content/Cory_Doctorow/Printcrime.tex

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   8 \textbf{\huge\textsf{{Printcrime}}}
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  12
  13 \emph{Forematter:}
  14
  15 This story is part of Cory Doctorow’s 2007 short story collection
  16 “Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present,” published by
  17 Thunder’s Mouth, a division of Avalon Books. It is licensed under a
  18 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license,
  19 about which you’ll find more at the end of this file.
  20
  21 This story and the other stories in the volume are available at:
  22
  23 \texttt{http://craphound.com/overclocked}
  24
  25 You can buy Overclocked at finer bookstores everywhere, including
  26 \href{http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1560259817/downandoutint-20}{Amazon.}
  27
  28 In the words of Woody Guthrie:
  29
  30 “This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright
  31 \#154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it
  32 without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause
  33 we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it.
  34 Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.”
  35
  36 Overclocked is dedicated to Pat York, who made my stories better.
  37
  38 \section{Introduction to Printcrime:}
  39
  40 Printcrime came out of a discussion I had with a friend who’d been
  41 to hear a spokesman for the British recording industry talk about
  42 the future of “intellectual property.” The record exec opined the
  43 recording industry’s great and hysterical spasm would form the
  44 template for a never-ending series of spasms as 3D printers,
  45 fabricators and rapid prototypers laid waste to every industry that
  46 relied on trademarks or patents.
  47
  48 My friend thought that, as kinky as this was, it did show a fair
  49 amount of foresight, coming as it did from the notoriously
  50 technosqueamish record industry.
  51
  52 I was less impressed.
  53
  54 It’s almost certainly true that control over the production of
  55 trademarked and patented objects will diminish over the coming
  56 years of object-on-demand printing, but to focus on 3D printers’
  57 impact on \emph{trademarks} is a stupendously weird idea.
  58
  59 It’s as if the railroad were looming on the horizon, and the most
  60 visionary thing the futurists of the day can think of to say about
  61 it is that these iron horses will have a disastrous effect on the
  62 hardworking manufacturers of oat-bags for horses. It’s true, as far
  63 as it goes, but it’s so tunnel-visioned as to be practically
  64 blind.
  65
  66 When Nature magazine asked me if I’d write a short-short story for
  67 their back-page, I told them I’d do it, then went home, sat down on
  68 the bed and banged this one out. They bought it the next morning,
  69 and we were in business.
  70
  71 \section{Printcrime}
  72
  73 \textsf{(Originally published in Nature Magazine, January 2006)}
  74
  75 The coppers smashed my father’s printer when I was eight. I
  76 remember the hot, cling-film-in-a-microwave smell of it, and Da’s
  77 look of ferocious concentration as he filled it with fresh goop,
  78 and the warm, fresh-baked feel of the objects that came out of it.
  79
  80 The coppers came through the door with truncheons swinging, one of
  81 them reciting the terms of the warrant through a bullhorn. One of
  82 Da’s customers had shopped him. The ipolice paid in high-grade
  83 pharmaceuticals\dash{}performance enhancers, memory supplements,
  84 metabolic boosters. The kind of thing that cost a fortune over the
  85 counter; the kind of thing you could print at home, if you didn’t
  86 mind the risk of having your kitchen filled with a sudden crush of
  87 big, beefy bodies, hard truncheons whistling through the air,
  88 smashing anyone and anything that got in the way.
  89
  90 They destroyed grandma’s trunk, the one she’d brought from the old
  91 country. They smashed our little refrigerator and the purifier unit
  92 over the window. My tweetybird escaped death by hiding in a corner
  93 of his cage as a big, booted foot crushed most of it into a sad
  94 tangle of printer-wire.
  95
  96 Da. What they did to him. When he was done, he looked like he’d
  97 been brawling with an entire rugby side. They brought him out the
  98 door and let the newsies get a good look at him as they tossed him
  99 in the car, while a spokesman told the world that my Da’s
 100 organized-crime bootlegging operation had been responsible for at
 101 least twenty million in contraband, and that my Da, the desperate
 102 villain, had resisted arrest.
 103
 104 I saw it all from my phone, in the remains of the sitting room,
 105 watching it on the screen and wondering how, just \emph{how} anyone
 106 could look at our little flat and our terrible, manky estate and
 107 mistake it for the home of an organized crime kingpin. They took
 108 the printer away, of course, and displayed it like a trophy for the
 109 newsies. Its little shrine in the kitchenette seemed horribly
 110 empty. When I roused myself and picked up the flat and rescued my
 111 peeping poor tweetybird, I put a blender there. It was made out of
 112 printed parts, so it would only last a month before I’d need to
 113 print new bearings and other moving parts. Back then, I could take
 114 apart and reassemble anything that could be printed.
 115
 116 By the time I turned eighteen, they were ready to let Da out of
 117 prison. I’d visited him three times\dash{}on my tenth birthday, on his
 118 fiftieth, and when Ma died. It had been two years since I’d last
 119 seen him and he was in bad shape. A prison fight had left him with
 120 a limp, and he looked over his shoulder so often it was like he had
 121 a tic. I was embarrassed when the minicab dropped us off in front
 122 of the estate, and tried to keep my distance from this ruined,
 123 limping skeleton as we went inside and up the stairs.
 124
 125 “Lanie,” he said, as he sat me down. “You’re a smart girl, I know
 126 that. Trig. You wouldn’t know where your old Da could get a printer
 127 and some goop?”
 128
 129 I squeezed my hands into fists so tight my fingernails cut into my
 130 palms. I closed my eyes. “You’ve been in prison for ten years, Da.
 131 Ten. Years. You’re going to risk another ten years to print out
 132 more blenders and pharma, more laptops and designer hats?”
 133
 134 He grinned. “I’m not stupid, Lanie. I’ve learned my lesson. There’s
 135 no hat or laptop that’s worth going to jail for. I’m not going to
 136 print none of that rubbish, never again.” He had a cup of tea, and
 137 he drank it now like it was whisky, a sip and then a long,
 138 satisfied exhalation. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his
 139 chair.
 140
 141 “Come here, Lanie, let me whisper in your ear. Let me tell you the
 142 thing that I decided while I spent ten years in lockup. Come here
 143 and listen to your stupid Da.”
 144
 145 I felt a guilty pang about ticking him off. He was off his rocker,
 146 that much was clear. God knew what he went through in prison.
 147 “What, Da?” I said, leaning in close.
 148
 149 “Lanie, I’m going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One
 150 for everyone. That’s worth going to jail for. That’s worth
 151 anything.”
 152
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