The United States State Department has ordered the removal of blueprints for nonprofit Defense Distributed's controversial 3D-printed "Liberator" handgun from the company's DEFCAD Web site.

A warning posted on the site reads "DEFCAD files are being removed from public access at the request of the US Department of Defense Trade Controls. Until further notice, the United States government claims control of the information."

The State Department said that it ordered the instructions for downloading and building Defense Distributed's 3D-printed weaponry removed because the act of posting this information may be in violation of export controls dictated by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). These regulations prohibit weapons manufacturers from exporting technical data to foreign individuals without permission from the federal government.

"Defense Distributed may have released ITAR-controlled technical data without the required authorization from the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, a violation," the State Department said in a letter to Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson.

Wilson's company was offering the blueprints to the general public for free and he says that the instructions had been downloaded over 100,000 times in the two days between when they were posted and when the State Department intervened.

Wilson, though in compliance with the government's request, has hosted the files outside of United States jurisdiction, making them available on a Mega Web site based in New Zealand, according to a CBS News report. Identifying information for anyone downloading from that site is encrypted.

Wilson told CNN that his next step in what may become a major legal and political battle is to hire an attorney who will fight with him for what he believes is really about the future of the Internet and the future of information control itself.

In an interview with Betabeat Wilson elaborated further on this notion, saying "this is a much bigger deal than guns. It has implications for the freedom of the web."

"I still think we can win in the end beacuse the files are all over the Internet," he said. "To think this can be stopped in any meaningful way is to misunderstand what the future of distributive technologies is about."