10 May 2013 Last updated at 04:46 ET
The US government wants all design files for the 3D gun removed
The US government has demanded designs for a 3D-printed gun be taken offline.
The order to remove the blueprints for the plastic gun comes after they were downloaded more than 100,000 times.
The US State Department wrote to the gun's designer, Defense Distributed, suggesting publishing them online may breach arms-control regulations.
Although the files have been removed from the company's Defcad site, it is not clear whether this will stop people accessing the blueprints.
They were being hosted by the Mega online service and may still reside on its servers.
Also, many links to copies of the blueprints have been uploaded to file-sharing site the Pirate Bay, making them widely available.
The Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance wrote to Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson demanding the designs be "removed from public access" until he could prove he had not broken laws governing shipping weapons overseas by putting the files online and letting people outside the US download them.
"We have to comply," Mr Wilson told news magazine Forbes in an interview.
But he added the State Department's fears were ungrounded, as Defense Distributed had been set up specifically to meet requirements that exempted it from the arms-control regulations.
And he welcomed the US government's intervention, saying it would highlight the issue of whether it was possible to stop the spread of 3D-printed weapons.
The US government has demanded designs for a 3D-printed gun be taken offline.
The order to remove the blueprints for the plastic gun comes after they were downloaded more than 100,000 times.
The US State Department wrote to the gun's designer, Defense Distributed, suggesting publishing them online may breach arms-control regulations.
Although the files have been removed from the company's Defcad site, it is not clear whether this will stop people accessing the blueprints.
They were being hosted by the Mega online service and may still reside on its servers.
Also, many links to copies of the blueprints have been uploaded to file-sharing site the Pirate Bay, making them widely available.
The Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance wrote to Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson demanding the designs be "removed from public access" until he could prove he had not broken laws governing shipping weapons overseas by putting the files online and letting people outside the US download them.
"We have to comply," Mr Wilson told news magazine Forbes in an interview.
But he added the State Department's fears were ungrounded, as Defense Distributed had been set up specifically to meet requirements that exempted it from the arms-control regulations.
And he welcomed the US government's intervention, saying it would highlight the issue of whether it was possible to stop the spread of 3D-printed weapons.