California’s 3D Printer Law Would Criminalize Open Source, Enshittify The 3D Printing Space

from the mandated-enshittification dept

There’s been a flood of new state laws placing restrictions on 3D printing that are driven by sloppy moral panics about 3D printed guns (and a desire by large manufacturers to dominate the market), but are so ignorantly and broadly written that they do more harm than actual good.

New York’s 2026–2027 executive budget bill (S.9005 / A.10005), for example, included 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 having the “geometry” of a potential firearm or firearm component.

But as folks like Adafruit’s Phillip Torrone noted recently, the proposal has all manner of problems. One being it would undermine the adoption of open source solutions, placing elaborate burdens on volunteer-run projects. Another being that it’s largely impossible to detect firearms from geometry alone, meaning that all the new restrictions aren’t actually fixing the problems they were intended to cure:

“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.“

Washington state’s HB 2321 has similarly problematic restrictions harmful to open source.

The EFF notes that California is also pursuing similar legislation with similar problems. The activist org notes that California’s A.B. 2047 would mandate false-positive prone “censorware” akin to New York’s law, but it also aims to criminalize the use of open-source alternatives, making it a misdemeanor for device owners to disable, deactivate, or otherwise circumvent these mandated algorithms.

The EFF notes that part of the problem is that big manufacturers want to bring some of the shittier behaviors we’ve seen among large traditional printer manufacturers (disabling printer scanners when printers run out of ink, obnoxiously bricking printers that don’t use the manufacturer’s expensive cartridges) to the 3D printing space:

“This bill is a gift for the biggest 3D printer manufacturers looking to adopt HP’s approach to 2D printing: criminalize altering your printer’s code, lock users into your own ecosystem, and let enshittification run its course. Even worse, algorithmic print blocking will never work for its intended purpose, but it will threaten consumer choice, free expression, and privacy.”

There’s real danger here that these bills will criminalize open source and create all manner of the same sort of annoying walled gardens we’ve come to hate in traditional printers. All pushed under the pretense of public safety, yet incapable of actually addressing the problems they claim to fix.

Fortunately none of these proposals have been signed into law yet, so there should be some runway here for activist orgs and tinkerers to coordinate some meaningful opposition before 3D printing can be fully and completely enshittified by big companies using 3D gun moral panics for cover.

Filed Under: 3d guns, 3d printers, activism, california, hardware, new york, open source, software, washington