I'm not sure why this isn't posted here already (I searched and couldn't find it...). It's a really important case that involves the 2nd, 1st, 5th, amendments. Gura is litigating it.
By posting a file online, the DDTC claimed Defense Distributed had potentially violated arms export controls—just as if it had shipped AR-15s to Mexico.
In its 2013 letter to Defense Distributed, the DDTC cited a long-controversial set of regulations known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which controls whether and how Americans can sell weapons beyond U.S. borders. By merely posting a 3-D-printable file to a website, in other words, the DDTC claimed Defense Distributed had potentially violated arms export controls—just as if it had shipped a crate of AR-15s to, say, Mexico. But the group’s lawsuit now argues that whether or not the Liberator is a weapon, its blueprints are “speech,” and that Americans’ freedom of speech is protected online—even when that speech can be used to make a gun with just a few clicks.
...
ITAR already has a long history of being used to threaten Americans who publish controversial code. In the 1990s, the same regulations were used to threaten cryptographers with prosecution for posting online the first freely available strong encryption tools. Under ITAR regulations, a piece of uncrackable crypto software like PGP was considered a military munition. PGP inventor Phil Zimmermann was even investigated by the Department of Justice for three years at the height of what has come to be known as the Crypto Wars.
Wired article:
http://www.wired.com...ol-free-speech/
Complaint:
https://www.scribd.c...S-Dept-of-State