Toward A Framework of SL Political Science

All government is an attempt by a group of people to organise in order to achieve a common goal.

That government should be limited to what is necessary in order to achieve that common goal.

Government should never exist for government's sake.

In Real Life, government's goals include the protection of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, food, land, resources, property, etcetera. All these goals are in fact handled either by a computerised accounting system or are irrelevant (Yes, I am sure there are counterexamples. I'd like a formal list but I'm not putting it in this post) to Second Life - no-one farms nor grows food nor consumes food; No-one's life is endangered; No-one can be prised from land that they lease directly from LL.

From my experience, self-government in Second Life is based on cooperative agreements. People want to cooperate in order to achieve a specific goal. What happens, and who does one turn to, when one party or both fails to hold up their end of the bargain?

Well, one could turn to United States law. This is problematic. Contracts may have been informal. People value their anonymity and given various jurisdictions' varying codes, the use of unregistered-with-US-or-state-government pseudonyms may invalidate or preclude contract enforcement under US Law.

We have three (possibly more) actions that I see as possible to be used in self-government strictly within the scope of Second Life.

The first is social inclusion. Group(s) may exclude individuals. Mute, exclusion from group membership, even to sales scripts excluding selling to (a) group(s) or (an) individual(s) - scripted objects checking avatar name against a database and refusing to operate for given avatars.

The second is reputation. This is less useful, as it often turns into a popularity contest and invites gossip, etcetera. Plus it is hard to formalise.

The third is access control to certain areas. Land bans, group access, etcetera.

All three of these are tied, eventually, to the given avatar in question - avatars which can in fact be abandoned, alternate avatars used if a given real person wants to circumvent an attempt at a government enforcement of exclusion - unless all avatars are excluded by default (such as land pass sales).

There's also the fact that (at least in my experience) most people don't understand that government is a necessary evil and should be limited in scope to what is necessary - that most people don't understand what the social contract is and what the balance of rights is - most people do not understand how law works - and most people are ultimately concerned with their neighbor building malls/casinos/cardboard castles/the proverbial hot pink house - driving down their 'property value' - and with dealing with 'griefers'.

The problem with 'ugly houses' and 'griefers' is that complete and simple definitions of either that all (a significant portion) of any populace can agree upon - nigh on impossible and subjective to each person's aesthetics.

I'm sure that planned communities address the 'ugly house' problem, since what someone does on/with their own property - as long as it doesn't violate LLToS for PG sims, or for mature sims, or US Law (hate speech, inciting to crime, violating copyright/trademark law, stalking/harassing under US law's definition) - is their own business and if one disagrees with having X for a neighbor, one can always have bought out the neighbor or can move.

And, I'm sure that LL would like to be rid of having to handle 'griefer' complaints.

So, I think that the first thing to do is agree on a set of standards for what a wide-scale government in SL ought to address.

I open the bid with "define Griefer", in a more or less universal fashion, and in such a way that it doesn't subject itself to personal aesthetics (16m^2 billboards decrying RL government policies =/= griefing. Casino neighbor =/= griefing. Push script "gun" installation targeting people on one's land from the neighboring land = griefing, regardless of the involvement of neighboring land.)

The ways I can think of to enforce a 'punishment' for griefers? Have a group - "GrieferFree" or something - and get everyone who has a stake in business or civil enjoyment of second life join it, have their vendors check for inclusion in group before selling, land access restricted to that group ... create a class of recognised law-abiding citizens. Get everyone to agree to the group. Create and publish a set of criteria for griefing, a method for determining if someone is griefing, appeals process, lengths of punishments for various offences, oversight, etcetera.

And don't forget that government isn't fun - and those who govern shouldn't do so for power, nor influence, nor money.

More thoughts later.

The first two are basically the same they're both based on social reaction. The third isn't really something you can enforce unless you own the land (ie you cant force someone to make their land accessable only to a group).

Still I find this to be an interesting topic and you sound like you've put a lot of thought into thinking outside of the square for solutions. So here's my take

In the past I've always found it easier to class actions for SL self-government as the following:

Social
Economical
Geographical

In your discussion you mention the problem of griefers. I see two solutions to this, one social and one geographical.

Social Solution: Griefers
Why not create a central database of griefers/undesirables and people who seek to destroy the entertainment of others? I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to script up server/client sides for the database. The database would be accessed by admitted members of the group. The administrators of the database could be decided upon by merit or popularity, and I say administrators in plural because with these kinds of things it's generally a bad idea to rely on one person to do all the work of keeping it together. Not only because it can lead to bias, but also because as the group grows the workload will become too demanding for just one person to want to bother with all the time. Users could submit entries to the administrators, which are then reviewed and entered into the database for later referral.

Putting this into context of SL, it's like being able to share your notes on an avatar with a number of other people.

All it would require is a scripted object to be given to each member of the group, using this object each user would connect back to the central server to send/receive data. Data could be sent in a number of ways, my current preference being notes.

What exactly is done with this information would be up to the individual, the most popular responses would probably be muting and banning.


Geographical Solution: Griefers

Start with the land first, and then bring in the neighbours. Instead of putting land up for sale to just anyone, get to know the avatar you're selling the land to. Explain that the sale of the land is conditional to compliance with regional standards. Make these standards enticing by having a plot of land that acts as a hub, accessible only by group members. Within this land you could put anything you wanted to support the strength of the group. Essentially the avatar would not just be buying land, they would be buying access to the group as well.

If avatars then decide they don't like the people around them, have the group buy the land back at an agreed price. So long as the price is agreeable, and an argument has been averted (this isn't a hard thing to do), most avatars will gladly move out by this method instead of opting to sell their land to a total random at an undeterminable time in the future. In this manner the process of breaking away from the group is quick and agreeable.


In Conclusion...

Griefers are a small minority that seek to affect the majority, but in order to avoid them in the future you must avoid them in the present. When setting up a governed region, be selective about the avatars you allow to participate in your state. Make sure your state is enjoyable, and appreciates the voice of all members of the region. If fights break out, resolve them with maturity and rationality.

After all, despite how different everyone on SL is, they're all there for a common reason: for entertainment, something enjoyable to spend their free time on.

Boiled down to pure essence most US law states siimply, do no harm. In other words a rational adult has the right to do pretty much what they want as long as they do not harm the people around them or infringe upon the perogatives of the government.

In keeping with this idea zoning is another way of insuring that the actions of an individual do not infringe upon the expected rights of other individuals or the community as a whole.

I think it's pretty safe to say that the US legal system couldn't ever be effective on SL. Aside from the fact that a very significiant population of SL users are non-american, the US legal system is just way too messed up and doesn't even work in RL.

Falling back on something you're familiar with isn't really going to help you in cyber governance. The environmental conditions are just waaaay too different, and RL legal systems don't rely purely upon a set of tennants that state "do" and "do not"... All legal systems are complex structures that rely upon many conditions that SL simply cannot provide due to the very nature of the game engine and lack of political institution.

Besides, I think the original post was about US Contract Law being used to regulate agreements between users upon which governence could be enforced. Even if it doesn't fall under international law - which starts to become too expensive to bother with if there is ever a dispute - it is ineffective in that it requires users to disclose their personal information to one another, which is just never going to happen.

The first one won't work for the same reason Anti-Virus solutions don't work - it's reactive instead of proactive. Instead, I envision a set of N groups which are for people who abide civilly, and everyone gets in them by default. That way there's not another database, but just membership or non-membership in a group in an existing (LL group) database. Administrators would be necessary, with simple guidelines that they can all agree upon and follow.

The second - well, I would want to think myself about it more. It's good locally, but seems to be similar to Communism in that I don't imagine it would scale up well. Local administrators each interpreting things differently, etc. That may not actually be the case but I will think about it more.

The problem with zoning is that it is normally a response to the hotpinkhouse syndrome - it is a method of enforcing community aesthetic standards at the expense of individual's rights due to the notion that a community has eminent domain - even if an individual owns the property, the community can force the sale or use of the land due to eminent domain.

The only Eminent Domain rights in SL lie with Linden Labs, and they've made it clear that they have a very restricted amount of criteria that must be met (involving complying with US copyright & other laws, or mere failure to pay) before they invoke their eminent domain, and none of those criteria involve aesthetics.

One has the right to seek refuge from being offended. While in public, one does not have the right to not be offended. One may remove offensive things from one's own land but not from public nor from others' private land (unless a real law is being broken).

Part of the Linden Labs terms of service is that:

"The rights and obligations of the parties under this Agreement shall not be governed by the U.N. Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods; rather such rights and obligations shall be governed by and construed under the laws of the State of California, including its Uniform Commercial Code, without reference to conflict of laws principles."

So the way /I/ read that, is that I'm a party, you're a party, we're all parties and that any rights we undertake or obligations we make while abiding by the ToS and accessing the SL service - are regulated by the laws of the State of California. That may not be what was /intended/ but it could be interpreted that way. It also has language to the effect that anyone accessing the service from outside the US is on their own and solely responsible for ensuring that they comply with their own laws.

I'm personally torn between (and I need to chart it all out to help with this) whether contracts made/executed within SL are ultimately enforceable under the laws of California, and whether a contract with an international user is even enforceable at all by appealing to external legal systems (California, US, international) due to the language of the ToS and the generally high threshold of pursuing a case via the [edit] external legal systems.

Which is why I think hard about whether there are ultimately tools/rights/forces solely within Second Life upon which some form of government can be based.

Well lets see government in SL cant work for a few reasons. One a resident run government would just be a popularity contest for the most part. Two it requires laws to be in place which ultimately SL does not have much of any to that extent just what the linden can enforce and what we ourselves are able to enforce on our land. To Penny, the first idea could work to a varying degree. Its unlike the banning due to the Payment Info thing and is alot less discriminatory towards those that just simply dont have payment info on file and arnt greifers. The second part there however is a bit off base with how things are normally reacted simply because you dont like the set group or what they are doing, I mean its one thing if you own the sim and are renting it out etc but to do it in other cases is quite uncalled for really.

Now to Galen Zoning in SL is potentially bad if it isnt resident run. Quite simply we are free to do what we want with the land we buy and most people that rent out sims or bits of sims that they own have their own methods of some type of zoning regulations. However to do zoning in every sim simply slows things down. Businesses then have to find a commercial zone and all other types of BS when simply they just want to open a shop or something but cant cuz its a residential zone. There is alot of scripts that are simply laggy. The current Virtual Machine used to run the scripts is much slower and when things are switched to mono in the future it should relieve some of the script based lag.

We have resident run government: http://neufreistadt.info. We are a haven of freedom, justice and democracy on the grid. Our legal system has enforcable laws interpreted by a judiciary, democratically passed by an elected representative assembly, and executed by an administrative branch. We have a constitution which has survived the passing of its founders.

You can enforce by banning/ostracism and reputation, but you can better enforce by forfeiture of land and escrowed $L. Losing land/$L is effectively loss of hard RL currency and is therefore alt proof.

I suspect that others may not view your constitution as having survived the actions of some officers, said actions having caused the founders to leave. That goes to reputation. I've read your constitution but I don't favour it.

Forfeiture of land requires oversight to ensure that the land is forfeited only when necessary. Same with escrowed land. It also requires those in office to plainly and properly interpret the described law and to realise when there is a vagary in the described law, and undertake a process to clarify the vagary - objectively. The failure point in both situations lies with the people who execute the offices, or - as may be the case as far as I am concerned - fail to properly and objectively execute their offices.

Add /into/ that mixture the fact that oftentimes dealing properly/sanely/objectively in politics in SL also involves having a thorough and working understanding of the applicable United States law (which anyone who has a large enough stake and does not agree with the decision of an office - /will/ appeal to) - and it's a recipe for disaster and stress for those who undertake filling an office of arbitration or enforcement in an in-game government.

No, this is simply wrong. There is a reason we have the world's highest prison population, and it has much to do with our considerable collection of victimless crimes, including the various laws against narcotics (some of which are proven considerably less harmful in any conceivable way than others that are legal), laws against prostitution (which basically amounts to telling people that they have limited say in how they may use their own bodies), "decency" laws, and laws against gambling.

I don't mean to sidetrack the discussion (too much), but I felt I couldn't simply leave this alone, either.

As for govenment, I favor a benevolant dictatorship. As in, "My sim/land, my rules."

Any attempt at government is very likely going to quickly dissolve into a popularity contest, and any attempt at true democracy is probably going to be laughable in SL for precisely the same reason that it's laughable in real life: mob rule is a hopeless way to govern anything.

Personally, I wonder why there's the feeling that any resident-run "government" is needed at all. I haven't noticed any major problems caused by the lack, and the only in-game simulated government I'm aware of seems to generate more problems for itself than it solves.

Edit: Also, Finning, how do you find that these are separate things?



Do those all not ultimately become used based on reputation? How are the first and third points in any way ultimately extricated from the second?

I agree with Finning Widget for the most part, but would like too add my own observations on Governments in general. As too how useful they maybe in creating a structured system in Second Life, is to be determined by others, but I believe they may be of use...

Well, here they are:

Governments exsist to serve the People, and protect the People, be it from outside hostilities or the People themselves.

The best way too insure that the People are served and protected by (and from) their Government is to compose the Government of the People.

This doesn't mean land owners or buisness owners specificly, but a diverse selection of representives from various standpoints and backgrounds, and hopefuly this will prevent some abuse.

But Governments, being Human Instituitions, are prone too corruption, abuse, and other negative actions, and so it is by the People having Ultimate power over their Government through envolvement, vigilance and care, that a good Government can be formed and mantained.


Again, these are observations on Governments in general (specificly FL), but I think it is always useful to Keep in mind these things when dealing with any large group of people.

As far as a Government in SL, I believe imposition on individual freedoms should be avoided where possible, and that any large scale governing body be used more like a court system, for ending disputes and deciding when one's free actions are an imposition on the freedoms and enjoyment of another player.

Of course, this then demands that specific, but adaptable, definitions of things like griefers be agreed upon, not too mention choosing who is suitable for positions of this magnitude.

Now, I'll shut up.

But what are you actually saying? "The government exists to serve the people" sounds to me like so much rhetoric. No, the government exists to serve the interests of those in power, of those who control it. Those may even be truly benevolant interests in some instances, although of course they frequently are not.

You talk about having representatives from diverse backgrounds, but who chooses which representatives, and how? How can you be sure they're really there to represent anyone but themselves, especially if they own SL businesses or (cough, cough) accept "donations" from people who do? If there's an election system, how can anyone be certain it's at all honest, and even if said system is kept totally transparent, how do you prevent the whole thing from dissolving into a game of popularity and favoritism, where pretty words and being well-liked mean more than having real ideas?

Edit: That is to say, if a real "government" somehow were formed and managed to become powerful enough to have real, measureable impact within SL, tell me why I'd need look to further than to whom Anshe Chung decided to give "gifts"?

You can't be "certain" of anything but death, especially when dealing with people.
How a Government, and if a Government will be chosen, is up to the People, not me.
You can't trust anyone in a position of power to not be interested in themselves.
One way we could try and control self interest is to set clear limits on power, and make it a no frills job.
But yes, that would likely lead to a much higher level of corruption.

What I mean is that those are things that all Governments should remember.
As too if they will, I doubt it, but hope for it.
There are only varying degrees of unpleasentness, no perfect solution with Governments.

And a Government is what the people will allow.
If the People will allow a Dictatorship, there will be one.
If the People allow an Theocracy, there will be one.
You see, for all the talk of power, a Govement is nothing without the People, since it stands on them.

Anyway, in the end what I advocate is more of a Court System, and less of a Government.
But I doubt a SL Government of any sort will be formed yet, or perhaps ever.

The people aren't that difficult to control.

"If there is hope, it lies with the proles ..."

Sure, if they ever began to have the slightest notion of what's really going on. Luckily, information control nips that in the bud nicely. Just look at America today!

... oh, didn't you know? Well, there you go, then.

I'm not sure whether that has anything to do with the concept of a government in SL, but then again, I haven't yet been convinced in the slightest by anyone that a government, or an attempt at one, in SL would be at all useful. To what end?

This thread kinda reminds me of the opening scenes in Jerry McGuire. You know, where Tom Cruise's character spends a drunken weekend outlining what's wrong with the world and how it should be fixed? And makes a hundred and ten copies of his essay and distributes them to colleagues, and then "wakes up" and realizes what he's done....

This thread kinda reminds me of the opening scenes from Jerry McGuire. You know, where Tom Cruise's character spends a drunken weekend composing a touchy-feely essay on what's wrong with the world and how it should be fixed? And then makes a hundred and ten copies of his gospel and distributes them to colleagues.... And then "wakes up" and realizes what he's done.

Well what can I say?
I was told once that I was the Last Idealist.
I sure hope to God that isn't true.

Aren't there sims for this sort of thing?

As a Political Science major, I am very interested in the virtual workings of political SL. I have only been here a few days but have tried to explore quite a bit, and was taken aback by some of the islands that are "themed." It was also interesting to see the dynamic between "griefers" and private security. Currently there is no balance. Some guy was able to come up to me and trap me unwillingly in a cage. One runway had a sandbox area where I tried out some of the free vehicles and apparently the security didn't like that and they used some sort of weapon to kick me out. The weird thing is that they didn't bother to tell me anything, what I was doing wrong. Which meant I would be likely to come back and do it again. What is needed is a good defensive weapon that is free for all, give us all guns to defend ourselves. Another option would be to expand LL security forces. Obviously they probably have more important things to do than patrol, but some sort of volunteer resident program besides just landowners could fill the void of lawlessness.

Perhaps a simple weapon that tags a person as a "griefer" that would accumulate. After a certain number of hits they would be banned or something.

There can be no world-wide government with a society as fractured as SL. Only the landowners (LL) can really decide what will go on.

Of course this entire community will someday disappear because it is not built to withstand the collapse of LL. SL has tons of potential, but until the thing can become more like the real web where anybody can host a space, and in SL's case, an island, you won't be able to have a real "metaverse" kind of environment.

While this thread is an intriguing thought experiement, the reality is very straightforward.

In the future there will be PD/GPL versions of sim engines and clients. These tools will be used to create content rich environments much like SL. Ultimately the entity that owns the server and pays for the hosting determines the laws, and enforces them, within the limits of RL law.

I see nothing in SL that would change the exsisting model. Griefing a user ultimately griefs the hosting entity and they can choose to act or not to protect "their" community.

That LL presents itself (currently) as a very liberal dictator is irrelevant. They own the resources and can do what they wish with them. Anyone here been active at Tribe.net?

There was a huge hew and cry when they changed their community standards to reign in potential breaches of federal pornography statutes, and other content related abuses.

LL may be headed for such changes. I can think of several community standards in SL that could be inviolation of state and federal law. It's only a matter of time before a DA, or a AG decides to take a crack at "cleaning up the internet" and uses LL as a test case.

In washington state accessing virtual gambling sites is a crime. Making virtual gambling available to residence of the state is crime... This is true in other states... So far no one has taken these laws into court...

Will the state of Washington see SL $L as tokenized currency and hold the Lindens responsible for hosting illegal gambling, or will the creators/owners of the objects that implement the games, be held accountable for makeing and selling unlicensed gambling devices? How many of these implementations are legally flawed, or deliberatly fraudulent/rigged? There is no oversight that I can see...


SL community standards are very broad, and diverse, and though I do see some attempts to limit access to consenting adults, are these enough to keep LL out of trouble...

OK... having said that....

I think inclusion in a group that monitors adherance to community standards is a good idea, but it it's only as effective as LL allows it to be. If exclusion from the group
means that one cannot trade with members of the group, then essentially, a black-market is created, and these avis will have little respect for the "in" majority. Only the Lindens can control this, and from what I am reading here, they don't have any intention of doing so beyond fixing land transfer glitches, exploits, and trying to curb rampant griefing.

Fraud, advertising standards, and zoning are clearly out of scope for them at the moment.

I think the ability to "tag" a griefer is a good idea. Once a comic suggested such a system for monitoring traffic.
Some of my friends and I kind of expanded on the idea... Give every licensed driver a spring-dart gun and three suction-cup darts/month, coded with a coded version of their DLN. Drivers can then report a violation by "tagging" the car with a dart.

If a cop sees a car with three or more darts hanging from it, they are obligated to ticket the driver for creating a public nuisance, as the public voted with their darts. The darts could be coded to indicate, for police records who had complained, for possible followups... or sanctions for abusing their reporting privileges...

A similar system kind already has hooks in SL. The abuse report, but it requires too much effort on both sides to support. The "tagging" simplifies the process, and makes it clear who is complaining about who, and what without a lot of verbage. Objects could be tagged as well.

This way the community decides what is acceptable and what isn't by voting. People that try to abuse tagging just get filtered out as noise.

Heaven help the avi who abuses their "Tags" and then runs afoul of a griefer.

=B-)

It occurs to me after seeing some rather spectacular drama in other online forums (unrelated to SL) that the huge increase in population of net enabled people has created some misunderstandings.

One I see a lot: Just because subscription to a forum is free does not mean that 1st amendemnt rights prevail. The server and it's content are private property and the owner or owner's agents have editorial control... period!

This seems to escape a lot of nOObs who errorniously to think their 1st amendment right is protected on privately owned resources.

A responsible moderator will try to adhere to a liberal standard, but they are trying to generate traffic, or maintain a community service, and it's their service...


=B-)

Quote: "In the future there will be PD/GPL versions of sim engines and clients. "

I am have no idea what that means.

Anyways I think Metaforest is pretty much right. I was just kind of thinking out loud, and the only real law is the that of who ultimately owns the server, LL. I too was surprised by the gambling and pornography, but I don't think there will be any legal action because there are so many other places on the web that are much more flagrant violators and have a lot more traffic and visibility. Of course if SL gets to be really big, then a lot more is possible.

In the end the only ones who have control of SL are the Lindens, and because they are the ones with the power if there is an issue, it is to only them you can raise it with.

The problem is everyone has the ability to control what they want to do in SL, but has virtually no say in what others do. If you want proof of why an anarchist society would not work, I am sure a serious study of anti-social behaviors in SL would prove an interesting case.

So if I decide to grief you by making three different (free account) alts and tagging you three different times, you won't object when you get a suspension?

What if I get some friends to do it too, and together we tag you around 30 or 40 total (unjustified) times, and you get permabanned? That's accepable, right?