IPM Female DP Owner's Guide

Note: This is a draft intended for circulation only among authorized IPM staff members.

Legal matters

Your android is your property. It's that simple.

Your obligations

According to the law in most jurisdictions, you are fully responsble for the actions of your android. Your responsibility is no less if the android acted without your orders; it is your obligation as an android owner to monitor and limit her actions as needed to ensure that they are consistent with your intentions and local law.

To help you, IPM has programmed her with a general understanding of the laws common to most communities. She is programmed never to break any law of which she is aware except at your order. Should you order her to do something which might break a law, she will inform you of the fact, and will refuse to carry out that action unless you explicitly confirm your desire for her to break the law. However, please note that she may not know all relevant laws. It is your responsibility to keep her informed of laws that may apply to her actions, or to otherwise keep her from violating them.

If you wish, you may override your android's restrictions against violating the law; however, should you do so, a permanent record of the override will be left in your android's memory.

Once you purchase an android, she belongs to you. IPM is no longer responsible for her behavior, and will bear no legal responsibility for any legal infraction or damage she may cause unless the android malfunctioned, behaving in a substantially different manner than is described in this manual and other accompanying material.

Your rights

By the same token, you may do with your android as you see fit. Although we tend to refer to androids as "he" and "she," they are machines, not people, and like any other machine, they are legally, morally, and physically the property of some person. They cannot own property themselves, nor have they any right to make demands on you or your property. Your android has no legal or moral rights of any kind. You need feel no obligation to accede to her desires, or to the desires she would feel were she human. Should you wish to, you may sell her, give her away, or destroy her. You may cause her to act in any manner you choose, regardless of her desires, or you may change her desires themselves.

You cannot set your android free. An android is property, just like a computer or a car, even if abandoned, and cannot own itself. An abandoned android may be salvaged by any claimant.