3D-Printable Gun Project Announces Plans For A For-Profit Search Engine Startup

Andy Greenberg, Forbes Staff

Covering the worlds of data security, privacy and hacker culture.

3/11/2013 @ 10:56AM |

An image from Defense Distributed's website of an AK-47 being loaded with a 3D-printed magazine.

For the last six months, Cody Wilson and his non-profit group Defense Distributed have worked towards a controversial goal: To make as many firearm components as possible into 3D-printable, downloadable files. Now they’re seeking to make those files searchable, too–and to make a profit while they’re at it.

In a talk at the South By Southwest conference in Austin, Texas Monday afternoon, Wilson plans to announce a new, for-profit spinoff of his gun-printing project that will serve as both a repository and search engine for CAD files aimed at allowing anyone to 3D-print gun parts in their own garage. Wilson says the startup, hosted at Defcad.com, will be a redesigned version of a website Defense Distributed already maintains at Defcad.org for uncensored printable gun component files. But Defcad, which launches next month, will also host its own search engine for all types of 3D printable files, displaying search results as rotatable and zoomable three-dimensional models on a single page.
Wilson says that the search startup plans to index all types of 3D-printable files–not just the firearm parts that have made his group the black sheep of the 3D printing community. But he hopes that Defcad’s track record of hosting models for some of the most controversial objects on the Internet will demonstrate to users that its search results won’t censor any blueprints, even ones for objects as politically incendiary as deadly weapons.

“Basically the idea is object-based search, but I think we can claim a real commitment to openness…When we say you should have access to these files, people believe we mean that,” says Wilson, adding that the site’s no-censorship policy would also extend to objects that companies might claim threaten their intellectual property rights. “No takedowns. No removals. We’d fight everything to the full extent of the law.”

A screenshot from Defcad's still unreleased search engine.

Defense Distributed’s willingness to take on an issue as politically and legally fraught as 3D-printable guns gives it an advantage over competitors, Wilson argues. “There will never be a ‘Google Guns,’” he adds. “Defcad is entering a space where few [companies] are socially willing to go.”
Other companies, in fact, have scrambled to distance themselves from the notion of printable guns. In August, Defense Distributed’s fundraising campaign was removed from crowdfunding site IndieGogo for violating its terms of service. The next month, 3D printer firm Stratasys repossessed a printer Defense Distributed had rented when the company learned the group’s intentions for it. And 3D printing firm Makerbot began purging designs for gun components from its website in December, a move that inspired Defense Distributed to make Defcad.org into a haven for files Makerbot refused to host. ”We can’t depend on a community like [Makerbot founder] Bre [Pettis]’s to be as open as we are,” says Wilson.

Here’s a video Wilson plans to show at South By Southwest that charts Defense Distributed’s progress and lays out the group’s business idea. It also takes some swipes at gun control advocates and “collusive members of the maker community,” showing an image of half of Makerbot founder Bre Pettis’s face.

“Can 3D printing be subversive?” Wilson asks in the clip. “If it can, it will be because it allows us to make the important things. Not trinkets, not lawn gnomes, but the things that institutions and industries have an interest in keeping from us. Things like access, medical devices, drugs, goods, guns.”
The video quotes President Obama’s State of the Union address reference to 3D printing as “the next revolution in manufacturing.” Wilson responds: “A revolution means a revolution.”

Words like those are quickly making Wilson one of the most polarizing figures in technology. In an opinion piece for the Huffington Post last October, Josh Horwitz of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence noted Wilson’s extreme libertarian views and called Defense Distributed a “blatant, undisguised attempt to radically alter our system of government” that could let “political violence…replace political dialogue as the hallmark of our democratic system.” Wired has called Wilson one of the “15 most dangerous people in the world.” Congressman Steve Israel has repeatedly referenced Defense Distributed in calling for a renewal of the Undetectable Firearms Act to make 3D-printed guns illegal.

But with its new search business, Defense Distributed goes beyond provocation to seek profit, too. Defcad’s search engine will show relevant advertisements to users alongside search results just as Google does. Already, he says a single banner ad on Defcad.org has generated as much as $4,000 a month as users have flocked to the site to download files for 3D printing components of AR-15 semiautomatic weapons as well as for high-capacity magazines, ammunition feeding attachments which gun rights supporters fear may be outlawed in pending gun control legislation. At times, 3,000 unique visitors have come to Defcad.org every hour, and nearly half a million files have been downloaded.
Defense Distributed also receives close to $2,000 a month in donations, says Wilson. In total, he says the site has raised enough money to cover operational costs for four or five months to come. But a search business, Wilson believes, could be more self-sustaining and grow faster; He says he’s currently seeking early investors for the company. “Defcad is groaning under the weight of all its traffic,” says Wilson. “It’s got some real growing pains and could use more talent and its own organizational principles.”

Wilson’s move to spin a business out of the gun printing project, of course, may not win his group new friends. Adding a personal profit motive may open Wilson to accusations of a conflict of interest and give his critics new ammunition against him.

But Wilson argues there’s no ideological conflict in profiting from his work. “A guy’s got to eat,” says Wilson. “I want Defcad.com to be its own organization and a really serious player in search going forward. I think we can do it in a for-profit way and an authentic way.”
“All we wanted to do was print a gun,” he adds. “But if this opportunity is there, I’m happy to take it.”
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