The State Department won a round in the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals when the court ruled that the government’s interest in protecting national security could prevent a gun company, Defense Distributed, from publishing information on its website that provided technical advice to foreign nationals to produce un traceable 3D-printed guns . One justice dissented partly on the grounds that the restriction was “pure content-based regulation.” (Ars Technica, September 21, 2016, by Cyrus Farivar)
Writing in 3ders.org, September 22, 2016, Alec points out one of the difficulties in the decision,”First Amendment rights usually trump all others, though the US government is certainly allowed to prohibit speech based on its content – if there is compelling government interest. But some might argue that listing web-based data as ‘exported’ totally misrepresents the internet. How can information be legal within the US and illegal on the web, where US citizens can access it? Regardless of where you stand in the 3D printed gun debate, this seems like a very strange legal construction.”
Noah Feldman of Bloomberg News, September 21, 2016, also challenges the ruling reporting that as Defense Distributed argued in its lawsuit, the State Department was engaging in prior restraint widely acknowledged as illegal under the First Amendment. Feldman also disputes the compelling interest argument pointing out that there is already information readily available for making untraceable serious weapons.