Google's done a lot for free speech. But they made an early decision to disallow promotion of firearms, have gone on the record opposing the AGPL, and have a closed search index and codebase. Their fear of copyright infringement suits is why Youtube passed Google Video and their risk aversion on social is why they're playing catch up with Facebook. They can't be the pioneers here, because the future of 3D printing is dependent on radically open access to object files.

Makerbot is perfectly competent at hardware. And their software is fine too, especially Thingiview. But they caved to censorship, and they don't seem to realize that printed hands and pharmaceuticals are anathema to the FDA and Roche, printed cars will be opposed by the NHTSA and Ford, and printed drones will be fought by the FAA and Boeing. Makerbot won't fight those battles, which is why Thingiverse is going to be a home for trinkets and garden gnomes.

Politicians always want new regulations, patent lawyers always want to sue, and presidents want to feel important. But the mechanisms by which they impose their will are centralized structures dating from a centralized century. Once it's not a few dozen manufacturers under the thumb of the state but tens of millions of decentralized acts of civil disobedience — a patient printing artificially expensive pharmaceuticals, a South Asian woman printing to defend herself — there won't be enough jail cells in the land to hold all the thoughtcriminals.

Laws were changed and political parties founded over Napster, Bittorrent, and The Pirate Bay...over music and movies. But with 3D printed firearms, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, drones, and medical devices, the stakes will suddenly get much higher. Because 3DP is not about reviving manufacturing jobs or competing with assembly lines on cost. It is not about disrupting manufacturing. It is about disrupting copyright, IP, and regulation. It is about printing items whose prices have been set to infinity. It is about disrupting man-made forms of artificial scarcity. It is about DEFCAD.