Gnu Consumers

[David Gerard]

On 28 December 2010 11:12, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think we need more explicit ties between the world of home machine
> shops and the world of home 3D printers.


Oh, and here's the stirring teenage hacktivist manifesto, for teenage
hacktivists of all ages:

http://craphound.com/?p=573 - CC-by-nc-nd-1.0, copy freely.


Printcrime

Copy this story.

(originally published in Nature Magazine, January 2006)

Cory Doctorow

The coppers smashed my father's printer when I was eight. I remember
the hot, cling-film-in-a-microwave smell of it, and Da's look of
ferocious concentration as he filled it with fresh goop, and the warm,
fresh-baked feel of the objects that came out of it.

The coppers came through the door with truncheons swinging, one of
them reciting the terms of the warrant through a bullhorn. One of Da's
customers had shopped him. The ipolice paid in high-grade
pharmaceuticals -- performance enhancers, memory supplements,
metabolic boosters. The kind of things that cost a fortune over the
counter; the kind of things you could print at home, if you didn't
mind the risk of having your kitchen filled with a sudden crush of
big, beefy bodies, hard truncheons whistling through the air, smashing
anyone and anything that got in the way.

They destroyed grandma's trunk, the one she'd brought from the old
country. They smashed our little refrigerator and the purifier unit
over the window. My tweetybird escaped death by hiding in a corner of
his cage as a big, booted foot crushed most of it into a sad tangle of
printer-wire.

Da. What they did to him. When he was done, he looked like he'd been
brawling with an entire rugby side. They brought him out the door and
let the newsies get a good look at him as they tossed him in the car.
All the while a spokesman told the world that my Da's organized-crime
bootlegging operation had been responsible for at least 20 million in
contraband, and that my Da, the desperate villain, had resisted
arrest.

I saw it all from my phone, in the remains of the sitting room,
watching it on the screen and wondering how, just how anyone could
look at our little flat and our terrible, manky estate and mistake it
for the home of an organized crime kingpin. They took the printer
away, of course, and displayed it like a trophy for the newsies. Its
little shrine in the kitchenette seemed horribly empty. When I roused
myself and picked up the flat and rescued my poor peeping tweetybird,
I put a blender there. It was made out of printed parts, so it would
only last a month before I'd need to print new bearings and other
moving parts. Back then, I could take apart and reassemble anything
that could be printed.

By the time I turned 18, they were ready to let Da out of prison. I'd
visited him three times -- on my tenth birthday, on his fiftieth, and
when Ma died. It had been two years since I'd last seen him and he was
in bad shape. A prison fight had left him with a limp, and he looked
over his shoulder so often it was like he had a tic. I was embarrassed
when the minicab dropped us off in front of the estate, and tried to
keep my distance from this ruined, limping skeleton as we went inside
and up the stairs.

"Lanie," he said, as he sat me down. "You're a smart girl, I know
that. You wouldn't know where your old Da could get a printer and some
goop?"

I squeezed my hands into fists so tight my fingernails cut into my
palms. I closed my eyes. "You've been in prison for ten years, Da.
Ten. Years. You're going to risk another ten years to print out more
blenders and pharma, more laptops and designer hats?"

He grinned. "I'm not stupid, Lanie. I've learned my lesson. There's no
hat or laptop that's worth going to jail for. I'm not going to print
none of that rubbish, never again." He had a cup of tea, and he drank
it now like it was whisky, a sip and then a long, satisfied
exhalation. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair.

"Come here, Lanie, let me whisper in your ear. Let me tell you the
thing that I decided while I spent ten years in lockup. Come here and
listen to your stupid Da."

I felt a guilty pang about ticking him off. He was off his rocker,
that much was clear. God knew what he went through in prison. "What,
Da?" I said, leaning in close.

"Lanie, I'm going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One for
everyone. That's worth going to jail for. That's worth anything."


- d.