WA State to require DRM blocking, eliminates open-source. makes owners guilty until proven innocent  

Duplicate: WA State to require DRM blocking, eliminates open-source. makes owners guilty until proven innocent

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RE: WA State to require DRM blocking, eliminates open-source. makes owners guilty until proven innocent

Sounds like a good solution is to stop selling to Washington State... They can do without.

RE:

It's not exactly a new concept. Photocopiers have been prevented from copying banknotes for decades.

But it was easier to implement there, since the same players who have an interest to protect the banknotes are also controlling their design -- so they can incorporate clearly recognizable features which photocopiers can detect.

In contrast, "recognizing printable guns" reliably seems very hard, since the designers of those items will have a keen interest to make them unrecognizable for the algorithms. Having read how some random dot patterns can still derail current AI solutions which try to read license plates or detect traffic signs, I fully expect each "gun detection algorithm" to be bypassed a week after its release.

I would be happy to live in a world without printable guns. Unfortunately I don't see how we would get there. Blocking algorithms as suggested in WA are probably not going to work.  

RE: WA State to require DRM blocking, eliminates open-source. makes owners guilty until proven innocent

I wish it were that isolated or easy. The problem is far more insidious because it concerns stl files and is not isolated to hardware. See https://www.youtube.com/@LoyalMoses on YouTube. New York has similar legislation. 

HB-2320 and HB-2321 work in concert. For example:

- If someone outside of Washington State sends a file/attachment to a WA resident that gets flagged, then the sender - outside of WA state - can be prosecuted. It does not matter if they use their own printer or a service that has to use the DRM.

- You work on a proprietary design with friends for a product. Washington State REQUIRES a 3rd party evaluate the shape file and approve it prior to printing. There is no restriction on who that 3rd party is or what country they are in so (A) a data breach leaks your design (so sorry) or, (B) the AI/LLM that approves your shape needs to be trained that it is okay. This latter case which means the AI/LLM can be used elsewhere to generate a derivative work. Such AI derivative works are already a huge problem in the publishing and entertainment industry. 

The only solution is to contact the lawmakers and prevent such laws. The system can only work when citizens participate. This means making your friends in the affected states know about the problem (currently WA and NY).

Hopefully, companies such as Prusa can get involved because once adopted, such legislation will spread. 

Consider the implications for 3d printer companies and families: A child downloads and prints a cosplay prop or part for their airsoft gun using their own printer or a service - then the police show up at the family home.  Perhaps nothing happens or the child gets a warning, but the intimidation is real. 

RE: WA State to require DRM blocking, eliminates open-source. makes owners guilty until proven innocent

The shooter in Japan showed you just need a hardware store. See wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvised_firearm.

RE: WA State to require DRM blocking, eliminates open-source. makes owners guilty until proven innocent

Posted by: @southofseattle

I wish it were that isolated or easy. The problem is far more insidious because it concerns stl files and is not isolated to hardware.

[...]

Consider the implications for 3d printer companies and families: A child downloads and prints a cosplay prop or part for their airsoft gun using their own printer or a service - then the police show up at the family home.  Perhaps nothing happens or the child gets a warning, but the intimidation is real. 

But again, the actual problem is the inability to reliably identify the outlawed files, I think.

Sharing or having certain types of files is illegal in many legislations -- child pornography for example. That's a good thing. Personally I would not mind if design files for printable guns were in the same category. But as you say, false positives (harmless files misidentified as "guns") are bound to be at least as common as false negatives (gun designs cleverly disguised to bypass automated detection).

RE: WA State to require DRM blocking, eliminates open-source. makes owners guilty until proven innocent

Correct, and I note that 2D recognition is MUCH simpler than 3D.

We sadly see mass shooting almost daily in the US using legally purchased guns. Draw your own conclusions about the efficacy of this legislation on US gun violence. If you think yes, tell your legislator. If you think no, tell your legislator.

Even a few emails at the state level can make a difference. Thus, my hope is that a few US PRUSA users will contact their legislators as a result of this post, if for no other reason than the impact on open source software and to prevent state required examination of everything they print. 

This forum seems like a good source to reach these users (specifically WA state and New York as both have pending legislation). A couple of days ago, this topic and loss of these daily activities didn't cross my mind. I also note that it is really hard to get rights back after they are taken away.

The 3D geometric shape space search in non-trivial and not solved. Even experienced machinists cannot identify how a part will be used from just the shape. 

For illustration, a favorite story is how the allies manufactured radar tubes in WWII. The Germans used traditional construction techniques including precision machining. Excellent but limited production. The Allies stamped the pieces out of metal and goobered (meaning glued) them together with silver solder (See stacked plate construction).

So, think of the combinatorial ways plates can be glued together with a strong glue like epoxy to create something dangerous. These 3D printed plates can also be printed at different times and locations. This means that the monitoring software has to watch what a suspect is printing over time across all accessible printers, including friends and services in-state, out-of-state, and out-of-country.

A ghost gun database cannot be inclusive enough. I believe there are too many permutations and ways to obfuscate a print to be stored or learned by an AI/LLM.

Wish us luck

So: they are legislating against the production of firearms or parts of firearms on computer controlled machinery ... on the whole I approve of the intent but this attempt at legislation is ludicrously unenforceable.

" ...any digital instructions in the form of computer-aided design files or other code or instructions stored and displayed in electronic format... "

Even a digital photograph containing a picture of a weapon, for example a movie poster or a book cover, could be used to digitally extrude a shape that could be used to master a weapon.

Or text, the code:

difference(){
  cylinder(d=external_diameter, h=length);
  cylinder(d=internal_diameter, h=length);
}

Can be invoked to produce a washer, a bracelet - or a gun barrel and so presumably would break the proposed law.

- yes, that's a very crude gun barrel but terrorists have, for many years, made viable firearms from plumbing supplies that are as crude.

Effectively they are proposing to legislate against all modern technology - email this to your representative(s) and point out that they are reading this as transmitted and displayed in electronic format and the file is stored on their mail server and/or client...

Cheerio,