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alteromtoday at 7:47 PM3 repliesview on HN

It's ridiculous that this is even being discussed. The people proposing the bill must have zero understanding of how a 3D printer works.

It makes as much sense as requiring saw manufacturers to implement protections that restrict what can be cut out with a saw.

Or pen manufacturers being required to enforce copyright.

Any form of this bill will 100% fail to attain its stated objective, while having horrendous not-quite-unintended consequences.

And in the end, what's to stop someone from assembling an unlicensed 3D printer to make unlicensed prints? That's how the industry literally began.

(Not to mention: what do they think would happen to the hundreds of millions of existing "dumb" 3D printers? They won't disappear because there's a law).

Sigh.


Replies

max51today at 10:05 PM

>And in the end, what's to stop someone from assembling an unlicensed 3D printer to make unlicensed prints?

You really don't have to go that far. A very high quality control board (eg. an original Prusa) is like 90$ and cheap ones go for 25$.

You could buy the licensed printer and swap the board. Or maybe even just flash the firmware on the licensed printer

dabluecaboosetoday at 8:00 PM

> Any form of this bill will 100% fail to attain its stated objective, while having horrendous not-quite-unintended consequences.

California gun laws in a nutshell.

show 1 reply
annoyingnoobtoday at 7:52 PM

> what do they think would happen to the hundreds of millions of existing "dumb" 3D printers?

Hey, my printer might be going up in value.