Transcription
You buy a 3D printer, you own it, you mod it, you fix it, and then you sell it later when you upgrade. Well, that all sounds pretty normal, doesn't it?
But California AB2047 is designed to end all of that. And this goes far beyond the borders of California and 3D printers in general. For those that have been following along, you might be thinking you've heard all of this before, but believe me, it is far from redundant. You'll pick up on some similarities with other states, but stick with me all the way through this whole thing because this is about to blow your minds on what they are actually doing to our industry. It's every single thing that we thought was too crazy to become law actually happening. It turns 3D printers into something that's effectively licensed at the device model level. Approved workflows, approved lists, approved vendors, and a system that's designed to stop a technically skilled person from getting around it. This is your printer must obey the state before it executes a print job. And if you think this is just California, this is just so much bigger. California is how rules get exported into global firmware, global slicers, and global product lines. This is about transferring control over the machines in your home from you to a distant list, a distant set of rules that you never voted on and can't negotiate with. And it starts with 3D printers. But it does not end there.
Here is the clever part. AB2047 does not come right out and say, "We are hereby banning 3D printers." Instead, it builds a cage around them. It says any printer sold or transferred in California must be fitted with a special layer of control. That control has to be certified. The certification depends on algorithms and software processes that the state approves. The state then publishes a list of good printers. Retailers and distributors must check that list. Ordinary people are forbidden from selling or transferring printers that are not on that list. Nobody walks onto the floor of the legislature and screams, "Let's outlaw your bamboo, your Voron, and your Puscha." They don't have to. They just make it impossible to legally move those machines anymore or to update them or to keep them in their original open state. Functionally, they are pushed out of the legal market. That is how you ban a class of devices in slow motion.
Think about what ownership used to mean. If you bought a drill, you could drill into whatever you wanted. If you bought a computer, you could install whatever software that you wanted. If you bought a car, you could wrench on it. You could upgrade it. You could strip it for parts. You might void a warranty, but you weren't committing a legal offense by exercising control over something that you owned. Well, AB2047 flips that relationship entirely upside down. It introduces systems where your printer will not proceed unless certain conditions are met. It transforms a yes by default tool into a no by default tool. Your printer no longer simply follows your instructions. Before it obeys you, it must consult an invisible online rule book. And that rule book is not written by you. It is written by politicians, committees, agencies, and maybe even third party vendors who you will never see in your workshop or your projects or your needs. You still bought the machine. You still paid full price and likely even way more after this, but each print job becomes a request asking for permission, not a command.
Let me jump right in here just for a moment. I'm actually right in the middle of the edit, and this thought crossed my mind that I thought that was really important. So, in the last series of videos, there's been a lot of comments where people seem to be blaming uh Bamboo Lab uh and Creality and and these other companies, these 3D printer companies for all of these issues and problems. And I want to make it very clear where we need to place the blame. The blame doesn't need to be targeted at the companies or at at the makers. It needs to be put on the politicians who are interfering with our industry. Right? In fact, if you look at it from this perspective, companies like Bamboo in reality are the victims. This is not an isolated incident. This is coordinated. And I know that's why it sounds so redundant that you think that you've watched this video before, right? Just in a different state. But this is so much different. Every state that's involved in this is putting massive amounts of pressure on these 3D printer manufacturers in our space. They are forcing them to comply, which ultimately takes 3D printing away from us. So, what I'm recommending is that you jump on social media and we'll talk about contacting legislators at the end, but jump on social media. Tag Creity, Soval, Pruscha, Bamboo Lab. Tag all of them. Tag every 3D printer company that you know and demand that they stand up for our rights. Demand that they grab their pocketbooks, the profit that they've taken from you, and help fight this legislation. Right now, they're sitting quiet and these have huge ramifications. They are going to lose their businesses if they don't fight and if we don't fight. So, go do that. Seriously. And don't forget, tag me loyal Moses on X, Facebook, find me there, Instagram, Tik Tok, whatever. Go do it.
For decades, personal computing was built around a simple, powerful idea, a general purpose machine. It was a device that did not care what you were doing, only that you were giving it valid instructions. Your PC did not check your code for political correctness. Your calculator did not ask if your equation was allowed. Your printer, whether it was an inkjet, a laser, or a 3D printer, did not question the shape you were asking it to make. It just printed. Bills like AB2047 introduce a new species of that machine. It's the purpose limited appliance. A device that carries secret constraints. It's the opposite of a general purpose computer. Instead of being capable of anything within its physics, it becomes narrow, cautious, and constantly checking whether your idea fits inside someone else's box. We are watching the downgrade of our tools in real time. Not in hardware necessarily, but in philosophy. You think you're buying capability, you were actually buying pre-approved behavior. And we talked about this in previous videos, and some of the comments thought this was conspiracy theory. Well, you're watching it unfold right in front of you.
To make all of this real, the bill leans in on something it calls software controls. In plain language, that means that your printer's brain is no longer yours. Manufacturers must implement systems that evaluate what you're trying to do and then decide whether or not to let it happen. Those systems must be robust enough that a technically skilled user cannot simply disable or bypass them. So what does that mean for the real world? It means firmware that resists modification. This kills open-source Marlin and Clipper firmware. It means lock down ecosystems where third-party software is treated as suspicious. The safest path for a manufacturer is to ship a sealed box. A printer that only talks to one official slicer. Yes, that's in this bill. A slicer that only sends pre-checked pre-filtered instructions. A system that cannot easily run code that the maker did not approve. That is the exact opposite of what pulled so many of us into 3D printing in the first place.
You might be thinking, "Fine, I won't buy any of the new lockdown machines. I'll just keep what I have." But the bill does not stop at new devices rolling off of an assembly line. It reaches backward into your closet into your maker space. It says after the operative date, it is unlawful to sell or transfer a 3D printer in California unless it meets these new requirements and is on the approved list. That means the open machine you already bought fair and square becomes stuck to you. You're allowed to keep it, at least at first, but you are not allowed to legally sell it. You are not allowed to give it to a friend. You're not allowed to donate it to a school. You are not allowed to move it through the normal channels of reuse and recycling. It becomes a type of contraband, what I call zombie hardware. Not officially dead, not officially alive in the market. It's just trapped.
The right to repair is not just about being able to swap a nozzle or replace a belt. At its core, it's about this question. Who is the final authority over the machine once it's in your hands? Do you have the right to open it, fix it, modify it, repurpose it, and improve it? Or are you just leasing a shaped plastic and metal shell while the real ownership lives in a locked firmware with hidden keys and someone else's terms of service? AB2047 pretends to be neutral about repair. But look deeper at the incentives it creates. If a manufacturer can be sued, fined, or dragged into court because a user found a way to bypass their controls, what is the safest path for that company? To lock everything down, seal the firmware, sign the code, glue the case, discourage tinkering, discourage modding, discourage education. Think about this for a moment. Aftermarket companies that we love, like Big Tree Tech, are done. Using their products to upgrade your printer will become a crime if they interfere with these controls. And if you publish guides, tools, or firmware that make true repair and modification easier, those can be painted as circumvention. You start from you bought it, you own it, and you end up as renting functionality under constant supervision.
Now, every law is only as scary as its enforcement. But they're going to enforce this just like every other law that you don't like. But look at the teeth. AB2047 doesn't just set up a list and hope everyone plays along. It attaches serious financial and criminal punishment to non-compliance. Civil penalties of up to $25,000 per violation. Think about what a violation can mean here. A store that sells an unlisted printer, a distributor that didn't properly check the list, an individual who transfers a non-compliant machine. You're just giving it to your friend or selling it to someone on Facebook Marketplace. It is big enough to shut down small businesses and discourage private sales. It is big enough to terrify hobbyists into silence. It is big enough to make experimentation feel dangerous. Combine that with the threat of criminal charges for disabling or circumventing these systems and you have a landscape where the safest option is to never touch the internals of your own device and literally discourage people from even joining this hobby or even experimenting with 3D printers.
Now, maybe you don't live in California. Maybe you're watching this from another state or another country and thinking, you know what, this isn't my problem. But here is how manufacturing works. Companies do not manage multiple versions of complex hardware. They want a single design. They want one firmware pipeline, one certification path. So when a huge market like California demands a more restrictive version of a product, the rest of the world tends to get dragged along. The California compliant variant becomes the default global design. The locked firmware becomes the standard build. The safe restricted ecosystem becomes the official experience. And the old open truly user-controlled machines stop being produced, supported, or even legal to sell in your state or your country. And combine that with the fact that California is suing 3D printing model sites outside of its own state to force global compliance, this is bad.
If this model of control succeeds with 3D printers, why would it stop there? Once lawmakers and regulators prove that they can define a category of risk, require blocking technology, force certification of algorithms, publish a list of approved devices, even attach huge penalties to non-compliance, they can apply that pattern anywhere. In other states, we've already witnessed them targeting CNC machines and laser cutters and lathes. And it will continue into home robotics and basically any software tools that can generate code to even AI models that can generate designs. Anything that can shape the world moves one step closer to being treated as a controlled licensed utility instead of a personal tool.
This is why AB2047 matters. Even if you never print a controversial thing in your life, even if all you ever make are brackets or toys and replacement parts, it matters because it answers a question that will keep coming up across every category of technology. When you buy a powerful tool, do you buy power or are you buying permission? If you can't repair it, modify it, or resell it freely if it can be remotely bricked, delisted, or reclassified out from under you? If you need invisible gatekeepers to say yes before your machine will listen to you, you do not own it. You are renting its obedience on a month-to-month basis at the pleasure of people you will never even meet. AB2047 is one more step down that road. It wraps itself in safety, but at its core has nothing to do with safety. It is about narrowing the circle of true owners and expanding the reach of remote control. Read the text yourself. Look at the approved lists. Look at the will not proceed language. Look at the penalties that hang over basic ordinary sales or transfers.
Now, how do we fight this? We fight by being loud. By sharing this and other content with everyone, you know, hitting that like, hitting that subscribe, commenting, all of that pushes this video out to more people so more people are aware and more people can contact their legislators. And it doesn't matter wherever you are, even if not in California or other affected states. Share your stories and experiences. Let these legislators know that this is not acceptable and that they've lost your vote. Ultimately, they won't listen to you unless they fear losing an election. Now, I'll include details in the description on how to contact your legislators in these affected states. But don't forget to contact your legislators if you're not in an affected state. A simple Google search will guide you there. Don't give up.