We do still have open source hardware but that's the last line of defense against actions like this, not the first. They'll target distribution which will affect open source and proprietary hardware equally. You need to kill this sort of legislation in its crib.

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Brian_K_White 23 days ago | parent | next [-]

You need both, because there really is no such thing as kill it in it's crib. The people that want this will continue to want it forever, and will continue to propose it forever. And eventually it works.

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no_wizard 23 days ago | parent | next [-]

The missing the third ingredient which is passing rollback resistant legislation in its place that protects these freedoms.

That makes efforts far more durable.

Than it’s a matter of showing up in court to defend attacks against the law(s) that protect it.

In this way, we can have durable change, but it’s a high cost road. By design I am sure.

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dns_snek 23 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How would this situation be any different if BBL printers were open source?

The law doesn't care about licensing, there are just 2 groups of printers - those that follow the law and implement effective blocking technology and those that don't.

If BBL sells an open source printer that allows someone to trivially bypass proposed mandatory blocking technology, they'll be fined and held liable for any crimes that result from guns printed using their 3D printers.

So BBL, as open source as they might want to be, is not allowed to sell such a product.

	▲	cindyllm 23 days ago \| parent [-]
		[dead]

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kiba 23 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Nothing is forever. This whole thing rose in the first place because a novel technology was used to make weapons.

To give another example, the whole modern anti-vaxxer movement was started by a doctor to sell bogus tests.

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bradfa 23 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Just print the code to do what ever is disallowed on a t-shirt, ala DVDCSS. Is that not a legitimate way around things like this?