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Backup Crimes

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Sat, 2013-11-16 15:24

EccentricOwl EccentricOwl's picture

Backup Crimes

I love the setting for its flexibility and options. It's been a while since I've thumbed through my books, though. I'm curious what they mention in the EP setting about... If you commit a crime, THEN you are destroyed but brought back from backup, are you still responsible for the crime you committed? (IE in the Inner System.) Furthermore, if an alpha or beta fork commits a murder, but is then eliminated - are you responsible for 'your' actions?

Sat, 2013-11-16 21:14

bibliophile20 bibliophile20's picture

EccentricOwl wrote:I love the

EccentricOwl wrote:
I love the setting for its flexibility and options. It's been a while since I've thumbed through my books, though. I'm curious what they mention in the EP setting about... If you commit a crime, THEN you are destroyed but brought back from backup, are you still responsible for the crime you committed? (IE in the Inner System.) Furthermore, if an alpha or beta fork commits a murder, but is then eliminated - are you responsible for 'your' actions?

Typically, if the crime is severe enough to warrant execution, they make a clean sweep and delete the backups too, on the grounds that they are that person. But a crime of that severity is usually along the lines of collaborating with the TITANs, mass murder, forknapping, torture, or messing with existential risks. The really big crimes. And in the outer system, too, if you're the kind of person that harms people for the lulz and destroys habitats "because you can", you're going to be facing deletion of your backups and getting yourself killed. But, to answer your question, if a fork commits a crime, yes, you are legally responsible for the actions of your fork (the autonomists have a cutoff date of 6 months of seperation, after which the fork is its own person). Hunting down hidden backups and forks of criminals and turning them over to the aggrieved party, and other such scenarios, is the bread and butter of ego hunters. Also, they wouldn't kill a useful morph if they can help it; they'd just upload you out of it, delete your instance and give/sell the morph to someone else.

—

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

Sun, 2013-11-17 15:35

easl

EccentricOwl wrote:If you

EccentricOwl wrote:
If you commit a crime, THEN you are destroyed but brought back from backup, are you still responsible for the crime you committed? (IE in the Inner System.) Furthermore, if an alpha or beta fork commits a murder, but is then eliminated - are you responsible for 'your' actions?

If you want to keep your game world interesting, you could have various governments have different answers to that question. That also provides for a good background explanation for the Black Mark negative trait. "I'm wanted on Mars for something one of my old forks did."

Tue, 2013-11-19 22:55

thezombiekat thezombiekat's picture

Different governments do have

Different governments do have different answers. And each habitat is a different government (the planetary consortium sets some overall rules for trade and corporate behaviour but does not define personhood) If it was a recently created fork most would hold you responsible (they are not going to let you get away with crimes by forking before committing them) The anarchists don’t have fixed laws but consider every event on a case by case basis. But would probably rule you responsible until about the same time they give you separate rep scores and otherwise consider you different people. (This is also not a fixed time but is based on the desires of the forks and divergence in behaviour.) responses to crime under the anarchists is also more about reformation than punishment, so you might get treated more leniently if the events that motivated your fork to commit a crime never happened to you. In some jurisdictions not only are you guilty of anything your fork did, your guilty of creating the fork in the first place.Now considering all those different jurisdictions laws and that an ego hunter has is going to be asked by one jurisdiction to collect an ego from a jurisdiction that considers the target a different person to the one that committed the crime.