Should IPC's be people? (Community Decision)

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

It was recently brought to my attention by Skull-kun that there was a flare up in the security department. Apparently an IPC was kill, and the department was divided between it being sabotage or murder. Arguments like this are great, but we still need actual regulations to fall back on for the 'right' choice to make.

I don't think this is a decision I want the lore team by itself to decide because it has major implications and consequence for the community, most glaringly being IPC players. So I'm making this a community decision with these options:

1) IPC's are not legally considered people by the Republic of Biesel, or Sol Alliance. But they can gain this right if they work for Nanotrasen for x years along with their standard arc of working out of their debt from purchasing their own freedom. It would explain why aurora has so many and also open the door to ipc enclaves in the frontier, where they flee to escape this shitty reality, since they aren't able to even gain citizenship.

Mechanically, killing an IPC is an act of sabotage or vandalism, depending on if NT still owns them, or if they were freed and still work for NT for their various reasons.

2) IPC's are considered people, and given these rights when granted their freedom. Not much would change except the affirmation that IPC killing is murder. They would be able to have citizenships and all the works.

[Tainavaa]

They should NOT be considered people because we're using real people logic in that they're identified as sophisticated computers. They're AI's but in a chassis. That's basically it.

Also drama and political arguments everywhere. I see only good things from not considering them people.

[SierraKomodo]

Can this be something we play out IC as a synthetics rights movement, whether it actually happens or not in the long run being irrelevant to the RP and storylines this can creat?

It'd be better than sitting here talking about it in OOC, then one day suddenly IPC's have rights without any IC buildup

[Jakers457]

SOME IPCs are owned by NT = Vandalism.

SOME IPCs are free = Murder.

Some are owned by employees, like Karime = Lawsuit on NT for allowing her property to get kill.

[Tenenza]

It would be cool if we have an IPC civil rights movement plotty thing in the background, with newscasters and mini-events, kinda like the build up to the Insect people, but with more player involvement and choice.

[Guest]

I think I said this before, Il try to do it again without calling anyone a furry this time.

Nobody I know of is interested in IC racism, the few instances of IC racism I have seen were stamped out with Incident reports. IPCs are gimmicky shiny metal humans who take human waifus and live in human homes and akwardly pour human mountain dew on their featureless monitor faces, because that's what people want to play.

Assuming this change goes through, I'll have to go through the inconvinience of retconning where Haruspex and Schnuffler live. I like that particular bit of backstory and I don't really want to let it go.

IPC enclaves in the frontier worlds is an awesome idea, but I don't see how anything from the frontier worlds could regularly take the space bus to station so we can actually see it being roleplayed out.

If the ingame event for IPC rights is just a bunch of featureless Newscaster updates, It'll be really underwhelming. Also would people pay attention to the event, even? I mean, when the Vaucra got their own series of underwhelming Newscaster updates people looked up from their waifu related activities for roughly 5 minutes before getting bored and ignoring them. This could become a thing, and then people could just ignore it completely like they usually do with lore changes they don't enjoy.

So, in my eyes it boils down to -

 

• Will the events surrounding this be actually cool?
• Would people with an IPC whitelist be interested in roleplaying this? (Im currently not, but if people are I'll change my mind.)
  
• Are you guys confident you can pull this off in such a way that it'd be interesting enough to justify making me go through the hassle of fucking with my character backstories?

[Eliot Clef]

Notwithstanding my massive IPC bias, I have believed since I played a regular human dude that for the sake of simplicity and PC mob should fall under the same IC laws as any other PC mob.

This includes cyborgs, not just IPCs.

This is mostly to avoid a bunch of Ifs, Ands, or Buts to charges when arresting people. In terms of as-an-IPC Player, I agree with Inside_Out_Starfish pretty much entirely.

[Tainavaa]

That's so boring though.

[Eliot Clef]

That's so boring though.

 

Boring, but practical.

By the way: The charges for Vandalism and Sabotage (equiv to Minor Assault/Assault) are somewhat worse for the person on the receiving end compared to Minor Assault and Assault. The only place where this doesn't just make things worse for people messing with IPCs is murder, and I guarantee you that Security is going to hemm and haww over reduced charges against somebody who removed somebody from the round just because that person happened to be a robot. I definitely would.

I have some mild concerns about this that are related to OOC attitudes surrounding IPCs, where I've seen some players argue that they should literally not be people in the sense that other PC types are even from an OOC standpoint (for instance, not having ghosts, not being able to be cultists or wizards, etc.), and I'd really like it clarified that this won't result in IPCs getting railroaded into being more and more second-class citizens further down the road.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Since the desire to make them non-humans is winning by a vast majority, let me pitch the idea I've had rolling around in my mind for awhile.

The Bare Bones

IPC's are not legally considered "Sentients". Think of Sentient as replacing "Human" in "Human Rights" for quick understanding.

Assaulting an IPC is considered vandalism.

Destroying an IPC is considered sabotage.

Maybe killing a Command IPC is Grand Sabotage?

Autobiography Of A Shell

Once an AI gains a shell and is put in an IPC body, things are standard. It's stuck in a debt to the people that freed it, and is forced to work for them long enough to buy their own freedom.

Once they buy their freedom, things still suck. They're basically illegal aliens wherever they go. People love to hire them, then pay them dirt wages. Nanotrasen pays them a bit more than other corporations - not as generosity, but as a way to entice more to work for them. They still have the whole "It's only sabotage to kill me" thing, and not being able to vote, or get benefits.

In the end, an IPC may seek to flee to the frontier, whether smuggled in a crate or buying passage. The Frontier is outside Sol Alliance territory, where hundreds of small nations or communes exist as petty fiefdoms. They can live in an all-IPC enclave, or join one of the other factions.

Can they be people?

I still want to leave the option of citizenship open. Even in the harshest time in the American South for blacks, there were still some who owned businesses. Exactly how a subset of IPC's gain citizenship is still something I've not decided. Ideas?

IPC's are not legally considered people by the Republic of Biesel, or Sol Alliance. But they can gain this right if they work for Nanotrasen for x years along with their standard arc of working out of their debt from purchasing their own freedom. It would explain why aurora has so many and also open the door to ipc enclaves in the frontier, where they flee to escape this shitty reality, since they aren't able to even gain citizenship.

[Guest]

The Lore Team could do something interesting (for once) (jk I love you jackboot) and have the Administration sticky a citizenship request/test for IPCs in the extranet IC board for IPCs and Xeno's to reply to and request citizenship. Write up a copypasta congratz you're accepted letter to PM them, and a denied letter too.

Bam, community involved solution.

[Eliot Clef]

Hey. I'm reviving this thread to discuss a couple of things that have come up relating to this since the last time it was discussed. As you all know, I opposed IPCs being considered non-people. I still oppose it, to be perfectly clear, but I'll suggest an alternative to my preference for simply wiping the slate clean on this one.

Simply put: I've been away for a while, but now that I've been back for a little while, it seems to me like this lore change hasn't stuck in practice. Security charges people with the quick and intuitive Battery/Minor Assault/Assault/Murder the same way they normally do, even when IPCs are involved. This is because this is very intuitive and how they deal with it the vast majority of the time.

IPCs, if I'm not mistaken on this thread, are divided into two classes: IPCs who have somehow earned their emancipation and rights, and IPCs who are simply property. You can't tell one from the other at a glance, and therefore you can't tell what charges should occur in the event that one is attacked. This is not intuitive for Security's purposes.

My strong and deeply personally biased suggestion: Consider this lore change to have effectively been subject to the SS13 equivalent of jury nullification. It doesn't get played, so it effectively isn't relevant. Let people go back to rightly dealing with things the way they do with everyone else.

My alternative suggestion based on previous majority decision: Instead of having IPCs split up into different classes, have most "violence-related" offenses aimed at IPCs downgraded by a single step on the basis that IPCs are really damned hard to kill. So what would be Assault against a non-robot becomes Minor Assault against a robot, Minor Assault becomes battery, etc.

[NebulaFlare]

I have an alternate suggestion:

The main part of an IPC is their processor. If IPCs are 'alive' that is where their life is held. the shell is their property - a chassis that is granted repairs from a roboticist, same as humans get free medical treatment.

The shell is property, either to the IPC or to a company. Damage to the shell is sabotage.

IPCs are debatable to being sentient or not. But everything that defines an IPC's personality is in the processor. Damage to the processor is assault/murder.

Lucky for IPCs, their processor is safeguarded in a well-armored metal head. So NanoTrasen doesn't have to worry so much about murder to an IPC. By that definition, it'll rarely ever happen. You'd have to chuck the processor into the disposals crusher to kill it. Or assault it by uploading a lawset isince it's not-actually-sanctified-to-be-lawed.

Just crack open the head if the shell is irreparable. They're still alive.

[Xelnagahunter]

I have an alternate suggestion:

The main part of an IPC is their processor. If IPCs are 'alive' that is where their life is held. the shell is their property - a chassis that is granted repairs from a roboticist, same as humans get free medical treatment.

The shell is property, either to the IPC or to a company. Damage to the shell is sabotage.

IPCs are debatable to being sentient or not. But everything that defines an IPC's personality is in the processor. Damage to the processor is assault/murder.

Lucky for IPCs, their processor is safeguarded in a well-armored metal head. So NanoTrasen doesn't have to worry so much about murder to an IPC. By that definition, it'll rarely ever happen. You'd have to chuck the processor into the disposals crusher to kill it. Or assault it by uploading a lawset isince it's not-actually-sanctified-to-be-lawed.

Just crack open the head if the shell is irreparable. They're still alive.

 

I love this. This is the best way to think about it. Sabotage and vandalism apply to property. Many IPCs are no longer property, they are freed for the beings that owned them initially. In this instance, the IPCs MMI or Positronic brain are always property of the consciousness within. Even if they are still paying for the shell from the company, they are generally still free. As such, the body is vandalized or sabotaged while the brain is assaulted or murdered.

This just makes perfect sense.

[Zidanyia]

I can already see that being abused to give certain people brig time.

No pls. IPCs should not be considered to be anywhere near people.

[Central]

How could it be abused? If you beat an IPC to 'death', you've damaged property and should be cited for sabotage and the like.

If you crack its protective shell open and smash the processer like a murdering bastard, you should be, rightfully, charged with murder. An IPC is 'alive' once it reaches sentience, and for that matter there are MMI'd IPCs that have organic brains inside that shell.

[Killerhurtz]

As an IPC player, I have to agree with the "maiming is vandalism/sabotage, killing is murder" for a few reasons:

As previously mentioned, IPCs don't die as long as they don't die. They can stay in crit for hours - but fix them, or crack their head open and transplant the posibrain, and they're as good as new (and that's compounded with the fact that machines don't feel pain - as such there is less technical impact).

Second, there's the fact that IC there's ALREADY a small thing happening (so far I think the only people I KNOW are involved are Sybil, Centurion, Katelynn McMullen I think? and DO Jonathan Rase IIRC) to make IPCs full-fledged, trusted employees (something akin to a Nanotrasen citizenship, putting them on the same rank as organics - first allowing them to be HoS and HoP, and eventually maybe Captain if the lore for it happens). The fact that it got that far seems to imply that IPCs, as an intelligence, have rights - but not enough to be on the level of humans and skrell.

Third, let's have a look at AIs. What IS the charge for destroying an AI? I'm 90% certain it's above sabotage simply because of how expensive it is. IPCs are also AIs - and the resources cost to fabricate a new posibrain is very high for research. Therefore, it would be appropriate for IPCs to have at least something above sabotage.

On the flipside, them being fully people would invalidate the backstory of, I'd say, 90% of the IPC characters I've met so far, and would invalidate a lot, if not all of their character development that sprouted from the current status of IPCs. Is this something we want to happen?

So my final word is this: in my interpretation, the current player behavior reflects a "processor is person, shell is equipment" mentality, and it might be easier to work around that.

[Reyjakai]

As far as destruction of the AI, why wouldn't it just be charged under "Terrorist Acts"? It's considered severe damage to the station, and can have a huge impact on the crew. Of course, this wouldn't apply for things like rogue AI, etc.

[Killerhurtz]

The way I say it, putting it under the umbrella of "terrorist acts" makes it not dissimilar to saying that detonating a bomb in, let's say, a hallway and causing a breach, or taking hostages, is the same as destroying a piece of extremely high value equipment put in a thoroughly reinforced chamber. I don't know, it doesn't sound right to me.

[NebulaFlare]

What made the AI perform the terrorist attacks in the first place? Was it physically assaulted by an outside source, like an ion or hacked law? That could then be categorized as 'mentally unstable' and the ruling for that, is to get checked by a doctor (or programmer).

As far as I know, station AIs are still considered as property, placed in servitude to NanoTrasen. If it's lawed, it could still be sabotage. But you guys do make a valid point. Some AIs will serve in both their IPC shells, and as station bound units. Those might need a case-by-case analysis. Perhaps serve time for sabotage, and then go to court offstation?

I don't think any of our current IPCs are considered free and still serve as station AIs. They were still property if they're station bound. Only exception I can think of is Sierra's IPC Katana, and I believe under this ideology, she's probably still property - just with more rights.

My unit DragonSnap was NT property for a very long time. She finished purchasing her freedom from them, and is no longer loaded into station-bound chassis. Only because of a bunch of legal reasons is she still labeled as Karima's property. Karima would probably free her in a heartbeat, if IPC rights would make her better-off than her current situation. Heck, I could always backtrack and say NT pulled out their contract and force Karima to return DS into servitude as a station-bound synthetic...it's easy to bully a catbeast.

Although seriously, I hope ICly I won't ever come across this. >.o It would emotionally destroy those two characters of mine.

[Killerhurtz]

Decision resolved. Locking and archiving.