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In other words, a Star Trek replicator will make mincemeat of the idea of copyright...



Or the other way around. Existence of replicators will create laws forbidding you to whittle yourself a shape of a Mercedes.


Or the other other way around: Star Trek style replicators will never see the light of day. As soon as the technology even REMOTELY gets close, everyone with a financial interest in keeping physical goods scarce (basically all manufacturing companies), will collectively come down on it like a ton of bricks. If you think the record and movie industry lobbying effort against sharing is powerful, imagine basically every manufacturing company in existence joining in.


As long as some political suit somewhere things that it will give them a leg up in the rat race, that lobbying will be shown the door.


I think we are already getting there with 3D printers...




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