Defense Distributed v. U.S. State Department

Cody Wilson/Def. Dist. take on the State Department.

Cody Wilson, one of the founders of Defense Distributed and a crypto-anarchist, filed a lawsuit against the U.S State Department this past May for potential violations of his first and second amendment rights. Wilson published the files for his 3D printed firearm, the Liberator, online and the State Department ordered him to remove them, under the threat of potential million dollar fines and/or imprisonment. Wilson obviously removed them from Defense Distributed’s website, but not before the files had been mirrored onto a number of torrent sites.

The State Department’s reasoning behind the order, was a supposed violation of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which seeks to prevent the exportation of weapons technology.

We were considering adding Wilson to the court documents archive, but since that is strictly for “political prisoners”, we decided to just do it in a separate post. All of the documents in the lawsuit are below, and it appears that Wilson/Defense Distributed’s current motion was denied: “Plaintiffs Motion for Preliminary Injunction is hereby DENIED.“ (Note: 8/6/15: Order Denying Preliminary Injunction)

Preliminary Injunction, as defined by West’s Encyclopedia of American law, edition 2:

A temporary order made by a court at the request of one party that prevents the other party from pursuing a particular course of conduct until the conclusion of a trial on the merits. A preliminary injunction is regarded as extraordinary relief. The party against whom it is sought must receive notice and an opportunity to appear at a hearing to argue that the Injunction should not be granted. A preliminary injunction should be granted only when the requesting party is highly likely to be successful in a trial on the merits and there is a substantial likelihood of irreparable harm unless the injunction is granted. If a party has shown only a limited probability of success, but has raised substantial and difficult questions worthy of additional inquiry, a court will grant a preliminary injunction only if the harm to him or her outweighs the injury to others if the injunction is denied.