Comment by blisterpeanuts | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blisterpeanuts | Hacker News Reader

"In Australia’s province of New South Wales, thanks to a law passed earlier this month, merely owning the files could land a person in prison for 14 years.

Wow, that's pretty harsh. I have read about Australia's gun confiscation program but I didn't realize they banned possession of computer files. I wonder how that could even be enforced. What if you just rename the file to "bunny rabbit" or some other innocuous thing?

And what about 3-D printing parts of a gun separately? A barrel for example is basically a tube. Will they ban tubes? The grip is just a grip. Useful for finger strengthening. The cylinder is a candle holder. Etc.

Just piece it together and you accidentally, coincidentally have something that happens to shoot. As for bullets - hm, homemade bullets have been around for centuries. I would suspect it's possible to make bullets from scratch even in a place like Australia or Japan.

Bottom line: bans don't work, and 3-D printing merely makes it easier to circumvent clumsy, 1930s style laws.

> I wonder how that could even be enforced.

It couldn't. What it can do, though, is to aggravate sentences for "bad people" when arrested for other crimes. Raid a dealer's house, get laptop, "find" (cough cough) 3d-print files, threaten perp with 14 years extra, get him to confess to the original crime, job done.

This is why 1930s laws stay on the books -- they can always be useful here or there.

In a movie I saw (Existenz) there is a scene where someone pieces together a gun firing teeth from a bunch of stuff they find in their meal. All the bits individually look very gross but are not immediately recognizable as parts of a weapon.

In the words of Chris Rock: we don't need gun control, we need bullet control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db0Y4qIZ4PA

Bullets you can make from stuff too. We need propellant control. But then everyone will switch back to knives and blunt objects. What we need is kinetic energy control.

Newer powders are hard to make, but black powder is actually relatively easy to make from what I understand. You certainly won't be shooting modern quality ammunition, but guns are still possible. The .38 special was originally a black powder cartridge if I'm not mistaken. That's why the case is so large compared to the actual quantity of modern gunpowder that you use.

    > I didn't realize they banned possession of computer
    > files

I wonder how hard you would have to think to find other examples of computer files whose possession would get you in to trouble?

Yeah, ouch. Thanks for pointing that bit out. I won't download it then =/

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