It all depends on who you are buying. Most of the important (useful) people will have already gone through their servitude and earnt their payment. So all you really have left in the Great Big Database is the rest of society whose primary use is menial labour. So, costs. First you would need to cover the final payout cost of the morph reward (or whatever else they indentured themselves for). That could range from as low as a couple thousand credits for a Case, to a few tens of thousands for a Menton, depending on the indentureds contract. Then you need to cover the cost of whatever morph they are going to be working in during their contract, which is another couple of thousand credits at least. After that, living costs, which could last for quite a few years depending on the contract length. Those would include maintenance on work sleeves, basic health care (primarily mental. A workforce who thinks they are happy work harder), living space, ect. There are probably some legal costs to get the contracts transferred, although that may have been negated by prolific AI. And even if you are only buying the contract and then setting them free, the indenture would probably not appreciate being bought and then having their work contract voided. So you might still be obligated, even if only socially, to fulfil the completion obligations on the contract, I.e giving the blighter his Synth morph before chucking him into the big bad world. How world you feel if you worked your ass off on some back water mining station on Venus only to be thrown into the anarchist hellhole that is the outer system by some random do-good? TL;DR, a couple of tens of thousands maybe.

I was under the impression that the price of an indenture is; one morph due at the completion of services. I'm not sure that there generally is an initial "purchase price" outside of the black market as no one can claim to "own" the original Ego besides that Ego. By corollary: doe anyone know any hard reference to how long the typical indenture runs? I know that Morninstar offers shorter contracts but I think I read that they use indentures for more dangerous work (mining Venus.) The reason I ask is because I was musing once about contract trading. IE, a company who first put an Ego under contract could sell that contract to another company. Sometimes it could happen at a profit. A Lunar Mining company in Erato instances some no-skill-grocery-bagging-infugee-schmuk and teaches him to teleoperate mining equipment then two years later sells his contract to Prosperity Group to go work on a gate world. It cost the mine company nothing but the effort of training and Prosperity Group gets a trained mucker operator to work on a high stress minerals extraction operation.

"... - though most indentures carry five to twenty year contracts, in reality these indentures typically last between eight and twenty-five years; some go on even longer." Core rules, second printing, p 66. "The vast majority of teleoperators and surface workers are indentured servant infugees selling their labor to acquire a morph. Infomorph teleoperation pilots can earn enough to purchase a cheap synth morph in approximately six months or eventually save up for a slightly better morph like a basic pod or a splicer. Workers who are willing to risk their egos directly on the surface earn more generous pay, however, and after a year of work most can afford mid-range morphs like an augmented splicer or even an exalt." Sunward, p 25, discussing surface mining on Venus. Looking at these, we get some good ballparks. An indenture is expected to be provided the tools they work with during the time they are working for you, along with any accomodations they require. Based on the Core Rules entry, they're getting paid between 250 and 1000 credits a year for the morph (5000 for high cost / 20 or 5 year term), and I think we can assume there is a little more money on top of that so they can afford to pay for housing once they are 'free'. Call it 500 to 1500. The Venus calculation is a bit wonkier, since the cheap synth is high cost, as is the splicer and the pod (both pleasure and worker). We probably have to presume that the cheap synths are more in the neighborhood of 2500 and the splicers/pods in the neighborhood of 7000.

I think the modern-day practice of debt bondage is applicable to the plight of indentures... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage Note that such debt is usually kept vague to the debtor (via elaborate interest rates, etc.) in order to maximise their exploitation, which is often inherited by the debtor's children. Being owner of such a debt ensures you have slave labour forever. I don't see why this ages-old practice would change much, particularly when dealing with debtors who may not even legally qualify for personhood and are effectively immortal and are thus more versatile and valuable. Also I think you'd be very lucky to only get buried under a 25 year stint, especially in an era in which transhuman life can persist to nigh-infinity. Slavery does tend to be (barring emancipation by external force) a permanent state for those unlucky enough to find themselves trapped in it.

Nah, surely the possibility of in any way controlling information is long forgotten by the time of EP, especially in areas where basic human rights are concerned. I think if we're talking slavery in a setting in which people can take the form of data, then it makes sense to think of it as a copyright issue. Identures may be surreptitiously freed via the 'underground railroad' all the time, but the slave-owners still hold their backups and all duplication rights - you're not free at all if you don't have any legal rights to your own identity. You're just an illegal copy.

I have some of my earlier musings on the subject here. Still, there are few other opinions that require note here: *IMHO Hypercorps generally do not use the old-style debt bondage system. Not because of their good hearts, but because it would not fly in a society with interconnected information system and muses who can run calculations. The Few extra years they manage to usually sneak in with surcharges et cetera are the maximum they can pull off without resorting to outright slavery. *Aside morph, the indenture includes costs for extra living space and lifesupport capacity that the infugee will need. Most indenture contracts include a citizenship in some habitat, possibly costs of one-time egocast, etc. I'd see the indenture offer more as a generic "Get you back on your feet after the Fall"-package the 'corps are "selling". *A Minimal indenture covering "recovery fee" of the ego, server space for infomorph life and citizenship on eg. Mars where there is no shortage of room can be relatively short (1-3 years). *I'd think that while you cannot sell an indenturee, you can sell the indenture. The Buyer can't alter the original contract and generally have to return the infugee in question to the original habitat the contract specifies. The Contract also generally specifies the duties expected from the indenturee (eg. you can't legally use someone who signed an indenture for general maintenance as a gatecrasher). *I see no reason why an indenturee should not be able to continue in the same job after the indenture is ended. Hypercorp pays salary (which doesn't need to be more than indenture expenses) and gets someone who is a known quantity and knows the job. Of course, many indentures are extremely fed up with the 'corp at that point and gleefully give it the Finger. (And end up as underemployed clanking masses, but that's another story...) *Hypercorps exploit the infugees to the hilt, but they are not in it for teh Evulz. There comes a time when trying to squeeze that last drop of blood from stone becomes a bad proposition from the cost/benefit perspective and that is the one line they will not cross. If easing the indenture conditions is cheaper than a memetic campaign and cracking down, they will do it without batting an eye. Just business, understand?

I think the initial cost of contracting an indenture is probably minimal though. As I understand it there are still plenty of infugees on Lunar servers an generally in Earth orbit. Some who are even still in cold storage. Possibly there's a service fee paid to the LLA for taking some of those unfortunates off their hands. I'm sure a cherry picked selection of skilled labor is available for a higher price from brokers who've done the research and legwork and may have already put some informorphs under contract. And then there's the 9Lives Crew who probably make their gravy selling specialty items for special purposes. I'm not sure that the Mesh will really help the cause of keeping people honest. Most habitats are separated by a distance that's greater than the average person's ability to cross with private broadcasting equipment. The vast bulk of data in and out of a particular habitat has to come through that hab's neutrino system or really big radio so they've got a really effective choke point. It's easier for any particular habitat to censor the mesh than it is for China to censor the internet today. I suspect that many of the indentures were talking about are employed doing just that.