Except that Fabbers Without Borders would have to be nonprofit. Because Regulated Fabbers, Inc is literally giving away fabbers. The product they're selling is regulation. The public fabbers are all produced at a loss. (And the private fabbers that they sell are of course DRM free) Oh, of course nobody on Extropia is ever going to sell a fabber that can make more fabbers. That would just be stupid. All fabber-making-fabbers have to either be made using cracked DRM or be imported from nearby an-cols. (Or of course made for personal use by someone with an imported or cracked fabber)

If something is hard to make from a fabber, like a simple gun or some explosives, there would be different fabbers trying to offer the same services but with different qualities. For instance, you can use this fabber during 30 minutes freely, so fabbers are limited by time(or the time limiit is defined under your reputation) everybody would agree to use such fabbers because they offer the basic services such as simple electronics or decoration and if you want something more complex you simply pay a fee. Or there would be fabbers which directly charges you on how much resources did you use, but they can give you a discount if you give to them the resources directly(like a block of salt or iron). Or, the fabber has free items which change day to day premium items and ubersuperpremium items for total access... have in mind that in an ancap society. And of course there would be charity, with fabbers destined in poor areas with big logos(so everybody knows which enterprise is giving a favor here) and completly free access, with fast making process by default(so they can be massively used and fast and enought imprecise to it to basic products). When you get to extropia or other ancaps societies(there are three in the game), think big and creatively entrepeneurs are highly rewarded in free market societies, and there would be as much busisines models as minds are trying to find a new way to win money.

Just publish a list of "deadbeats", use whatever term is acceptable, for people who don't contribute back for blueprint use. This would effect Rep within Extropia and while they wouldn't be denied service people could very easily prioritize services towards those that are known to contribute back to them. Fabbers must necessarily prioritize based on a number of factors (material, time, emergency conditions, etc). If the owner of the blueprint has an individual listed as a low priority for their blueprint use that is simply a factor used to determine when that person can fab the blueprint. If you can get widespread buy-in for prioritization then those fabbers that don't will be overwhelmed by those that don't want to contribute. They will still be able to use it, they will simply have to wait longer or go to a fabber that isn't part of the priority system (likely also used by those that don't want to contribute, and so oversubscribed). This would help manage the "free ride" situation while reducing chances of ethically negative outcomes like people starving in the street etc. An-cap works better, I think, when the Rep system is added as that helps avoid some of the excesses associated with it. Also, people who did contribute, at different levels, could be given a higher priority for blue print use and simply use that as another fabber priority use. So you end up with a carrot and stick model to encourage, but not require, contributions for a persons work making a blueprint.

Okay, speaking as someone who's political tendencies IRL lean towards AnCap, I'd say that the problem probably never comes up, because they never put DRM on their products to begin with. Why? Because DRM is a scheme associated with Copyright, and Copyright is a government-enforced monopoly (and if there's one thing AnCaps hate, it's government interference). Trying schemes to maintain your failing monopoly is corrupt and self-defeating, and those that rely on them are inevitably doomed to failure, as treating your customers like criminals drives away legitimate customers and rewards those who break your DRM.

savanah wrote:

I think it would work as Winrar, you can download and use the blueprints at will, but everytime you use them a small pop up would attempt to appear asking you to pay for the product, but your muse automatically blocked it and it never came to your conscious attention because you're (a) an anarchist and believe information should be completely free, and (b) an anarchist and thus don't have any money.

Fixed that for you.