Do fabricators make "Real" or "Fake" things?

[Sigtrygg]

57th, 1105 in the Third Imperium is the 57th century.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Or you could use scannable QR codes "printed" on the fabricated items, to prevent fakes.
Or you could use Licencing Servers to provide access-tokens or keys, to prevent piracy and allow only the genuine fabricators to operate.
Or you could just make the fabricators utterly fool proof, and hence no need for game rules.

But, can the templates themselves be cloned or faked?

You can pirate computer programs. You can steal blueprints. I see no reason why the templates wouldn't fall under one of those options.

 

[Limpin Legin]

You can pirate computer programs. You can steal blueprints. I see no reason why the templates wouldn't fall under one of those options.

Could do, could do. If you want reasons, then here are three:

• Pirating computer programs has always been relatively straight forward in making a bit-by-bit copy of said program under the same storage format. Until DRM and/or licencing servers arrived, where it is possible to revoke copies of the same licence serial number.
• The Intellectual Property of fabricators and blueprints could be uncopiable in terms of the capabilities of widely available copying equipment, because of storage formats, riveting temperatures, etc, etc. That would put such ideas out of reach of the ordinary criminal, or happy-go-lucky individual with self-interests.
• Stealing is not the same as faking. If something was a plan or blueprint for use with a fabricator, and then stolen, that might be tough luck, but it is not really addressing the issue of the question. If someone steals your SMG bullets, then it is for real, and not fake - just that the owner has changed.

So there are plausible reasons within the 21st Century as to why a fabricator might be fool proof when such technology arrives. However, since it is pure science fiction, you can provide your futuristic space pirates whatever excuse they need in order to get the job done, just by saying it will happen

 

[MasterGwydion]

Could do, could do. If you want reasons, then here are three:

• Pirating computer programs has always been relatively straight forward in making a bit-by-bit copy of said program under the same storage format. Until DRM and/or licencing servers arrived, where it is possible to revoke copies of the same licence serial number.
• The Intellectual Property of fabricators and blueprints could be uncopiable in terms of the capabilities of widely available copying equipment, because of storage formats, riveting temperatures, etc, etc. That would put such ideas out of reach of the ordinary criminal, or happy-go-lucky individual with self-interests.

If by ordinary criminal, you mean the guy who robs a gas station for the money in the register, then yes. An average criminal hacker though will likely have ways of doing it, or if not, will have contacts that do it already.

• Stealing is not the same as faking. If something was a plan or blueprint for use with a fabricator, and then stolen, that might be tough luck, but it is not really addressing the issue of the question. If someone steals your SMG bullets, then it is for real, and not fake - just that the owner has changed.

Anything you print with that stolen template is automatically counterfeit. That means that everything you print is "fake" Your example of SMG bullets doesn't really work. If you had said steals the template for your SMG bullets and then builds his own, then the bullets are "fake" as in counterfeits.

So there are plausible reasons within the 21st Century as to why a fabricator might be fool proof when such technology arrives. However, since it is pure science fiction, you can provide your futuristic space pirates whatever excuse they need in order to get the job done, just by saying it will happen

I figure this is the age-old story of offensive capabilities versus defensive capabilities. Criminals find a new way to pirate something. Companies come up with a defense. Then the criminals come up with a new way to pirate that thing. Over and over and over again.

 

[CordwainerFish]

Pirating computer programs has always been relatively straight forward in making a bit-by-bit copy of said program under the same storage format.

Remember the 8 bit days? There were all sorts of techniques publishers used, generally leveraging corner case behavior in hardware, to keep bit by bit copies from being willing to run. Hunt down an archived copy of Compute! or one of its competitors; the ads in the back will amaze you.

 

[Limpin Legin]

Remember the 8 bit days? There were all sorts of techniques publishers used, generally leveraging corner case behavior in hardware, to keep bit by bit copies from being willing to run. Hunt down an archived copy of Compute! or one of its competitors; the ads in the back will amaze you.

Indeed. That was exactly what I meant. And it wasn't particularly the bit-ness that reduced the problem, it was stuff like DRM and licencing servers.

 

[phavoc]

Remember the 8 bit days? There were all sorts of techniques publishers used, generally leveraging corner case behavior in hardware, to keep bit by bit copies from being willing to run. Hunt down an archived copy of Compute! or one of its competitors; the ads in the back will amaze you.

In the days of Beagle Brothers (Apple II) the copying software usually was staying one step ahead of the publishers.

Hypothetically speaking of course.

 

[phavoc]

57th, 1105 in the Third Imperium is the 57th century.

After a few millennia, a century or two is just a rounding error.

 

[Limpin Legin]

If by ordinary criminal, you mean the guy who robs a gas station for the money in the register, then yes. An average criminal hacker though will likely have ways of doing it, or if not, will have contacts that do it already.

Indeed. That is what I meant. It is not as simple as some dude with the right doo-dah gadget and forgery-5 skills. They would have to be more organised, and that would bump up their costs and risks of their activities becoming more visible and scrutinised. Not impossible, just much rarer.

Anything you print with that stolen template is automatically counterfeit.

I might be completely naïve here, but I am totally unaware of this in US, UK or Traveller Imperium laws.
Interpol site says:

• The trafficking in illicit goods spans a number of practices including:
• 
  
• counterfeiting
• piracy
• falsification
• adulteration of products
• smuggling of genuine products
• tax evasion.

No mention possession of "stolen goods" automatically means counterfeit. If I steal your printer, and use it to print off my CV, is that CV then a counterfeit?

Your example of SMG bullets doesn't really work. If you had said steals the template for your SMG bullets and then builds his own, then the bullets are "fake" as in counterfeits.

I was making an analogy between automatic fabricator equipment and automatic firearm equipment. Bullets are fed into a SMG like templates are fed into a fabricator. And that was the level of my analogy. I was alluding to the analogous value of the "realness" of missing resources rather than the value of "fakeness" of those resources. If that still does not make sense, then that is fine also.

I figure this is the age-old story of offensive capabilities versus defensive capabilities. Criminals find a new way to pirate something. Companies come up with a defense. Then the criminals come up with a new way to pirate that thing. Over and over and over again.

 

[J. L. Brown]

This is somewhat a semantical question (at least as far as the fake vs. natural diamond question is) without a good answer. So long as the manufactured item has the same physical characteristics as the natural item, the question comes down to preference in ownership. Luxury items will always skew the answer since the desire to own something unique is a big driver in desire and price. For myself, I'm happy to own a print of the famous Water Lillies painting. I'm not willing to shell out $54 million USD to own the original. But the value is driven by desire (much like a diamond) rather than common sense.

Maybe a better example would be "fake" vs. "real" gold. If the "fake" gold was built up, atom by atom whereas the "real" gold was mined, smelted and purified, would the end user care that their gold object was manufactured at the atomic level or manufactured in nature? You'd have to ask the potential owner. If it were a ring or a statute, maybe someone would care. If the gold was used in a circuit in a computer, would anyone care?

In theory it is probably possible to insert at the atomic level some mechanism or method to indicate the item was built via a fabricator vs made the old fashioned way. At some point this may become meaningless - say technology like matter replicators are common place and (most) people give up the idea that owning something unique is special. At that point the question is mostly academic and limited to very few people.

Since Traveller posits a relatively similar culture, albeit one with magical technology using today as an example, I would say people in the 52nd century probably have the same views of ownership of items as we do today.

Gold is gold, at the atomic level. If your fabricator is building stuff up atom-by-atom, then all of the gold was already gold. I will point out that 'mined' gold has some impurities which allow for detailed analysis to narrow down its mine (or at least region) of origin -- gold that coms out of an atom-by-atom fabricator might be atomically pure, which might make it extra valuable.

 

[CordwainerFish]

Indeed. That was exactly what I meant. And it wasn't particularly the bit-ness that reduced the problem, it was stuff like DRM and licencing servers.

It wasn't DRM that was being used (at the time that would have both been impractical, years ahead of the state of the art, and run afoul of export restrictions), but tricks like writing data halfway between tracks of a disk, or overwriting one's own code with halt instructions (because the program was supposed to be on a ROM cartridge and thus unaffected by that).

 

[Arkathan]

Indeed. That was exactly what I meant. And it wasn't particularly the bit-ness that reduced the problem, it was stuff like DRM and licencing servers.

The original Elite (forerunner to Elite Dangerous)... hold a prismatic piece of plastic up to the screen to get a code... or if you played enough, spam the codes that statistically show up enough that you remember them and hope for a match.
Or the Pool of Radiance, A fake three factor dial that really only depended on one variable, so you could make a simple table comparing one rune to the passcode.

 

[Limpin Legin]

gold that coms out of an atom-by-atom fabricator might be atomically pure, which might make it extra valuable.

Except that if gold was easily fabricated in such a pure state, there would suddenly be an abundance of it, and gold would then no longer be a rare metal, and prices would likely tumble.

 

[Limpin Legin]

The original Elite (forerunner to Elite Dangerous)... hold a prismatic piece of plastic up to the screen to get a code... or if you played enough, spam the codes that statistically show up enough that you remember them and hope for a match.
Or the Pool of Radiance, A fake three factor dial that really only depended on one variable, so you could make a simple table comparing one rune to the passcode.

Well, build your fabricator copyright protections on that technology if you want. Only I'd imagine a futuristic Imperial court to have more hindsight and fortitude.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Indeed. That is what I meant. It is not as simple as some dude with the right doo-dah gadget and forgery-5 skills. They would have to be more organised, and that would bump up their costs and risks of their activities becoming more visible and scrutinised. Not impossible, just much rarer.

Most hackers I have ever met defy the very idea of "more organized". Most of them were college kids or college dropouts with a laptop and no car. lol One was a college professor.

I might be completely naïve here, but I am totally unaware of this in US, UK or Traveller Imperium laws.
Interpol site says:

Let Me try and simplify. If you steal copywrited material (such as a book) or patented templates (such as the blueprints in the US Patent Office) and then Fabricate that copywrited or patented material, that is counterfeiting because you do not have the license to fabricate a Gucci Handbag

No mention possession of "stolen goods" automatically means counterfeit. If I steal your printer, and use it to print off my CV, is that CV then a counterfeit?

I was making an analogy between automatic fabricator equipment and automatic firearm equipment. Bullets are fed into a SMG like templates are fed into a fabricator. And that was the level of my analogy. I was alluding to the analogous value of the "realness" of missing resources rather than the value of "fakeness" of those resources. If that still does not make sense, then that is fine also.

Templates are not fed into a Fabricator the way bullets are fed into an SMG. A Fabricator does not fire templates, it creates an item based on the information in the template. Bullets are the result of a template.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Except that if gold was easily fabricated in such a pure state, there would suddenly be an abundance of it, and gold would then no longer be a rare metal, and prices would likely tumble.

Gold isn't easily fabricated. Fabricating Gold would require manipulation at the quantum level. It can be done. It just requires an superior fabricator. TL-19

Gold is an element.

 

[Arkathan]

Well, build your fabricator copyright protections on that technology if you want. Only I'd imagine a futuristic Imperial court to have more hindsight and fortitude.

No, that era of software was really annoying. Lose/break/wear out your key, lose access to your game.

 

[Limpin Legin]

Let Me try and simplify. If you steal copywrited material (such as a book) or patented templates (such as the blueprints in the US Patent Office) and then Fabricate that copywrited or patented material, that is counterfeiting because you do not have the license to fabricate a Gucci Handbag

Oh, I understand lack of licence or impersonating someone to gain fake approval would infringe copyrighted material. Just wouldn't agree that possession of stolen property was in itself forgery.

Templates are not fed into a Fabricator the way bullets are fed into an SMG. A Fabricator does not fire templates, it creates an item based on the information in the template. Bullets are the result of a template.

Why not? Templates and bullets are fed into their respective equipment via a cartridge of some kind? Only needs to be an analogy, not a precise one-to-one equivalence. Never said a fabricator fires templates. I mentioned an "automatic firearm" as something that can automatically produce more than one of it's kind of action. Sorry if that wasn't particularly clear. Yes bullets could be the result of a template, but that point was irrelevant to the analogy, as I was originally referring to something that was stolen, NOT faked. You introduced 'faked' and 'stolen' as being equivalent, not me.
Cheers for the chat.

 

[phavoc]

The original Elite (forerunner to Elite Dangerous)... hold a prismatic piece of plastic up to the screen to get a code... or if you played enough, spam the codes that statistically show up enough that you remember them and hope for a match.
Or the Pool of Radiance, A fake three factor dial that really only depended on one variable, so you could make a simple table comparing one rune to the passcode.

Don't forget printing the codes on colored paper with faint contrast to make it difficult to photocopy.

Or using the entire game manual (remember those?) That referenced a page, paragraph and sentence where you had to enter the next word. Kind of like madlibs for copyright protection.

 

[AndrewW]

In the days of Beagle Brothers (Apple II) the copying software usually was staying one step ahead of the publishers.

Hypothetically speaking of course.

Beagle Brothers catalogs where fun. Publishers could be a little ahead before a new version of Copy II+, Locksmith and so forth came out.