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“Printcrime” by Cory Doctorow
- Clotho 13y agoInteresting. Is he no longer part of boing boing?
- adventureloop 13y agoYou probably should have read the first line of text on that page. > This story appears in my collection Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present, 2007 craphound.com has been Cory's website for as long as I can remember.
- jabbernotty 13y agoThey just asked a question. There is no need to be snarky, and your suggestion wouldn't even have answered their question.
- bowerbird 13y agoactually, "they" didn't ask any question. and peterkelley wasn't being "snarky" either. he was making a joke, based on the description of the subject-matter of the book. oh, and i'm not being "snarky" either. but it's so very difficult to resist the temptation!, i don't know if i'm gonna be able to do it!, i can feel myself slipping even as i continue typing!... -bowerbird
- jabbernotty 13y agoI didn't reply to peterkelly.
- bowerbird 13y agoi apologize for my misunderstanding. i'm still kinda new at hacker-news, and its threading is still a mystery to me. -bowerbird
- Clotho 13y agoNot an answer
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- SonicSoul 13y agothis kind of reply makes me cringe.. i had a manager once who would do something similar on rare occasions i asked about something he already stated in the past. he'd re-paste it into the chat window (sometimes twice).. as if fostering proof that i must be retarded for missing a nugget of his eternal wisdom. the only thing that kept me alive was collecting such snippets for eventual book or at least a blog post about how much he sucked at being a manager. this was one of many valuable lessons of what not to do. ever.
- noobface 13y agoBosses like that are as valuable as they are unbearable.
- jamesbritt 13y agoPeople like that help teach the differences among bosses, managers, and leaders.
- C1D 13y agoI would love to see the end result of your book/blog post :P
- peterkelly 13y agoAs SonicSoul commented on the 12th of April, this will be published early next year. Or weren't you paying attention?
- MartinCron 13y agoSmall world, I think I worked for the same guy. My favorite nugget of wisdom from him was a dismissive "connect the dots..." that turned out to imply something that was disastrously incorrect.
- sp332 13y agoHe's still there. He just posted an article there this morning. http://boingboing.net/author/cory_doctorow_1 http://boingboing.net/author/cory_doctorow_1 Why do you ask?
- Clotho 13y agoNo reason. Just a curious reader.
- DoubleMalt 13y agoI remembered the story when I was reading the musings of the Australian police about regulating the cad files. As soon as 3d printers will be able to replicate themselves, every regulation will be moot. Information always finds a way to propagate.
- tvon 13y ago> As soon as 3d printers will be able to replicate themselves, every regulation will be moot. I don't get this. In theory, if it were illegal to print "Item #325" having 200 printers doesn't make it any less illegal to print "Item #325". > Information always finds a way to propagate. Doesn't this presuppose that no secret has ever been kept?
- fennecfoxen 13y agoWell, the other question is whether it will be legal to manufacture/sell printers which are capable of printing illegal things. If the printers are capable of self-replicating it will be implausible to enforce that sort of regulation. It is presumably already illegal to 3-D print several types of 3-D things, where such things themselves are illegal or where there is some form of copyright, trademark or patent infringement.
- DoubleMalt 13y ago>> As soon as 3d printers will be able to replicate themselves, every regulation will be moot. > I don't get this. In theory, if it were illegal to print "Item #325" having 200 printers doesn't make it any less illegal to print "Item #325". It might be illegal. But the law would be unenforceable. >> Information always finds a way to propagate. > Doesn't this presuppose that no secret has ever been kept? Valid point. What I meant is information that is out in the open. The cad files by Defense Distributed where published intentionally. You need a North Korean style regime to significantly slow down the propagation of such material.
- e12e 13y agoMost places you're not allowed to carry a knife in crowds. Doesn't really matter if you've made it yourself or not.
- metastew 13y agoWhile we're on this subject, what's the best DIY printer for an eager beginner like me? Last time I checked, it was Prusa Mendel, but there's been a lot of new additions to the market since then.
- iamwil 13y agoAccording to people in the reprap channels, it'd be: MendelMax1.5(or 2.0 if you don't care to source it yourself) or the Prusa i3. As for kits, people seem to like Ultimaker or Lulzbot's AO-10x. If you'd like a deltabot, there's the Kossel and SeeMeCNC's Rostock Max. I wrote a buying guide a few weeks back. You might want to check it out. http://blog.cubehero.com/2013/04/12/what-you-need-to-know-about-buying-a-3d-printer/ http://blog.cubehero.com/2013/04/12/what-you-need-to-know-ab...
- maeon3 13y agoThis is reminiscent of Gnu's "Right to read". http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html What is the solution if a person uses a printer to print devices that are used for what most people consider criminal behavior? For example, someone printing high performing secret remote detonating bomb materials for political enemy rallies. After they serve the prison sentence. Do you let them own an open source printer again and let them use it without restriction? With the power to print "anything" at low cost comes a tremendous power to kill thousands, even millions of people easily. How do you find the balance between freedom to let people print anything their hearts desire, and restrictions to stop the evil people from using that tremendous power for great evil?
- logicallee 13y agoIn that both are a pretty shitty story illustrating a great point!! :)
- betterunix 13y agoChange a few words and see if it still makes sense: what is the solution if a person uses their garage to make things for criminal purposes? If they get out of prison, do you still allow them to have a garage?
- freehunter 13y agoSee that's not the same though, unless the garage directly led to making the crime possible. Change a few words and see if it still makes sense: what if the person used their life for criminal purposes? If they get out of prison do you still allow them to have life? A garage is a place, not a tool.
- MindTwister 13y agoWhat about changing it then... If I build a detonator using a soldering iron and spare parts from a radio, should I be banned from ever owning a soldering iron... or a radio
- maeon3 13y agoAfter "printcrime" there will be: "look-crime" where you are caught peeking into or learning about how the insides of a system work on a base level, so you can replicate it without the backdoors, spyware, government mothership authorizations, credentials, alarms, and limitations. Close that vehicle/system lid citizen, there are trade secrets in there, step away, don't make me Taze you.
- mindcrime 13y agoAfter "printcrime" there will be: "look-crime" And after that, there will be "mind-crime".
- swatkat 13y agoMay I quote George Orwell: "thoughtcrime" [1] By the way, a very relevant username :) [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughtcrime
- mindcrime 13y agoBy the way, a very relevant username :) I'm just waiting for thoughtcriminal[1] to post in this thread, actually. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=thoughtcriminal https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=thoughtcriminal
- peterkelly 13y agoAnd URL query parameter modification crime.
- mkmkmmmmm 13y agoYour ordering is wrong because that's already a thing :(
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- spiritplumber 13y ago
- angersock 13y agoSo, one wonders--how does anyone who detests the idea of getting arrested for printing things and having printer tech confiscated simultaneously detest the idea of printing weapons with which to defend yourself and your means of production?
- livnev 13y agoWeapons are violence. There's no room for violence in the future.
- peterkelly 13y ago> There's no room for violence in the future I'm sure humanity will find some
- Karunamon 13y agoEven Star Trek had phasers. Weapons will exist as long as there is a need for a person to defend themselves against a foe.
- Turing_Machine 13y agoHow do you plan to arrange that? Be specific.
- cobrausn 13y agoSince forcibly disarming someone is application of violence, I fail to see your end-game.
- wnight 13y agoIs a hammer a weapon or a tool? Is a military mortar a tool when ski patrols use it to save lives by safely triggering avalanches?
- splawn 13y agoWhy would one wonder that? Besides the "getting arrested" part, it seems like two pretty different concepts to me...even with the positive spin you put on weapons.
- aqrashik 13y agoIf you prefer listening to it rather than reading, printcrime was in an Escape Pod Flash piece a few years back... http://escapepod.org/2007/01/09/ep-flash-printcrime/ http://escapepod.org/2007/01/09/ep-flash-printcrime/
- brudgers 13y agoA few months ago, I read Cory Doctrow's Makers. Having grown up in Orlando, rat as villain was blissful reading. Earlier this spring, I pulled Little Brother off the shelf at the library. As it happened, my son was just finishing Slaughter House Five: or the Children's Crusade at the very point I realized that he might enjoy its young adult tenor more than I would enjoy finishing it out of obligation. Ever since Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy's cover in my hand grabbed his attention at the library [following up quickly with a purchased copy of the complete series helped seal the deal] last winter, I've been on a roll for recommending books with him. Player Piano was the only thing close to Hitch-Hiker's Guide I could think of, and his finishing it was how we got to Slaughter-House Five. Indeed, the mentioning of last year's suggestion of Sword of Shannara has been rendered less painful between us by the recent success. Anyway, he really dug Little Brother. So much so he made sure to take it to middle-school everyday and walk out to the bus stop "reading" it, in the morning. As fortune would have it, the evening of the very day he finished it, I was at the library and what should be on the new fiction rack but Homeland. He finished that, too. Now one of the questions that comes around on Ask HN is how do I get my child interested in programming, and I don't think you do, really other than perhaps by modeling behavior, and I've said as much from time to time. But, reading Doctorow sparked my son to check out the computer section at the library - that trip was with mom and he came back with an "Intro to turning a computer on" type book. A couple of days later it was in the back-to-the-library stack. Then about two weeks ago, he asked me if I had a book about Lisp because that was what he had really been looking for at the library. Well of course I did, and he knew it - Graham's Ansi Common Lisp has been floating around the house since I picked it up used from Amazon last August. So a few nights a week he sits and reads and takes notes for a half hour all on his own and in his own way, which is of course the best way to come to any adult activity for a young person.* *OK so I did Youtube the first part of the first SICP lecture video for him on our way to a soccer tournament a week earlier. Until he fell asleep about 15 minutes in. As he was dozing off, however, we got to the part where Sussman says that what we can program is only limited by what we can imagine. That got him to stop nodding his head.
- shahar2k 13y agowhat really got me into programming or really interested in tech at all, was basically working with my dad ON stuff around the house, being able to take things apart, move electronics components around and see the effect, and then get to slowly transition to doing it myself. the big block to doing these sorts of things really tends to be fear of failure. after a few electrocutions, burnt devices, and realizing that failure really isnt quite as bad as it's built up to be, I think any kid would be much more brave to try and open tech up. if you are a programmer, do a 24 hour project yourself, a quick game, a quick project on arduino, basically something to get tangled with quickly and accomplish quickly. hah what got me interested though is just curiosity / hunger for more knowledge, some of my first conversations with my dad revoled around ohm's law, newton's laws. and learning how to take things apart meant that I also had to learn to put my dad's toys back together before I got caught :) anyways I'm a 3d artist now, but I'm also one of the only ones at my company who can write cgfx shaders, fix hardware, and troubleshoot the computers without calling IT.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- MarkHarmon 13y agoThe story seems relevant due to recent news articles about people printing guns. It makes me wonder about what other printable items will be criminalized. Also gets me thinking about the materials used by 3d printers. Right now plastic is the most popular, but who knows, maybe someday it will be "goop".
- tstactplsignore 13y agoI am often confused by how quickly the futurist community jumps from "machines which mold plastic shapes" to "machines which are capable of creating a laptop". Surely every modern electronic requires an enormous number of materials, some very rare, some in minute quantities, and some of which may require chemically and/or thermally active reactions in their implementation. Do many people genuinely think that we are close to this kind of machine? Because to me I simply see far too many hurdles for it to even become realistic. I know everyone is excited about 3-D printers, but within the current constraints of reality I cannot see how the current ones can do much more than print small plastic mechanical parts.
- tenpoundhammer 13y agoPlease research "fun" and "story", I think you will find out why fun stories are often based on things which may not be feasible.
- cowpewter 13y agoOr "speculative fiction" - which often uses currently impossible or implausible technology in order to make a point about society itself.
- TeMPOraL 13y agoSurely modern electronics exist for like, 50 years now. And progress is getting faster, not slowing down. Research for self-replicating machines is being done on many fronts now. And those are not "machines which mold plastic shapes", these are "machines that put various materials to precise computer instructions and can be built at home for less than $1k".