Do they not understand how this works? People will just stop buying printers and switch to building them.
this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2026
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Then they'll make owning an unregistered 3D printer a felony.
The same way having an unregistered firearm already is?
Lmao no they fucking won’t. I mean maybe like 0.5% of consumers, or less, will. Some number that pales in comparison to the amount that just buy a bambu because “it’s just easier, FOSS needs to get on usability and make it so that it just works 🤷♀️” while failing to see that their utter laziness and incompetence to solve even the mildest of problems and expecting everything to “just work” in exchange for money always means trading their rights and privacy away.
Look at the people that complain about jellyfin but then also complain about plex becoming increasingly hostile. Look at the people complaining about Linux but also whining about windows descent into madness. Etc etc. and in cases like this the buy in cost is nothing but your time! You think the average consumer, who openly invites corporations to fuck them, is gonna be like “hmm I’m gonna spend money to build a solution.”
No goddamn way. They’re gonna bitch about the legislation, they’re gonna bitch about how things got this way, then they’re gonna give bambu and anycubic and Microsoft and openai and Google and apple etc etc all their money. They’ll probably sign up for subscriptions with each company
It's time I'm fine running Linux I've done 3d printers for decades. But my god if I don't like bambu with their just works. I want to print not mess around with hardware. Done it and it turned me off if printing for tired of always tweaking stuff.
When was the last time a legislator understood the legislation they were passing?
Sigh
Take your filthy upvote
I'll take your filthy upvote. Not from a big truck, through a series of tubes.
You'll have people selling custom eproms and/or firmware to bypass it.
So reading the commentary in the first link, if you flash your printer with new GPL firmware that bypasses these restrictions, you're now in violation.
And what if I move (back) to WA with my printer purchased out of state that I've already modded?
I see what they're trying to do, make ghost gun production illegal, but turning makers into criminals for flashing their printers with new firmware seems the wrong way.
Or if I have a printer now and don't update it.
It always is. Always blanket laws that cover so many legal things to get normal law abiding citizens in a bind.
it is, and they don't understand that the hardware on a 3d printer isn't capable of analyzing what it's about to print like that, it's not even close. People average laptop couldn't even analyze a random part and give a reasonable estimate of how likely it is a gun part unless it's an exact match, but if you tweak 1 thing it would be lost.
I don't think these lawmakers have any clue how anything works. 3d modeling, slicing, and firmware would all have to have spyware in it and be uploading data to the cloud to be analyzed for this to be remotely possible. Not only is that financially impractical, it's logistically impossible.
There's definitely a little bit of this going on.
I wonder if Nvidia is leaning on them a bit. Like, create a regulatory requirement for something for one of their bullshit datacenters to do now that Microslop has said "we need to find something useful for AI to do or we're not going to be able to live the lie much longer" out loud almost verbatim?
I outright don't know if this is even possible. I mean...
What's that? I bet 60% of people who have touched one of those couldn't identify what it is by sight. Should I be allowed to print that?
Well you'd know if you upgraded a Prusa MK3 and had to print that part. Other than that? I doubt even those who built MK4 from the kit would recognize it.
I built a MK4S from the kit, and I would recognize it, even without having printed it it's a memorable part of the build. You'd basically have to have built or upgraded a Prusa printer in the last 2 years to recognize it for what it is. If you hadn't been introduced to it, do you have any hope of guessing what that's for?
For a printer to be compliant, it mustn't be possible to bypass the restrictions. So your printer might not even be legal if it allows you to flash custom firmware.
identify and reject print requests for firearms or illegal firearm parts with a high degree of reliability and cannot be overridden or otherwise defeated by a user with significant technical skill.
So Amazon can buy the data, know what we're printing, steal the designs and make a product for it, capturing the market they only know existed by spying on us. Knowledge is power and I'd rather not further empower the psychopaths who are primarily responsible for the widespread reduction of our qol. But the idiot masses won't give a fuck because they're foolish and never think anything they want to do is bad.
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Jokes on you, my printers are 100% opensource and I program them with the code I want.
And really, the politicians are fine with that. The goal isn't the complete elimination of 3D printed ghost guns. The goal is to greatly increase the skill level required to print a 3D printed ghost gun. With relatively modest tools and enough skill, you can machine your own gun from scratch in your garage. Yet the barrier to entry is so high that few who seek guns for evil ends use these methods. A random street drug dealer might find the idea of printing a gun at the push of a button very tempting. But they are unlikely to find the idea of building a machine shop and learning machining appealing or practical. Or in your case, learning all about open source 3D printers and their software. Yours is just the 3D printer equivalent of the home gunsmith. Yes, you and people like you exist. But the politicians aren't aiming for complete elimination, just vast reduction.
Accessibility matters. It's why the printing press was such a big deal.
I'm sure this has absolutely nothing to do with ghost guns. "Ghost guns" is just another way of spelling "protect the children."
When was the last school shooting that used a ghost gun? No, they use Bushmasters, Rugers, Smith & Wessens, Glocks. Because you can just...buy those. In a store. When's the last time a serial number stopped a shooting?
Get on the ground, hands behind your back! Bang bang bang bang bang!
That's Washington state, not DC.
Surveillance capitalism and the fascists always find a way to debase everything good that people like.
Uncommon Washington State L
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Everything is about surveillance nowadays. Doesn't anyone worry about being vexed anymore? Are there nanobots in my Snickers bar checking out my duodenum?
O just love that true one single product bthat allows you to replicate itself in an open non spy way now must have spyware.
Politicians are idiots
They haven't stopped at printers, they have everything now constructed to spy. Even a lot of things that have no legitimate purpose being connected to the internet. Soon we will not be able to find the non "smart" devices. We can't take batteries out of electronics that can spy on us anymore. It's a federal felony now to alter the programming on an electronic you bought as well.
It's a federal felony now to alter the programming on an electronic you bought as well.
I can't find any evidence for this; it would also be a nearly unenforceable law if it was actually a thing. What's going to happen, the device calls home and says help help I've been reprogrammed!
Now altering the programming only for re-saling might have some legal issues.
Idk if there are newer laws, I think there is, but a 1998 law makes it illegal to break a digital lock, very broadly defined, to protect cd's but applied to all electronics.
But the law was mentioned by an author interviewed on democracy now this fall.
Idk if there are newer laws, I think there is, but a 1998 law makes it illegal to break a digital lock, very broadly defined, to protect cd's but applied to all electronics.
Sounds like one of those laws that's never applied by itself, but instead is always sprinkled in on top of another more well defined and detectable crime. In the case or CDs it would have been against piracy groups who not only cracked CDs, but also distributed.
Without the distribution, that law would have never seen enforcement.
We could also argue that cracking software protections isn't reprogramming, it's a precursor to do so and isnt always necessary to reprogram a device. Someone could absolutely pop the computer out of a Samsung smart refrigerator and replace it with a Arduino and reprogram the device, which for personal use is legally bulletproof.
Idk some states carved out exceptions to it with right to repair laws.
Read some Cory Doctorow.
Read some Right to Repair U.S. law. There's absolutely nothing illegal about reprogramming any device for personal use.
Tell that to every farmer in the US. Do you seriously not know about the DMCA?
Tell that to every farmer in the US
Every farmer in the U.S. has the right to repair and reprogram their vehicles. They do not however have the right to force John Deer to provide access to their proprietary software.
Not being able to reprogram something, and it being a literal crime, are absolutely different things.
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Washington state.
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