I fear the hacker ethos of the tech world, the mindset that cared about the right to tinker and to not have the government tell you what you can and cannot know, has recently become smothered under a mountain of VC cash and a stew of Bay-Area politics that is all too willing to look the other way if the outgroup is the one looking to assert their rights.
Thankfully, it seems like the EFF is making good arguments: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wjkzz4/the-self-d...
> “The design files at issue here, for example, are not ‘functional’ software that can be ‘run,’ ‘launched,’ or ‘executed,’” the EFF wrote. “They are storage files for text, images, and three-dimensional shapes, having “functional” consequences only after a third party interprets and implements them with software, hardware (such as a 3D printer), and raw materials. Even under the government’s flawed view that ‘functionality’ diminishes First Amendment protection, files here are, if anything, less ‘functional,’ and at least as protected, as the computer instructions for encrypting data.”
I'm reminded of a fictional quote from a video game (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri), but it seems relevant:
>Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. --Commissioner Pravin Lal, "U.N. Declaration of Rights"