Fair Play: Stop the Sectarians

Something like this happens on the mainland -- your property next to it is utterly devalued. What can you do? Nothing. Sell out, wait, or fume in silence. Where is the justice? Nowhere...unless you have a strong neighbourhood association of owners who band together and do several things: a) buy out those cheaper parcels that are within reason in price to prevent further blight; b) politely but firmly ask those who are trying to deface and devalue an entire sim to sell out at a reasonable price; c) boycott the products and services of those who chose to invade, deface, and devalue a neighbourhood in this way so selfishly by selling ad space on 16m2 at outrageous rates. Lindens can't help; only human solidarity can help; and only a rational plan for local governance and local justice. The market is free; here are the results, unless people begin to exact some civic responsibility to go alone with the licentious freedoms.

Just a quick post to alert the public to yet another attempt by the Bavarian cream puffs to create some sectarian system and appeal to the Lindens to change what they do. Go here and read Redaktisto's article that asks the question "Who Best to Settle Resident Disputes?" willy-nilly with the answer: "Gwyn Llewelyn and her proxies at Frieswiththat because they've been cooking up elaborate systems for 3 years and are the experts." Well, not why I have any breath left in my tiny avatar body : )

Scary stuff, when Lindens are going to re-do the abuse-reporting and policing and governance systems! And why-are-we-not-surprised that the smug and pompous Hiro Pendragon also feels he now pwns this system by magnanimously reporting on what was a secret meeting with developers, though Philip said there could be no signing of an NDA (Philip, go one better, and make these meetings public -- and have more of them -- please).

I've learned a few basic things already about Hiro's pompous postings.

A Linden has explained to me that these are their proposals, not yet set in stone, and they will not be ready for use for another 6-12 months. This developers' meeting was originally supposed to be about customer service, I guess, but ended up being about governance, since we, ah, have so many "competent tekkie wikinistas" who are only-to-eager to tool-and-die our governance systems for us, and thus pwn them.

Of course, I don't buy that -- time and again, we see Lindens float something precisely at the moment when they are not seeking actual input, but only trying to soften up the public for inevitable implementation. Sure, it might be tweaked a bit here and there, but basically, we'll be seeing the Lindens implement a Ban-Link mass-ban system and the other things they talk about. Fortunately, I've gotten the word that they ARE thinking about an appeals system, but clearly they do NOT want Linden Lab itself to be getting much, if any of these appeals. They want a resident justice system. The question is whether they will pick their own pets or let residents themselves duke it out with competing services by creating tools any can use, and any can opt in or out of. I hope the latter.

The Feature Voting Tools are not a good example of this, however, being as how you can't vote "no" on them, and Angel Fluffy took them over. They are going to put up new software soon, they say, that will make this "better". Um, yeah, I can't wait!

I also learned that yes, the police blotter WILL indeed be redone -- and not just the section of the Second Opinion called "police blotter" that now has been whitewashed into a name like "civic center," -- the police blotter with the list of abuses. Very few actual cases get there, so it is changing -- and I don't get the impression changing in any direction we've discussed, i.e. publicizing the names of all those party to the conflict and offense found. We are likely to see less, not more cases. We can only hope it has memory and searchability.

One good aspect of all of this is that I confirmed, with Lindens, that unlike some Linden liaisions' notions of what is right, it is NOT repeat NOT against the TOS to publish a chatlog OUTSIDE of the world of SL and its forums because LL simply does not claim jurisdiction over third-party sites. And that is how it should be. That means we still have hope of trying to war against these sectarian takeovers by exposing their true nature as they espouse various philosophies in public meetings or in IM debates.

So while Hiro has published a set of things discussed in his secret meeting with Lindens, there is still a chance to have some affect on it. Daniel Linden will be convening more meetings about this in early 2007. It's depressing to think about, of course, since it is really all pre-cooked, but as always, we have a chance at least to make them feel some accountability -- if not outright shame -- for once again cooking with their close cronies.

What the Lindens aren't interested in -- it's clear -- is various grad-school-like attempts to take all this RL justice and legal power in SL now and have people craft elaborate systems as if you were designing, say, a new Constitutional justice system for Kyrgyzstan. They are only interested in the most dumbed down, tool-based system of bans and mutes. It's a frontier justice in which the government is merely issuing everyone a pair of pistols and everyone a county jail. Then they are on their own. They are not creating elaborate court systems with segregated witnesses, cross-examination, the law of discovery SERVER side where it counts, adversarial defense, appeals, etc. etc. Nothing of the kind. This *is* Kyrgyzstan, but without the high-priced fancy Western advisors and liberal intellectual class devoted to human rights.

That's why sitting around in meetings and arguing whether there should be common law or civil law or what weight precedents will have in this system is likely time wasted -- unless you are planning roll-play on your own sim. What's going to happen, like always does happen in SL is that Lord of the Flies will win: some sort of resident disputes system will get started, in which the Lindens will either pick by actual picking, or pick by leaving Nature to take its course and reward the strongest and most organized sectarians, some sort of courts with judges (this, in a system with no separation of powers!!!). They'll likely enable sim owners and continent owners more to the point to be the biggest winners -- because their notion of justice is land-tool based.

I think we need to lobby for a set of abuses that we'd want only them to handle, after local remedy is exhausted, because only they will have the information and only they will have the non-sectarian impartiality we hope for (weak as it is).

These cases would include: hate actions like anti-gay or racist speech and attacks; disclosure of first-life information; persistent and non-land-based sexual harassment (IM'ing on alts, coming back on alts to harass in a home, etc.); returning persistent and systematic griefers on alts; etc.

What we can't expect of them is a system to handle copyright theft or fraud. This will have to be taken on by residents, and it will NOT be pretty. Get early and often to any meeting about any Better Business Bureau which will likely feature Not So Terrific Businesses Trying to Put Competitors Out of Business.

So I plan to revive the group we used to run called Fair Play -- for the history, and agenda, and topics for work, go here -- and I'll be updating soon. I head a lot of interesting ideas in the last two meetings we had in Sutherland Dam -- but the usual problem of people trying to substitute the busy-ness of making a wiki, a domain, a website, or a new group for the hard slog of actually crafting a workable agenda and plan of action. I think we need a very short lobbying list. Job One: insist that Lindens do not repeat DO NOT name by name any resident judge or resident court system or bless any mediators system by name, like the resmods. N.O. Non passarant.

Job Two: craft a reasoanble dispute system on those areas that are in our domain that is simple, workable, and not too complexified by RL considerations, and insensitive to SL realities. We only have banning and muting as tools for punishment -- so these have to be amplified by naming and shaming police blotters we make on our own. I'm all for creating a resident-run police blotter that has an integral part of it an appeals process in the public eye for anyone who has been mass-banned in ways they feel are unfair.

Job Three: make a list of what areas we want the Lindens to be sure to keep control over so that these areas don't become the provenance of sectarian fucktards.

Justice is not cheap; it needs lots of time or money or both. Don't let that make justice become something for the rich and strong and connected in Second Life, just as in First Life.

Comments

[Cocoanut Koala]

"Job One: insist that Lindens do not repeat DO NOT name by name any resident judge or resident court system or bless any mediators system by name, like the resmods. N.O. Non passarant."

I'm with you on that. The idea that other residents, named by Lindens, Linden favorites, whatever - will be able to take my things away, or the things of any other resident - their land, their money, their goods - is just a freakin trip back to cave days.

We KNOW how much some people are salivating at the bit to take other people's things away. They have said so, and often, on various forums.

And worse, that they feel this is right.

Who wants that? I don't know.

But then, who wants Advertising World, either? By the time all this comes to pass SL may be nothing but a sort of fancy book of corporate ads that people sometimes come in and look at, then go off someplace else to actually do something fun.

coco

[Prokofy Neva]

Well, it's a balance, Cocoanut. Absolutely.

and of course what people like Ashcroft will tell you is, oh, but we're not here to take your land away. Nonono. we're here to place an effective system in which if you opt-in, you can get justice and then we only take your land away if you are bad. ETc.

Ashcroft will keep jumping up and down, saying we are making a caricature of his position.

Meanwhile the Lindens won't actually be so gross to appoint him as judge of all the lands. Instead, they'll do the usual stuff:

o hold special meetings just with him, as they hold special meetings just with Hiro

o have him -- like Lordfly or Catherine Omega -- or his equivalent -- come to the SL Views to REALLY discuss how "we" are going to make the "community" justice system

o feature him in Second Opinion

o have press conferences or interviews in which they'll say, "Oh, we're turning over power to residents now, and fortunately we have these nice young men like Ashcroft who have Done it All for You! Take it away, Ashcroft!"

In their hatred and their zeal to stop Prokofy from doing this -- these people always think it is my goal to "take over" which is why I bitch about others taking over, they're not going to get what is at stake: freedom.

[Prokofy Neva]

Frankly, the governance issue is just as important -- arguably MORE important -- than the Lindens' initial emulation of IP rights by telling residents they could keep IP -- and then undoing this quite a bit later by not ensuring copyright and playing indifferent to CopyBot.

In the same way, they will be lauded by the supine media, first and second, old and new, for supposedly granting avatars "their rights" and giving them "self-management".

This will look a lot like Tito's "self-management" system given to "workers' unions" (anybody out there remember THAT?)

It will look like Putin's "managed democracy" (and Russians in SL now who can speak to how THAT is really like?)

It will look a lot like "the Democrats" in the U.S. who "look like" a real opposition to Bush -- but argghgh just wait until you see some of the stuff they cook up. Etc.

So... it's argubly more important to be fighting hard for this to turn out more free, with better checks and balances, but it will have far less interest for residents than IP that brings them money because it will involve them SPENDING time and money, not MAKING it.

The Lindens will shrug and give the franchise to whoever shows up.

[Ashcroft Burnham]

Thank you for the free publicity for my study group, Prokofy! An entire 'blog entry: I'm honoured!

Incidentally, you wrote, "The question is whether they will pick their own pets or let residents themselves duke it out with competing services by creating tools any can use, and any can opt in or out of. I hope the latter."

You may be interested to know that the Local Government Study Group exists to promote (and very strongly) precisely that latter option, to promote, in effect, a market in governments.

You also wrote:

"Ashcroft will keep jumping up and down, saying we are making a caricature of his position.

Meanwhile the Lindens won't actually be so gross to appoint him as judge of all the lands. Instead, they'll do the usual stuff:

o hold special meetings just with him, as they hold special meetings just with Hiro

o have him -- like Lordfly or Catherine Omega -- or his equivalent -- come to the SL Views to REALLY discuss how "we" are going to make the "community" justice system

o feature him in Second Opinion

o have press conferences or interviews in which they'll say, "Oh, we're turning over power to residents now, and fortunately we have these nice young men like Ashcroft who have Done it All for You! Take it away, Ashcroft!""

I might ask why you dress me in borrow'd (judicial) robes - my plan was just to set up a group to persuade LL to implement *sophisticated* government tools (that allow things like courts and judges and cross-examination and appeals - you know, all those things that you like), and hope that LL will take the bait. I shall now know, from the self-proclaimed expert on how LL works himself, what I am to expect if my ideas are to take off. Very useful tips - thank you :-D

[Ashcroft Burnham]

Incidentally, thank you for putting me onto that Hiro fellow - looks like he could be a useful and productive member of the Local Government Study Group, so I've invited him.

I'm still impressed - I form a group, and, less than a week later, I feature in your 'blog. I am honoured to be among your foremost antagonists. I look forward to working with you further in the future in the capacity of arch nemesis (although the competition for that post is, I understand, really quite stiff).

[Cristiano Midnight]

Back off, Ashcroft, there are plenty of Prokofy antagonists with far more seniority than you working toward the arch-nemesis goal.

[Prokofy Neva]

Ashcroft, there's only one thing to be done in your group: create at least 5-6 officers, so that you are not the sole officer, and so that you do not have the sole authority to expel others, and so that there are some kind of grownups looking after this group, too, along with you.

That's all.

Anything else will be superfluous and instantly discredited.

And Ashcroft, as I've explained, you're merely a Gwyn-proxy, not any kind of nemesis on the premises.

>- my plan was just to set up a group to persuade LL to implement *sophisticated* government tools

"just" and "set up" and "persuade". But...who the fuck are you, Ashcroft? I mean, seriously. Just *who the fuck are you*? You are nobody. You're not even Nobody. You're just some kid in the UK with a lot of aggressive hormones and a lot of spare time, that's all.

We don't need *you* to establish what is needed for the Lindens to code to your pleasure.

Honestly, it has no credibility. If I did something like this single-handed, everyone would scream "foul".

Any effort at "study" or "making recommendations" or "persuading the Lindens" has to be a democratic effort open to any of good faith, interested in make a system that can work for all.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

There is no fair way to implement any sort of "resident-run legal system" without having a democratic form of resident participation established under the framework of something akin to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I'm afraid that I don't believe that Linden Lab is indeed thinking about implementing something like that. There are no cases in history where there was any chance of a legal system to be fair, impartial, neutral, and accessible, outside of a democratic framework. While that democratic framework does not automatically imply the existence of a fair system, it's a precondition. You simply can't have fairness of legal procedures under an autocracy, no matter how well intended those might be.

Linden Lab at this juncture has thus two options. One is simply to establish an unfair, partial, biased, crippled system, under the current model of Second Life, where authority is derived from Linden Lab only. That system will never be fair nor impartial, but it could obviously "work" in the sense that LL will not need to handle petty, local cases.

The other option, which is the much more reasonable one, is to make a case for "local justice". This means indeed better local tools for "applying justice" — and, in turn, encourage local communities to use those tools to enforce things locally.

I can't foresee LL to do anything else but this latter approach. Ashcroft's role is not really being "an antagonist" or "LL's advisor for setting up legal systems in SL". Rather, he's lobbying for something completely different, and quite more effective: better tools for government.

Those would *optionally* be used by whatever community would like to use them — locally. Prokofy, I don't understand why you're so opposed to the Local Government Study Group, or any similar group. Notice their name — *Local* Government, not *Global* Government.

You have been very loudly arguing for ages now about the plague of people deliberately stalking and griefing you and your tenants. I can't imagine why you would dislike having better tools to deal with those cases. Imagine that you'd be able to ban whole *groups* of people from your land. Or that you could ban users by IP address or Ethernet (MAC) address. Or that you could have a switch that would disallow some people (or groups of people) to enter the same sim where your tenants are — create a magic radius around yourself, your tenants, and the land used by them, that would simply be impassable by any griefer.

Locally, at Ravenglass Rentals and elsewhere, you'd act as Chief Justice of your "domain" — mainland or private island being irrelevant. Tenants could send abuse reports to you, and the result would be that you could simply ban these people out of your rental business, as well as anyone they'd be associated with. Sure, some would still create alts, log in from different computers and/or locations, and still be able to grief your tenants. But now imagine you could delegate the role of "policemen" to a small group of your most trustful tenants, who would be able to flag specific people as being banned in your domains. That way, you wouldn't need to be awake 24 hours a day to take care of law and order in your land — you'd delegate that power only to people you'd trust.

In effect, you'd have your own Abuse Report system, your own legal system, and an effective way to deal with all of those things.

What does Linden Lab benefit from it? Well, in your community, the number of Abuse Reports sent to LL would be rather low. Probably a few would complain about unfair treatment. But these would be mostly irrelevant — you would state very clearly the rules (simple or complex ones, whatever you fancy) for living in your domains, or even visiting them, and people would know what to expect if they'd break those rules.

And, of course, you would be able to publish the results of your decisions publicly. Not necessarily just on your own web site — but imagine that you'd have a mechanism to point people to an area where your rules and decisions are made public, and that these would be integrated in the SL user interface; perhaps a tab on the "About Land" dialogue box, or something like that. A history of "Local Abuse Reports" handled and what decision was taken to handle them, which could be viewed by anyone visiting your land.

That way, your tenants would gain confidence in you as a successful handler of local conflicts. They would be able to review your decisions. They would either agree or disagree with them — and eventually leave if they disagree too much — but that would be irrelevant: right now, you can even write down those rules, but these can't be efficiently *enforced*, and there is no way to track them down anyway.

The difference I see is that you'd prefer a global system, and thus are naturally afraid of having others making decisions that can affect you, and groups like the Local Government Study Group, who simply prefer a reinforcement of local authority — but without having an impact on whatever is beyond their jurisdiction.

Speaking strictly for myself, I've given up for long the notion that one day there could be a democratic government and a single legal system across the whole of Second Life. That is, I'm afraid, an utopia. The inhabitants of Second Life are tired from democracy. They're disappointed with it. They want strong, charismatic, paternalistic figures that protect their interests — or plain and simply anarchy or libertarianism. They want to congregate and discuss things that affect us globally, only to the point of "having a say", but not more than that.

This is a self-inflicted utopia again. You cannot ensure fair participation of *everyone* unless the process is democratic — globally. The reverse is not true, of course — just because you have some democratic structures, it doesn't follow that all participation is fair. The same argument for a fair legal system apply once more again.

I thus think that *most* people in Second Life don't care either about democratic processes or about a fair legal system — and I can only look at the factual numbers: 2 million accounts preferring anarchy/libertarianism/autocracy, and 65 involved in democratic self-governance in Second Life. The numbers are more than clear. Nobody cares about a fair system for *all*. They just want their *own* system.

It demands quite a leap in changing your mindset to understand what the *purpose* of these democratic structures *are*. These days, people in the Western world are so used of living in a democracy, that they forget what their ultimate social contract *is*. They forfeit their stubborn right in "doing what they please" to compromise in "doing what pleases the large majority of people". A compromise means abandoning that stubborn attitude at looking at one's own navel and understanding that without a compromise, you cannot live peacefully with your neighbour — unless you do it by force.

Since force is not an option in Second Life, there is really not much to choose: either you compromise with others willingly, or you keep being stubborn and try to impose your will upon others by the strength of your argumentation. SL has an unusual amount of very intelligent people which are quite good at rhetorics. This means that if one refuses to learn the art of compromise, it'll just be a "bikini contest" — trying to persuade others by the strength of your argumentation. And eventually becoming very frustrated when you fail to reach an audience.

What happens in that case? Well, if it affects LL's policies, they'll obviously pick the choice they like best — and not necessarily the choice that might be best for the residents. After all, democratic procedures take a degree of *maturity* — and sincerely speaking from what I've observed in SL for the past 2 1/2 years, there is simply not enough maturity on that area. People understand well enough that they have "rights" (ie. the right not to be griefed, for instance). They understand that LL is the only entity that has the power of enforcing any rights you might have. And they also understand that this power cannot be placed in the hands on other people who don't have the maturity to deal with the responsability fairly and in an unbiased manner.

So what is the alternative? Again, better tools, but *local* application *only*. So residents' communities will compete — in a free market of organised communities, where anyone can opt-in or opt-out of them — for providing fairer systems on a local scale only. And let the residents decide what they feel more comfortable with — a paternalising system where you have to trust the autocrat to deal with justice fairly, or a democratic system where basically the citizens have a vote to change the rules regulating their own community. As it stands, right now, 2 million people prefer the first alternative, and just a few dozens prefer the second one.

Ashcroft, Hiro Pendragon is definitely a useful and productive member of any group that might be created in Second Life :) However, don't be too disappointed with Hiro — having his own company to manage, he's one of the busiest people in the world, and while he would very likely be a strong supporter of the Local Government Study Group, he might simply not have enough free time for it.

[Prokofy Neva]

Gwyn, if you don't think there isn't a fair way "except," then why have your proxy from FriesWithThat start a group with himself as the sole officer -- even Sudane, the titular owner of the sim, having only rank-and-file member status? These little details are so telling.

If Sudane decides she's tired of all of you, she can pull the plug on the whole thing. Not a good thing, surely, for democracy?

Oh, I disagree about Linden Lab. They have a track record of making their regents and quislings and seconds to be the people in charge. After all, at one point, a third of the staff were made up of residents! Talk about leveling people up to power! Is it more or less today, I wonder? Everything in the past track record suggests that they'll elevate this or that group *as they are already doing*.

Your first premise was correct; if they are the sole authority it will never be fair. But then to proceed to say, oh, but local justice to work is merely to think up an apartheid system with "home rule" in the bantustans. That's not really justice; it's merely doing the Lindens' dirty work for them.

All local politics instantly becomes global in SL when people aspire *to have at the tools*. And that's how Ashcroft showed his hand: he said, let's make a group with only me as an officer, and let's have me stock it with loyalists to persuade the Lindens to change the tools the way I like.

Having debated Ashcroft inworld; having sat through hours of him debating others; having read the thread on SL Home Page, I'm here to tell you that this is a very bad scenario. I don't trust Ashcroft as far as I can throw him.

Your ideas about Ravenglass Rentals are naive and simplistic. Each tenant has the power to ban/eject on his own. These are routine matters now in the new group tools -- things we fought for, for years. But having the right to ban people who bother you is nothing -- it's not enough to handle persistent, severe griefing. Certain kinds of griefing has to be handled by Lindens and that's exactly the charge that has to be identified and pushed back on them if they push it on us. Why? Because we don't have the server side information about people's accounts such as to stop their alts and their groups.

Your notions, like the Bolsheviks' guard at the parliament who said he was "tired" from the debates and went home -- ushering in the violent and bloody 1917 Revolution -- that people are "tired" of democracy (which actually consisted of fuck-you hedonism and Linden licentiousness on things like the Bush Guy, not real democracy) -- is your notion alone. Ask the people; don't tell them; they want a lot of say -- that's why they clamour by the THOUSANDS of entries on the blog.

Your homiletic notions of navel-gazing are delivered in the usual school-marm tone you deliver all your prognostications, Gwyn. But in fact, you cannot ask people to compromise unless you have LEGITIMATE leadership and the rule of law. You can't ask them to forego something and take something away from them in a world where ALREADY so many rights are taken. That's wrong, and injust.

Your concepts of "maturity" are also biased, self-serving, and sectarian. It implies that you can render a judgement on other people's sims and structures -- and you can't.

Indeed, that's what is so appalling about you and the whole FriesWithThat fandago: your appalling notion that you can make meta-analyses of the entire grid, then make meta-recipes for it and then scurry around saying it is just for your own sim. Meanwhile, um, "just for your own sim," always seems to require "persuading the Lindens to change the tools"...your way.

Busted.

You are tyrants. Under the guise of sounding rational and reasonable and murmuring as pets to your favourite Lindens, telling them what they already decided on their own five minutes before they publish it, you will try to get your way. No way!

If the organised community were really a fair market, one might draw some conclusions. But it can't be a free market of ideas for social organizing when one very powerful, connected, and feted group with the Lindens constant ear "persuades them to change the tools".

The first thing to change, before you have at changing the tools (!) is to change your own ambitious hearts. Make a group that is fair and has equal-rights owners in it of some reasonable number that serves as a check and balance on one person's seizure of power.

Hiro Pendragon is not a good recommendation for any sort of study group. He's one of the most pompous, arrogant and at time even thuggish persons in second life. He threatened to get me banned from Second Life itself merely because I questioned whether a prominent Linden alt should get to use "General" for advertising his own projects -- when others are moved or disciplined.

In fact, that Linden later publicized his connection to a prominent resident AND acknowledged that his ad didn't belong in general.

Proving once again that if we have to have someone govern us, give us the tyrannical Lindens rather than the tyrannical Hiro Pendragons -- at least they get paid for governing the world and are accountable in ways Hiro will never be. Life is about choices.

[Desmond Shang]

>>There is no fair way to implement any sort of "resident-run legal system" without having a democratic form of resident participation established under the framework of something akin to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Amen to that!

Bad enough that any outside party would ever be able to tell you what to do on your own little patch of land.

Even worse, if an outside party could tell you what to do on a dozen sims. Hence my deep concern.

I appreciate the fact that the service terms *do* tell us how to behave on our own land. However they largely parallel ideals that I value.

In a very weak, general way, the service terms *are* a sort of 'declaration of rights' even if not very clear as such.

* * * * *

I joined Ashcroft's group. My opposition to many of Ashcroft's ideas are likely well known by anyone who even skims a forum.

But the topic is a worthy one.

Two issues really grab me.

1) Legitimacy of courts - anyone's courts: should a resident ever be able to put another resident 'on trial'?

Consider the fact that recording chatlogs, then sharing them with other residents in-world without consent is against the service terms.

2) Mainland 'justice' as mentioned in the first post - the case of one person destroying the land value for all neighbours.

If even a 16m patch of mainland is left unpurchased, your sim can still be brought down to near uselessness by it. While we ultimately need social fixes, it sure wouldn't hurt to allocate excess scripts or avatar density by 'parcel size' in the meantime.

Desmond Shang

[Prokofy Neva]

Consider the fact that recording chatlogs, then sharing them with other residents in-world without consent is against the service terms.

Not to worry. They can be published outside of SL. LL will not overreach on this. I've confirmed it. They have no TOS to overreach and don't aspire to overreach, and they believe that Voice coming to SL will trump all this. I'm not at all sure of that people will text even with Voice and it can be taped.

I don't believe any court has any authority as a mere appendage to the executive power, without three real branches of government and checks and balances. It's a troika.

I believe they need to bill for CPU usage, not abstractly, like 2048 is always the same no matter what, but bill it like an electric meter for actual usage.

[Ashcroft Burnham]

"Hiro Pendragon is not a good recommendation for any sort of study group. He's one of the most pompous, arrogant and at time even thuggish persons in second life."

Well, takes one to know one, eh, Prok? ;-)

"Bad enough that any outside party would ever be able to tell you what to do on your own little patch of land.

Even worse, if an outside party could tell you what to do on a dozen sims. Hence my deep concern."

No need to be concerned, Desmond: the concept of local government that I have entails each sim owner deciding which, if any, government to be under. Thus, you could set up your own "Independent State of Caledon" government and be entirely autonomous (and not have to fiddle around with those little meters for land fees, either, but collect them automatically), and nobody could stop you.

The point, incidentally, is that it is not up to the Lindens (1) to render resident-to-resident justice on the grid, and (2) to decide what a fair way of rendering resident-to-resident justice is, and that, further (3), things will inevitably go horribly wrong if any one person or group attempts to do either of those two things for the whole of SecondLife. So, each resident should be free to set up a government, and each landowner should be free to decide to which, if any, government to belong. Each government could then decide whether, and if so, in what way, to co-operate with what other governments, including by treaty, commonwealth, confederation or federation.

The idea is for there to be a a *market* in governments so that residents can vote with their virtual feet in deciding what systems that they think are fair and effective. The authority for each government will stem from the simple proposition that any given landowner has the absolute right to (1) to decide who should come onto her or his land; (2) to decide how that should be decided; and (3) permanently or temporarily to delegate that right to an external organisation of her or his choice.

[Prokofy Neva]

(3) permanently or temporarily to delegate that right to an external organisation of her or his choice.

This is the part that covers the multitude of sins.

This is the part called "Ashcroft's Confabulation of Democratic Sims" which people cede their land to.

No thanks.

[Ashcroft Burnham]

"This is the part called "Ashcroft's Confabulation of Democratic Sims" which people cede their land to.

No thanks."

Well, you've won the paranoia prize again, two days in a row! Well done! "No thanks" will, of course, be an option for everyone. As will "form your own government and delegate the power to yourself".

Incidentally, on the topic of:

""just" and "set up" and "persuade". But...who the fuck are you, Ashcroft? I mean, seriously. Just *who the fuck are you*? You are nobody. You're not even Nobody. You're just some kid in the UK with a lot of aggressive hormones and a lot of spare time, that's all.

We don't need *you* to establish what is needed for the Lindens to code to your pleasure,"

surely even in Prokofy's Great Land of the Free and Home of the Paranoid, anybody can set up any group they like and talk about anything they like and try to persuade anyone they like of anything they like - or do we have to get a special permit from Chairman Prokofy first?

"And Ashcroft, as I've explained, you're merely a Gwyn-proxy, not any kind of nemesis on the premises."

Aww, and I was so looking forward to sitting in a high-backed chair, stroking a large Persian cat, and saying, "Ahh, Mr. Neva, do come in - I was expecting you".

[Tyken Hightower]

Konnichiwa, kids.

Never should people be allowed to form their own governments nor enforce their own rules beyond who can or can not enter their land or be a part of their groups. Why?

Do you want the average SL'er enforcing rules on you? Do you want masses of these people banding together to make one enormous (because it's easy and will surely happen) governing body, covering multitudes of locations, with jurisdiction over you?

Seriously, just the ability to make the rules, in a virtual world that naturally brings with it the problems of anonymity (and thus lack of ethical/moral responsibility to anything) among others, turns people into pricks. Absolute power (over a place of any size) corrupts absolutely. With a potential for connecting multiple governments, that makes it even worse.

The only way people can successfully keep coexisting, the only way that prevents one group from dominating another, is to have an outside, more naturally responsible (be it because of impartiality or ethical duty on the job, ie: Lindens) party bend all residents to a common will, a will that can be influenced by all said residents.

[Ashcroft Burnham]

"Never should people be allowed to form their own governments nor enforce their own rules beyond who can or can not enter their land or be a part of their groups."

I think that you'll find the idea is that people should be able to form their own governments precisely to enforce rules about who should be permitted to enter all that land whose owners have voluntarily allied it to that government.

[Check Out This Interesting Forum Post!]

http://forums.secondcitizen.com/showpost.php?p=118758&postcount=1

Gotta read it to believe it.

[Desmond Shang]

>>No need to be concerned, Desmond: the concept of local government that I have entails each sim owner deciding which, if any, government to be under.

This I'm not too worried about, but I do think a basic set of 'avatar rights' or some such would be the first step. In other words, what are the *limits* of sim governance.

What happens to the sim owner that bans people based on sexual orientation, for instance? Would such a thing be allowed to stand? I would certainly hope not, but such values are found on the world stage.

>>Do you want the average SL'er enforcing rules on you? Do you want masses of these people banding together to make one enormous (because it's easy and will surely happen) governing body, covering multitudes of locations, with jurisdiction over you?

Well said, Tyken.

Most sim owners aren't interested in justice; they are interested in creativity, making money, or just about anything other than spending time resolving other people's disputes. Except perhaps as a form of personal entertainment. I can easily see a 'choice of tyrannies or anarchy' forming even now.

Regarding trials: yes, I suppose out-of-grid chatlog postings can facilitate a trial.

Meaning: anyone with enough money on the grid can 'try' you in their 'court' and then limit your actions gridwide due to 'treaties'. Definitely something to be approached with caution.

Not that our current methods are much better now, because if Sudane said: "Hey Des, ban Scammer McFly, he's been a pest harrassing residents here for weeks" - I'd seriously consider it.

But at least it isn't a streamlined, automatic process yet, where say ticking off one tin-pot land baron somewhere will deny you access to half the grid.

Something to think about.

[Ashcroft Burnham]

Desmond, do you really think that the Lindens want the least to do with handling resident-to-resident grievances? Do you really think that it will be practical, if and when SL has not two, but twenty million users, for a bunch of Linden Lab employees to be able to deal with complaints along the lines of "The High Court of Gorea banned me after a trial that I think was unfair because they ignored Local Statute 4169, section 24 on the law of evidence, and held *this*, when, actually, they should have decided *this*, and here's a thirty page argument briefly outlining why I think they got it wrong"? They are software developers, not lawyers: from what I understand, they see SecondLife as a protocol for worlds, not a world in itself. Open-sourcing the grid would make it impossible for them to decide whom to ban. Who polices web forums - the people who write the forum software or the people who run each individual forum? In any event, I doubt that any system that relies on Linden Lab laboriously trying to work out what is and is not a fair system of government could ever work: do you really trust them to do that? Why not have a *market* in governments, and let the users decide?

In any event why do you think that you have the right to complain if somebody else bans you from *their own land*? If landowner X wants to let government Y decide who gets banned from landowner X's land, why do you claim that any of your rights are being infringed thereby? The reality is that none of us have any more right to be on somebody else's land than we have to post on somebody else's web forum, and there is no more reason for Linden Lab to deign to decide what rules for deciding who may go where are fair than PhBB or VBulletin should have a supreme court of forum bannings.

[Prokofy Neva]

>I think that you'll find the idea is that people should be able to form their own governments precisely to enforce rules about who should be permitted to enter all that land whose owners have voluntarily allied it to that government.

Oh, here indeed is the problem, and this is what is so subtly misleading and really ultimately fraudulent about what you are doing, Ashcroft.

Desmond is absolutely right that FIRST you need to devise the LIMITS on sim governance. What are the CONSTRAINTS on people who aspire to lord it over sims -- like yourself? Over people who fantasize about the "voluntary" accession of many other people to their fabulous kingdom -- *who don't themselves even own the sim they are living on*. Hello?

If one were an owner -- and not a tenant, as you are on Neufreistat -- one would think *one's own sim border* -- duh -- would be a really handy-dandy built-in limitation thoughtfully provided by the Lindens -- you can't set up ban lists on somebody else's property.

But that's going to be eroded soon. Of course the Lindens will be automatizing that sharing of banlists and that will make the effect of a few over the many even greater, with many concommitant mistakes.

You speak about this confabulation as if it is all opt-in and choice, and voluntary.

But as I've just pointed out, sharing of banlists isn't really so voluntary. The people wrongfully put on the first person's list now involuntarily get spread to 100 other sims with no recourse. And those people who spread them can't pick and chose -- they take the thing as a whole, good and bad. That's just to cite but one of many issues that occur in cross-sim "cooperation" which is more about the few having loads of influence over the many.

The confabulations that you concoct are going to have all sorts of elaborate shit in them. No doubt it will be just as elaborate, sectarian, and fraught with in-fighting as Neualtenberg itself has been. In fact, I guess I've never joined what was supposed to be a fascinating virtual experiment, or felt I could tell RL political scientists I know about it, because I'm embarrased by it. It's a sectarian hellhole filled with half-educated nutters. The persona of Ursula is a good example of how someone who is a mediocrity in RL can become an unparalleled horror in a virtual world not demanding any RL credentials or checks and balances.

I can just see a confederation created by 10 groups, for example. People will feel that they are all getting along and it's all good. But then it only takes one Ursula, or one sim owner who gets tired, like Sudane, and the entire thing is threatened. Coups, counter-coups, dramas -- and whoops, I lost my land AND my buildings.

Bitter experience in SL has taught me that unless I own the land, the view from it, and the buildings on it, I do not have a Second Life. Period. Full stop. No touchy-feely group-tools. No understandings and notecards. Ownership is 10/10ths of the law in SL. I have a whole lot of nothing otherwise. These brutal -- but necessary -- facts of ownership in SL trump even RL concepts, sadly (in RL, a squatter could squat on certain abandoned land in some states and be assigned ownership in time).

In RL, something like my father's company can lease a building they don't own on land they don't own for 50 years and never worry for a second that anything but a bank would take it away from them -- there is contract law, courts, a system -- the press if all else fails. RL has sudden and unfair seizures of property; they are nothing, nothing, NOTHING at all like SL, where at a whim, a builder can demolish and entire sim you spent months and hard-earned money working on.

Unfortunately, sim-ownership dictates the reality of law in virtuality, just like server ownership dictates the inherent unjustness of our system, and the inherent bantustan-like nature of our "self-governance".

Playing along with this vicious system is to institutionalize the server-side/client-side apartheid that game companies maintain without contest. Our rent -- our labour -- our world -- our imaginaton -- doesn't count in this scheme except as a PR come-on.

But if we are to play this bantustan or Tito's self-management role-play out, we need to make a basic list of restraints on sim owners and a basic list of issues we feel only LL could fairly and properly be adjudicating. They want as little as possible to do with any of it.

But I simply refuse to buy this bullshit about how "well they are software engineers, not babysitters or world managers".

Um, they created a world and they need to *take responsiblity for it*. These "only software managers" have entire departments now called "Community" and "Governance" so please -- spare me the bullshit about how they are "only software managers".

It now has 2 million signups and some 150,000 or so real people in it. That means its worldness and the need to manage it is now acute. Either they outsource it to some community management company or they take some care in turning over the reins to the residents in some rational way with due process that doesn't corrupt the entire process.

So at a minimum, we must agree that the Lindens must not name inworld stewards like resmods: no Linden-appointed governors, courts, judges, mediators; no explicit or implicit endorsement of any resident or group involved in self-governance. No celebrating of Neultenberg and Gor in Second Opinion and in gushy news press releases. Neutrality. They want "net neutrality" -- on this, too, they must be as neutral as distilled water.

NO RESIDENT GOVERNMENT means NO RESIDENT GOVERNMENT. That's what most people want. That's what they should get.

For me, any Neualtenberg or son-of-Neualtenberg is not the place from which any study of governance must be mounted. It's corrupted and tainted and a poisoned chalice. Some may wish to grasp this handful of nettles in the belief that people already spent all this time doing a government and talking about it endlessly. I would urge them to give it a pass. This is a group that began as hard-left socialists and now end with a right-wing conservative running the show -- typical of a lot of socialist situations, I might add, incapable of creating balance.

I could just as rightly insist that Ravenglass Rentals with its rule of law in notecards is a place to study governance -- but I don't inflict silly things like that on people.

The whole thing that needs "study" is the reality of what should be presented to the Lindens NOW before they are *done coding* (duh), not endless peering at highly flawed models made before their governance system was installed.

The Law Society got off to a very sectarian and biased start by studying Gor and studying Neualtenberg and populating the forums with gushing praise of these hugely, hugely dubious models for governance on the hard left and hard right.

What I'm hoping is that the now-inactive but still functioning SL Home Page could be the forums for discussing these issues. Why? Because the person running them isn't in any demonstrable interest group, and his waning interest in SL is in fact a plus in terms of serving as a neutral basis for a forum.

Ashcroft, your ridiculous infringement on the right of anyone to complain about unjust banning lets me know at a very early stage what a tyrant you are. You are absolutely ridiculous. People can and should contest unjust land bans as they contribute distinctly to ruiniing the enjoyment of Second Life. Some people are banned for completely stupid and specious reasons from entire continents and cannot enjoy any of their stores or concerts or even visit their friends who TP them to those continents. The idiocy abounds.

If the governance system will HINGE ON banning and muting then there must be recourse to UNBAN or else the essence of the punishment becomes a dictatorship.

>The reality is that none of us have any more right to be on somebody else's land than we have to post on somebody else's web forum

This is basically a flawed concept because we are not on a web forums; we're in an interactive 3-d social world with emulated property and a public commons. Your technical literalism in affirming the right of code-as-law here to on/off switch people's rights is HUGELY suspect. Of course people have a right to contest this, and often successfully overturn unfair bans through mediation or appeal. That alone lets us know you are utterly full of shit.

I move to have another discussion group created entirely if Ashcroft is not going to accept basic principles of avatars' rights other than some narrowly, technical code-as-law approach.

Seeing this group fill up with Kendra Bancroft, an Ursula-proxy and harridan all on her own, and Scout Detritus, the Griefer of Ravenglass, I can see it heading the way of Metaverse Justice Watch. Ho-hum.

[Ashcroft Burnham]

Ahh, so you think that the answer is for Linden Lab to get *more* involved in resident disputes, do you, and spend *more* time and money sorting out "Jonny Random Griefer called me names last Friday" and "He said he'd build me a house and he didn't!" issues from millions of users? Even though you don't trust them to spot justice at five paces? Well, good luck in persuading LL to do that.

Meanwhile, in the world of the sane, I hope to be developing ideas about tools that are designed to stop just the sort of problems (over-reliance on trust, the possibility of coups d'etat, destruction of buildings, etc.) that you are raving about.

[Prokofy Neva]

No, I think the answer is having some significant civic movements fight both the Lindens, who intrude too much AND more importantly, the aggressive tyrants who appear in our midst, and get both the submit to the rule of law.

I've outlined the areas that I think LL does need to maintain control over (and frankly they will anyway). I've called for a robust discussion on what restraints should be called for to put in place not only on residents themselves aspiring to power over others, but on Lindens themselves.

The first step in that movement was to get them to publish their ethics guidelines. Well, we got something vaguely approximating it -- it's honoured more in the breach sometimes, and enormous vagueness and wierdness still abounds around the whole resident2Linden issue.

That's right, caricature my position falsely, imagining that I'm interested in she-said/he-said disputes, which I'm never interested in. Those disputes are solved by the parties involved hired thugs, absent any sort of normal government and separation of powers and rule of law and normal court system, eh? And more to the point, they are solved by mute/ban/eject/no push/no object.
And coming soon: no-see-'ems.

I'm not raving about destruction of buildings and coup d'etats; I'm soberly recounting the history of Newoldhat that you can't seem to remember yourself. And you know what they say about those who refuse to study the past.

Nope, I'm the one who will be working in the sane groups with those who are determined to prevent people with overweening ambitions from taking over.

[Macphisto Angelus]

Just an FYI. Ashcroft came to sl-forums back in Sept talking about his views on SL politics.

You can see that discussion here:
http://sl-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=867&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Not a shameless plug, I just thought it may bring something to the present discussion.

[Prokofy Neva]

Yeah, I recall that. With typical *modest*, I might add, too, he wrote this astounding drivel:

"This morning, in a quaint little medeival Bavarian-themed island sim somewhere in the West of the grid, a group of people met to discuss, and then agreed upon, a proposal. It had been discussed and debated for the previous two months, and, although had caused some controversy, had garnered considerable support. It was a proposal which many hope will revolutionise parts of SecondLife, and bring law to a hitherto unruly world. The place was Neufreistadt (formally Neualtenburg), and the proposal was the creation of a professional judiciary, and, separately, a means of bringing that judiciary to the wider echalons of SecondLife"

Why do people think they can get away with this arrant drivel?

The "wider echalons of SecondLife" (sic2) are not in *need* of young Ashcroft's blatherings.

This stuff is really awful. The pomposity would be great for the theater. But this is our real-life second-life stuff he is trying to get his grimy paws on.

Please. Never, ever, buy this Bolshevik stuff out of Nberg that speaks of "socialism in one sim". They ALWAYS have aspirations to take over the grid, and they ALWAYS need to be strangled in their cradle, just like the RL Bolshevism should have been.

[Prokofy Neva]

BTW, in addition to the self-importance and bad spelling, I note that presumption that the rest of SL is "unruly". It's not. It's just not under HIS rule.