Guilt or innocence used to be a binary equation. That’s not to say determining it was easy for our predecessors. Without the forensic and DNA evidence available to us now, it was undoubtedly more difficult for them to come to a conclusion they could be confident in. But the equation was simple. It was binary. Either the person was guilty or not guilty. They either did it or didn’t commit a crime.
But recently, albeit rarely, the government has been holding people responsible for the actions of other people.
Truthfully, this has been a problem since the 90s. But we have been shoehorning our modern day problems into our ancient binary solution. We saw it with Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning, who were held responsible for how other people used their Napster software. We saw it more recently with Ross Ulbricht, who is serving life in prison because other people sold drugs using his software. We can go all the way back to the failed prosecution of Phil Zimmermann, the inventor of PGP, for exporting “weapons” by sharing his encryption software online.
And now we have Cody Wilson and his company Defense Distributed. He hasn’t been arrested or charged with any crime, yet. But the government is undoubtedly coming after him. And it will only take one mass shooting perpetrated with a 3D printed gun, before people start calling for him to be held responsible.
The key point here is: should tool makers be held responsible for criminals that use their tools? Despite the few examples above, the answer has usually been no. Smith & Wesson isn’t held responsible when a murder is committed with a gun they manufactured. Amazon isn’t held responsible when counterfeit goods are sold on their platform. Your ISP isn’t held responsible when they deliver you
