Dissertation Progress

[major_clanger]

9,000 / 10,000 (90.0%)

That completes the actual discussion. I've just gone through the whole thing carefully noting errors, parts where the exposition isn't clear, and issues to note in the summary and conclusion. I probably have to add a couple of hundred words to clarify some areas, which if need be I can almost certainly trim out elsewhere, leaving me 800-1000 words to wrap it all up, summarise the legal position of using personal fabricators, and make my own suggestions as to where we're going and follow-on research.

For one thing, I've had to confine myself to European, UK and in some instances specifically English law. Clearly a huge forum for personal fabricator development is going to be the USA, and all the areas I've investigated need to be re-examined from the US legal perspective. And, looking at where personal fabbing might prove attractive, the Chinese and Indian perspectives as well.

And what will the actual response to this technology be? I shall note the temptation for commercial fab producers to incorporate some sort of DRM or anti-counterfeiting technology similar to that put into scanners and printers to stop people printing dollar bills, and how this will be futile in the face of open-source DIY fabs. Equally, any move to try to close the 'personal and private use' exemptions for design and patent law would be inadvisable - they were put there for a reason and the advent of fabbing doesn't invalidate it overnight. It's also worth explaining that there is a big difference between home fabbing and music file-sharing, as the latter delivered the ability to make and swap near-perfect copies right away, whilst home fabs will be making very limited substitutes for a fair while to come. There is thus the prospect of a much softer landing, so to speak, although this might equally mean that large rights-holders have more time to lobby for more restrictive design protection in advance of genuine 3D replicators actually being developed. As purplecthulhu noted when we were talking about this down the pub the other night, there's the prospect for more than one paper coming out of this...

Comments

[daveon.livejournal.com]

I started writing a novel based around the problem of the fabs about 5 years ago, before really getting hammered with "real" work. My thoughts at the time were we'd see players taking a Sun or Apple approach where they supply a fab and the programs with suitably locked DRM and the competing approach where there's a license model for a standard fab plant and people can produce their own programs and market them.

Over time I think we'll see the first approach happening and the things will be damn hard to hack for anybody but the most literate, but as things move on it'll open up which changes a lot of things.