Doesn't take much to make hipsters censor themselves.

Makerbot is a company that makes 3D printers, and owns Thingiverse, a web site containing plans for printing all manner of things designed by people who felt like sharing. Its supposed to be wide open, upload whatever you want, open source, peace and love.

Makerbot today shows its true colours. Which are Commie red.

You have the right to bear arms. But you don't necessarily have the right to upload them.

In the wake of one of worst shooting incidents in American history, the 3D-printing firm Makerbot has deleted a collection of blueprints for gun components from Thingiverse, its popular user-generated content website that hosts 3D-printable files. Though Thingiverse has long banned designs for weapons and their components in its terms of service, it rarely enforced the rule until the last few days, when the company's lawyer sent notices to users that their software models for gun parts were being purged from the site.

I've thought for years that these open-source geeks were all fair-weather bullshit, and wow am I right again. What a bunch of pussies.

The fight goes on though.

In response to Makerbot's crackdown, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson wrote to me in an email, saying that the group plans to create its own site for hosting "fugitive" 3D printable gun files "in the next few hours."

Neither Wilson believes that neither Makerbot's purge of gun parts nor the outcry over the Newtown shooting has hampered Defense Distributed's initiative. "The Internet routes around censorship," he writes. "The project becomes more vital."

Defense Distributed website is here.

May I suggest going and downloading a set of their plans to a thumb drive or a CD, and maybe hitting their tip jar too. Just to piss off the liberals at Makerbot if nothing else.

The Phantom