Comment by AnotherGoodName
1 day ago
This will cause 3D printer usability to go down massively. A bit like the multicolored tracking dots - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots that causes the driver to tell you "you can't print black and white as you're out of yellow".
As far as I know, the tracking dots aren't even a legal requirement. Nothing stops you from making a printer without it, unlike is the case here.
To mandate tracking dots they would first have to admit they exist.
When the FBI comes to you, an executive at a printer manufacturer, and says “implement tracking dots or we will discover criminal images on your son’s laptop” or some similar situation the existence or lack thereof of any legal requirement is irrelevant.
Blackmail an Executive? That's a complete overkill.
It's so much easier just to "recruit" the direct manager of the firmware engineering team. Convince them it's their patriotic duty to add "tracking dots" to the design requirements without drawing attention to where the requirement came from.
The engineers implementing it will assume the requirement came from somewhere above, or another engineering team. And if the executives ever notice, they will assume it came from somewhere below. Both will probably assume the legal department was responsible, and that there is some kind of law somewhere requiring them to implement that functionality.
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I hear sentiment like this occasionally and I genuinely wonder if this is conspiracy theory stuff or if this sort of thing actually happened in the past.
I'm aware of the programs Snowden revealed, Tempora / XKeyscore / Longhaul / the like, plus I've heard J. Edgar Hoover did bad things and lots of CIA meddling internationally was bad. Still, these seem qualitatively different to the explicit blackmail you're referring to.
Do you (or someone else reading this) know of historical examples that demonstrate a pattern of this sort of thing? You can interpret "this sort of thing" as you wish.
That's a lot to ask for on the spot, so if not, I would be interested in what generally makes you approach the situation from this cynical angle, especially given that it's the FBI. In my experience, which is fairly limited but is as a US citizen, most of the time the US government mostly follows the law and doesn't do this sort of thing to citizens.
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>buried in Part C is a provision requiring all 3D printers *sold or delivered in New York* to include “blocking technology”.
I.e don't buy your printer in New York. Pick it up out of state. Problem solved.
Yes, this is rent seeking, and yes New York is gonna New York, but not a big deal.
I would suspect flashing your firmware to the globally standard one would become commonplace if printers sold in NY came with a nerfed version.
On principle, yes, but also for maintenance. The nerfed firmware that's only required in a few jurisdictions is almost assuredly going to fall out-of-sync with mainline features.
"The rule saying you can't print the thing that you either weren't going to print, or you weren't going to let the rule tell you not to print, wants you to run old/broken software." No matter which side of that you fall on, you're upgrading the software.
I doubt any meaningful detection would be worth implementing just for New York, so you’ll get a cut down firmware that supports 5 hard coded models. You’ll need to flash your own firmware to print anything else.
No, it's not solved.
Goalpost will move to "save gcode on government-approved secured storage", licensing and registering each 3d printer, then confiscating the ones that are not whitelisted, etc etc.
This is the same story where every time you hear about some democratic run city/state implementing policy, everyone makes it out to be a step in the goal to get to 1984 Oceania.
This legislation is basically like a gold star on some politicians report card about preventing gun deaths. The impacted groups are allways gonna be niche, but it looks good to the overall public.
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It made me think of the tracking dots as well, but this is more like every time you hit print, it submits a copy of your document to the cloud for approval. With time, they could use AI to silently update the document to alter the offending portions and continue printing. They would then notify the authorities of the breach and decision could be made if further action is necessary
"The government has been notified that you are attempting to 3D print a copyrighted Door Wedge™ without a license. Local law enforcement has been notified, please prepare to be arrested."
or worse...
"You are trying to print a design that is 87% similar to Egg Cup™. Acquire a limited run license for $3000 for ten runs which expires in six months? Y/N"