might remember the “undetectable gun” panic circa 1990, referenced in Die Hard 2: “That punk pulled a Glock 7 on me. You know what that is? It’s a porcelain gun made in Germany. Dudn’t show up on your airport X-ray machines here, and it costs more than you make in a month.”
But that reference was to a fully fictional gun, and no significant numbers of guns that don’t show up on X-ray machines ever materialized. Although some 90% of guns that pass through airport X-ray machines go undetected by the humans operating those machines, according to T.S.A. tests.
Overall, it’s not unheard of for criminals to use home-made guns, but traditional machine tools are the usual method. And they might well be more expensive than a black- or gray-market gun, and someone who knows how to operate a lathe and such can probably use those skills to make good money legitimately.
Sounds comparable to demanding browsers to block sites
This.
Once again, people blaming tool makers for them being abused when they’re designed with broad purposes that are not necessarily illegal.
Someone makes a screw with a pointed end? Sorry, that can be interpreted as either as an alternative to a bullet or a stabbing tool.
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I took a tour of a jail once where they had a display of all the clever carved toothbrush shivs and makeshift “firearms” inmates had made out of papier-mâché made in a toilet and pen springs. If you’re aiming to misbehave in a free society with a hardware store around the corner, you can make deadlier things than 3D printed cheap plastic chotchkes and articulated dragons that you’re kids are going to break in a few days.
It's not a "law" until it passes and gets signed
Misleading headlines are a bad idea. In this case, once it does pass, it’s harder to do anything about it, which may cause people to skip a story. And you also end up with bogus rumors that never die.
It’s especially bad because Techdirt usually comes to stories late. I heard about this particular idiotic proposal long enough ago that I assumed “law” meant it had passed.
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Except language is descriptive, not prescriptive. Law is sometimes used as a term for a potential or proposed law, because that is the intent of the legislators proposing it. To be more pedantic, it’s not “the law” until it is passed, but it is “a law” that has yet to pass or failed to pass.
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Regardless of whether the usage can be considered acceptable, replacing “New” with “Proposed” in the headline would provide greater clarity. Or just call it a bill—we all remember how a bill becomes law, right?
Alternately, the future tense could be used instead of the present (“Will Be” harmful)—accepting slight inaccuracy to impart a greater sense of urgency.
Clarity is important when writing for the general public, and I don’t consider it pedantry for Sok Puppette to point out that this is easily mis-interpreted. In particular, it hides the important fact that there is still time for New Yorkers to stop this. Americans could use a little hope right now.
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No, I was saying I was being pedantic by pointing out the difference between “the law” and “a law.”
Dead On Arrival.
Not only annoying and harmful, but also DOA. Why? Because there are literally blueprints online on how to build a 3D printer and it can be driven via a Raspberry Pi with special software. RepRap is a thing and just like DMCA couldn’t stop piracy, this won’t stop 3D printing and if someone would want to 3D print a gun, they’ll just build a 3D printer without those restrictions.
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Perhaps someone could pull the old “international PGP” trick. Publish all those blueprints in a book, via a New York publisher, with code in a font designed to be scanned back in. Then export it openly.
The idea was that courts may struggle with whether code is speech, but every judge knows that the U.S.A. does not ban books (even if they’re now having to remind people frequently). The government dropped its criminal investigation into Zimmermann shortly thereafter.