The Department of Homeland security have seized the defensedistributed.com and defcad.org domains because several individuals behind the site have been indicted by a grand jury for the violation of the Arms Export Control Act, violation of the Undetectable Firearms Act and conspiracy to commit money laundering and copyright infringement.

On March 16 I shared a number of concerns with the founder of Defense Distributed regarding thier new 3D printing model sharing website DefCad.org. In one email to me Cody Wilson said …

Someone gets tagged with a lawsuit perhaps, but there are many mirrors of the site running. And many lawsuits will be evaded by taking safe harbor in jurisdictions outside the US where DOJ can’t just swoop in and squelch our DNS.

Cody must have thought that the feds would move slower than they did.

The Defense Distributed and Def Cad projects were being funded with anonymous Bitcoin donations. BitCoin is an online semi-anonymous currency that has been soaring in value these past few weeks. The only money laundering that Defense Distributed might have been directly or indirectly involved in would have involved BitCoins. I can’t help but think this is all going to head in a landmark trial … which is exactly what Mr Wilson wants.

UPDATE: I just checked the DNS servers hosting the side, it looks like it is being hosted by CloudFlare, which makes me think this is an April 1 hoax.