No laws, no lawyers please. They're obsolete. Lets just have trust networks.

Except for some things, like antitrust and crimes effect that effect the global commons (such as our good buddy impeach bush) I think we should not have contracts or lawyers in SecondLife.

What we need is superior trust network functionality.

I should be able to simply tell whether or not I trust someone or whether people I know trust someone.

Projects and investments should not be undertaken with people who are not trusted by a large group of diverse(!) people.

Simply relying on a contract is stupid - because contracts can be abused.

How can you contract to me that you're a smart guy? Sure, I can give you 50% of our company, but then what if you only do 1% of the work?


Besides, really, Contracts are mostly meangingless in the RW. Most real deals are done on a handshake with people who have a reputation for will to power .. getting things done and making things happen.

If you've ever been through the process of trying to get someone to pay on a RW contract, you'd realise, that it's more of a way to abuse people then it really is to get them to pay. There are 100s of stall tactics and ways of hiding capital in the RW from the courts. And, besides, suing based on contracts over long distances are near impossible.



Since we can put a very fine point on our trust networks, we can clarify exactly who is trustworthy and who is not, that should become our contract. If you abuse me, then I might take you off my trust list. Or, worse, I'll put you on a list which says I do not trust you.

When we go to buy things, it should be based on what our trust network recommends.

We shouldn't rely on things like getting our money back, but rather on the fact that 3 people we respect and admire thought the product was a good thing.

why do "we" need things like this anyway? trustworthly peoples in SL are well known.

more and more paper

Actually, there are a lot of very quiet trustworthy people who aren't very well known.

You shouldn't have to market yourself or take on visible projects in order to develop a reputation.

You should just have to be reliable and competent.

what should be in your eyes and what is are totally different concepts

I think we should just have big assed push guns.

"j00 skrewed me! " *kerblam!*

Hmm, so you're saying you should have to market yourself and take on visible projects?

Facilitating the reputation of quiet, competent people isn't something that should be?

disclaimer : there are many things you have stated that i have contention with .. most everything actually in some form or another



I agree with this, but I find it insane/nieve/utopian as a statement supporting ratings, ratings is what you are talking about, right? I find that trying to add metrics to these types of gray-touchy-feely things only creates more problems, and often is sold under the guise of helping the small guy to be known and become successful. Please explain how a quiet unknown person would be served in cases of wrong doings against them? Or how that system would serve the big roller that is given low ratings, simply because they were a big roller.. most everyone likes to see the giant fall. When there are disputes, ratings become simply a popularity (read as: marketing) contest/battle . My experience is that the quiet unknown person never wins popularity battles, which does not lend itself to justice... but maybe you aren't interested in justice as much as profiting from the 'ol '69'er land rush!?

Networking with other businesses already exists, and has for as long as there have been people doing business. There is no magic way of building a network without hard work and dedication, ratings I think is a way to try to build a network cheap; well, you will get what you pay for.

I believe that only with law/contracts can you hold people accountable for their actions. If you have only handshake *wink, wink* verbal agreements without a body of law the disputing parties simply balk at the terms which is word against word and then walk away since you can't do anything without investing lots of time and energy to discredit them, which they will do to you. this is simply not justice; which is the reason there is a need for law.

This isn't Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom, you know.

(I found that actually rather a scary concept. Imagine the ill-thought-out fickle opinions of thousands or millions of people on the internet determining not just whether you got flamed or not, but actually your direct material well-being. But then they did have free energy and immortality and all that.)

No, ratings do not work. For example, so what if you got -10000000 neg ratings. That's meaningless to me.

I'm talking about trust networks, similar to what you see with friendster.

The only way I"ll do serious business with you is if I trust you or someone I trust trusts you.

Or, conversely, if someone I trust thinks you're flakey I won't do business with you.

To err is human - to really screw everyone over requires a lawyer.

I'm glad I'm not the only one to see how badly lawyers and contracts have messed up RL, and not the only one to be eager to make sure they don't do the same to SL.



How exactly? If someone is determined to rip someone else off (as we've seen recently in these very forums) what makes you think they're going to submit to the authority or rulings of a panel of peers, or a kangaroo court, based on a notecard they've 'signed'? In a world where the only power that LL have over something as bad as griefing is IP banning I just can't see this working.

This isn't even to mention the kind of abuse that this is open to - and the morally wrong pronouncements of judgements that it would enable. Someone posting ugly billboards across SL (we know who I mean) may be a pain in the ass - and may infruriate many people with his 'business' practices - but that's the price you MUST pay for freedom and freedom of speech. His behaviour under a law/lawyer rule would have had him permabanned by now - a direct infringement of his freedoms - and the start of the deterioration of everyone else's. Not something I could ever agree to.

...and Utopian? Is there something wrong with wanting SL to be everything that the real world should have been and isn't?

Verbal contracts (usualy concluded with a handshake) are legaly binding. Contracts were created so that theives can be brought to justice. In the real world nothing is cash on delivery, everything has to be payed for in advance; this creates a situation where cash can be run off with. Saying that contracts aren't needed is a flawed argument.

That said, a trust network is a good idea. You could add user reviews to products listed in classifieds and the ability to filter and sort them by individuals you trusted. An average rating to go along with a product reviews.

The TOS and CS are a set of laws. Without them i could do all sorts of evil things. I won't post any lest someone actualy implement another of them. You advocate no laws in the thread head, so would it be alright if i violated copyright law? Outright steal your content.

About the user Impeach Bush, if he only put the signs on his own land and abides by sim zoning then he hasn't broken any rules to my knowledge. If this is the case then there is nothing you can do agaisnt the user. As a matter of fact, any hostile actions taken against him could be in violation of the CS and TOS (depending on the severity). You don't have to agree with him but you have to live with him. You can ban him from your lands but thats about it. You blaze of all people should agree with me on this, you spearhead radical unpopular topics; and i'm sure you wouldn't want to have to worry about being banned for doing so.

friendster.. you mean where the term "friend-whoring" was born? although, there is a system that is trying to work via business trust relationships, https://www.linkedin.com/ but I find it is a bit unworkable due to some of the reasons listed above .. but for me it really comes down to why do *you* trust someone?

is it based on deliveries? service? good business practice? ethics? open accounting? which weighs more in your judgment? do you have time to write this up about all the people you meet? do you have time to tell everyone you meet about the people you met? and update the profiles? and reupdate all the people you talked with before the udpate? and most profiles wouldn't say "they are ok"? and say you have all these profiles/ratings what about everyone else, how do they answer those questions? who says they use the same criteria (they could base their ratings on height!? which i would guess would not differ so much from other ratings, sure they would be wrong once in a while, but so what, considering they could say 'well, that is one out of 1000 ratings'.. what is the chance you would ever figure it out?)?


sable.. I don't think a collective utopia exists just simply because I don't think your and my definitions of utopia are the same therby making it impossible. I think protecting impartially the small and weak is important; popularity contests and beating war drums do not create justice which you can see in both SL and RL which is why I feel having some rule of law would be an appropriate way to stop it.

the only thing any society has to uphold law and order are the fact that most indivuals want to be a part of the society that their friends and family are. If they really don't, then they are removed in some way or another. So, if people break the 'law' sufficiently, then, I would say yes permaban them, freeze assets, sell their property, lock them in a public square for taunting... whatever is decided.

as for the individual you talk about, he would not be able to be permabanned unless his actions are breaking the law sufficiently to allow that. This is meant to protect your rights, everyones rights. So conversely, if someone doesn't like what he is doing, they can take it to an arbiter or something similar to find a solution; stopping all this incessant whining in a bid to create grass roots support from the king. No one i know of is saying the law should be created from some single point of power. I suggested in some other thread that the laws grow from a judicial process with juries. Now could it be corrupt? yes. Could it be giving incorrect judgements? yes. is that acceptable? NO. I think there are checks that could be put in place to curb much of that and with a system of law you could truly protect everyone.

The trouble with a system where users can write reviews other users creates a privacy issue. Would you really want someone posting a review saying you were bad/good in bed? And the funny noices you make while there?

Contracts have never screwed anybody. The people do that.

Contracts are not meaningless. RW business is not done with handshakes. It is done with contracts, lawyers, mediators, Letters of Credit, etc.

Trusting someone doesn't prevent them from screwing you, from misunderstandings gone awry, etc.

You should, however, be using the "trust network" concept prior to doing business with people anyway. It is not any kind of fail safe mechanism, it is just another tool.

lol

no & nope.

but.. I assume your questions were meant as fesicious as mine!? In case it wasn't clear my list of questions was only meant to point toward some of the inadequecies of trust networks ... in no way were they any kind of proposal.



gabe.. totally agree.

I do not want any other customer of Second Life having any say over what I do in Second Life. Lindens or no one for me. IF people want to become powerful, let them find some other game for that.

Contracts do not work in RL. Rather, they do not "force" anyone to do anything. What they do is serve as a record of agreement that people can look at.

I know lots of people who have contracts, but they have easily screwed over someone anyways.

Until you've actually been to court and tried to enforce a contract, you might want to reconsider your arguments.

Do you know how much it costs to actually enforce a contract? We're talking 10K USD plus, and that's only if it is clear cut. If it's not clear cut .. good luck! And if it is geographically distant (ie, over state lines)... wooh, double good luck!

If we're talking different countries, you simply can not enforce a contract.

No...any real business person will tell you that they do not trust because of contracts, but rather because of a handshake and someone's word.

What forces people to uphold their agreements is the risk to their reputation, not the danger of having to go to court.

I agree completely - another reason why the "this is what you agreed to, now abide by it or I hit you with a duly appointed and regulated #7 hitting stick" approach can never work in SL, and where a Trust Network can actually produce results.

Contracts and the associated law work either by threatening reputation (in the case of large organisations), or by threatening the reduction or removal of civil liberties (in the case of the small business or private individual). In SL the civil liberties argument carries no weight, rendering this half of the law model worthless*. A Trust Network plays directly to the reputation part of this, but works for everyone, not just large businesses.

I don't think anyone is advocating a direct ratings system (although similarities can always be drawn between the two) as we've seen how that has worked within SL in the past. Giving ratings for business practices should not be easy. I would propose a system similar to that outlined here under the title 'Network of Trust Model'. Carrot and stick then become an intrinsic part of the operational model, and can be left to self-regulate.

*There's a flavour of big wealthy businesses being able to avoid or manipulate the law, or survive law/contract enforcement more successfully than smaller business or private individuals here - but I think that's an argument for another thread.

EDIT: Damned shift-key type-os

Look around you. They already have, partly because of their networking with Lindens, partly for other reasons. The real question here is whether devices such as contracts and rules might bring down some sunshine on these activities, and regulate them when they become excessive.

To those posters who have urged reliance on a trust network: you've presented some fascinating theories. The test of a theory's value is how well it works to solve real world problems. Here's a hypothetical fact situation that Law Society has on its target list of practical challenges, to which I ask you to apply the trust network or other theory and come up with a possible solution.

Maxine is a highly skilled professional in her SL field who has developed many proprietary skills, textures, scripts and other tools to make custom designed items in her field (the field is not important ... might be custom houses, clothing or complex equipment). Her work has become so popular that she has more orders than she can fill without help.

Maxine wants to expand her market instead of just raising prices higher or turning away clients. She would like to train and use an apprentice, who would work very cheap for six months in return for being taught Maxine's trade secrets. After that, Maxine promises that she will bring the apprentice in as a partner and share the business profits with her. But the apprentice must promise unconditionally to not reveal Maxine's trade secrets with anyone or use them except in the course of Maxine's business.

In First Life, such promises are called Non Disclosure Agreements and Covenants Not to Compete and are generally enforceable when incident to an employment agreement or a sub-contracting agreement.

Willing Newbie comes to Maxine, asking to be her apprentice to improve Willing's skills. Maxine has Willing do some demonstration work, and it looks promising, so she wants to take Willing on as an apprentice, but wants that iron-bound commitment that Willing won't work for her for a month, learn most of Maxine's secrets, then disappear and reappear as another avatar and compete head-to-head with Maxine, using her trade secrets to serve Maxine's customer base.

Specifically, how would you use a trust network or other ideas discussed in this thread to protect Maxine? Assume that Willing Newbie is so new, no-one has a real sense of her trustworthiness, and assume that Willing could disappear and re-appear in the form of a new avatar.

And please, don't change the hypo by saying "Maxine should share her knowledge freely with all, not try to protect outdated things like trade secrets." Maxine is a capitalist. If she can't protect her trade secrets, she will keep them to herself, and there will be fewer goods and services in world as a result. Not to mention Willing won't learn them on any terms.

So, how would a trust network work to protect Maxine, exactly?

Frank, while I clearly see your point with regard to Maxine and trust networks, how then would any sort of contract protect Maxine?

The problem is identity.

Unless there is some confirmable RL identity, along with clearly associating any identity with specific SL names, it's easy to create a new SL character that is 'outside of the contract'.



I'm not trying to be contrary, except in a constructive way - but this 'identity crisis' severely limits everything.

What is trust, or a binding contract, when it is possible to instantly and completely transfer all funds and information to an anonymous character?




I face a similar (unrelated) problems - with regard to my antiques. How could I possibly prove that I haven't duplicated 100 antiques that I am discontinuing?

In that way, objects have a certain 'anonymity' too - and this anonymity and easy duplication place 'real limits', if you will, on the effectiveness of real life contracts and law.

I hope these comments are constructive, and the Law Society figures something out, because as a merchant I could benefit greatly from in-world contracts and confirmable object identity.

I can't even explain how flawed this all is.

A "real busines person" doesn't trust someone because of a handshake and someone's word. He also doesn't trust someone because of a contract.

Yes, a contract on paper doesn't show up at a delinquent account's door with a bat and "force" compliance.

Court fees and lawyers are expensive, but not as expensive as running a business based on handshakes and vague concepts of "trust".

Do you really think that big business gets done (both International and in the US) with handshakes and "trust"? This is so absurd as to be laughable. I must be the only one using lawyers and drawing up crap loads of paperwork. I'll have to tell the Executive Committee that we are wasting time and money and should work on our handshake techniques.

If the risk to reputation really worked, then the contract wouldn't be at issue anyway. The contract does not remove reputation risk. If somebody abuses a contractual loophole to "screw" someone else, they have not eliminated a smudge to their reputation by saying "the contract allowed me to act like an ass".

The use of lawyers and contracts also doesn't eliminate the need to know who you are doing business with and act accordingly.

I wish people would stop with the "I know lots of people" crap in their arguments.

Maybe I'm taking this wrong. In purely SL terms, neither contracts nor trust networks work to any satisfactory degree to protect SL investments.

The glamour of courtroom drama obscures the fact that the main value of contracts is in making sure that we are really agreeing to exactly the same thing before we get started. Laywers are good at asking the right questions (like, if we've agreed to work together for six months, what happens if we quit at five).

Lawyers do that sort of clarification of details ten times for every time they litigate.

Contracts in SL can be given some teeth, without having a court system in place, if both parties make a cash deposit up front with an escrow agent, who refunds it at the end of the contract period in accordance with the terms of the contract.

And a slightly off-topic rant: not only does "I will only submit to the Lindens" miss the point, it has only marginal credibility in the face of all of the complaints here about how ineptly they do their job. If whining is an acceptable substitute for getting what you want, you can do that about other residents just as easily as about the Lindens!

--Allie

Then your hypothetical and your organization and efforts are based on exclusionary principles and assumptions, and will not by definition cover all contingencies in Second Life. Not to mention you've cut off a fair number of "outside-the-box" solutions to the problem, based on mixed systems and assumptions.

That's too bad.