Dispute Resolution

Frank, I'm interested in your proposal, but you might want to clarify what you mean by '...their sim and its products and services...'? I've been doing full-sim reconstruction jobs lately, and the typical client wants me to build retail shop space to rent out and help pay for the tier costs of the private island. Almost every retailer or service provider who rents that commercial space is not a resident of the sim. Many designers have ten or twenty shops on various sims with a main store somewhere else. How does your proposal fit this typical situation?

Also, have you looked at Neualtenburg? You might get into some good discussions with that group. : )

Interesting thoughts and of course the way all RL societies have developed. But I suspect the general view amongst SL members/Lindens is away from such rule making. In fact emulating the way socities have civilised through the creation of laws may be missing the point of SL - if there is A POINT.

What would be far more interesting is to see whether higher standards of behaviour and trust develop naturally between members of the SL society without the need to create any law. In this way virtual worlds may be able to teach the real world a trick or two. Those lessons cannot be learnt if we enforce the imposition of laws. Who knows, maybe one day some body- the UN or WSIS - World Summit of the Internet Society - will co-ordinate a program to study why it is that virtual worlds , other than those themed on war, tend to generate reasonably peaceful co-existence within a context of encouraging private commercial enterprise. Or maybe they don't. I just noticed someone on SL selling a rocket launcher with warhead! What do people think?

Wotsthe, I agree that it would be sooo sweet if we just all got along.

Unfortunately, with 85,000 members and growing, there are always that few percent that don't get the word.

As you suggest, the vast majority of SL players are in it for fun, are nice people who cooperate and play fair.

In a very interesting article in her weblog, " Roots of Self-Organization Are Grafting in SL," (http://secondlife.game-host.org/article39visual1layout1.html) Gwyneth Llewelyn talked about the controversy over self-government in SL. Some think its necessary for them to accomplish their goals. Some think its a wicked thing and oppose it. In her essay, Gwyn suggests perhaps 90% are in the "nice" category, with 5% at either end, in the "gotta protect ourselves with private sim rules" category and 5% in the "strike down evil attempts to impose rules."

She recognizes the controversy and the basis for both positions. She comes down on the side of recognizing that self-organized entities with rules and enforcement procedures are a good thing, as long as they are consensual. In other words, as long as individuals decide to subject themselves to those rules and the enforcement sanctions voluntarily.

Keep in mind her article was written in June of 2005, and she noted that it was a time "As we slowly plod along towards 32,000 residents". Since then, the number of residents has tripled, and the rate of growth appears to be accelerating (as one would expect of a successful network benefiting from network effects).

Part of what the Law Society will be doing is studying various ways in which that self-organization has happened in SL, and what various cultural goals and norms those structures are trying to secure. We'll also try to eyeball how effective various methods have been, and the tools developed to implement them.

I suspect that dispute resolution methods will be included in some of those methods and self-governing communities. I'm sure how those DR methods work will be an interesting subject of study and discussion once the Law Society gets its Group Forum running and our Observers start bringing home notecards of rules and reports of discoveries from the wilds of SL.

In that discussion, there will always be room to consider ways to get that 5% to behave, so that dispute resolution may become unnecessary. So, pray for peace. In the meantime, I hope you don't mind if I keep my weapons clean?

Frank

Blowing up stuff is fun! A griefer group used to provide free entertainment for our Thinkers meetings by means of artillery barrages and similar pyrotechnics. I once put a buffalo on the official Thinkers soapbox, but it didn't have the same attention-getting panache. : ) Sometimes the sandboxes are full of crazy vehicles and buildings and people -- a great environment for prototyping. It's creative chaos -- just clowning around; nothing I'd categorize as a dispute.

Frank, would your idea for a voluntary Federation of Sims allow any creative chaos? You mention the benefit and attraction of well-ordered sims where the local patron makes the rules. I can't help but wonder if 'well-ordered' would discourage the strongly creative types as well as the scofflaws.... Perhaps it's possible to specify a set of rules that would simultaneously encourage creative productivity and discourage those who just want to wreck it for everybody else. An interesting challenge.

One point in your Federation of Sims suggestion might need clarification: '...proprietors of one or more of those city-states or villages (entire sims or functional equivalents) agreed to resolve disputes arising in connection with their sim and its products and services...' In my experience doing full-sim reconstruction jobs, clients want me to provide rentable commercial space to help offset the tier costs of the private island. With few exceptions the designers who rent those spaces are not residents of the sim, but have many stores on many sims, including a main store elsewhere. From what I've seen, this arrangement is typical.

What really needs doing in SL is for proprieters to refuse to rent to those who use exploits to get around the permissions system, those who violate copyright and those who abuse the intellectual property rights of creators. A certain well known texture provider who runs large stores has had her textures copied for resale in SL, garment and hair products are sometimes blatantly copied and free products are sometimes offered for sale despite the intention of the creator to make the item free for anyone in SL. This category of scofflaw is similar to cheat-hack users in combat games who use aim-bot to fire through walls or any other exploit that makes you feel the game is no longer worth playing. That texture provider told me she just feels like quitting.

Maybe I've strayed into Better Business Bureau territory, but this really is a case where we need to help our neighbors. The devs will always work at improving the safeguards in the permissions system, but the scofflaws will always work at finding a way around those improvements. It's a code wars situation like in many online games. Community sanctions will always be needed to bridge the gap when the tools are currently not doing the job.

Traxx, giving the size and diversity of interests in SL, I suspect there is zero chance of every sim owner joining a single "Federation of Sim" like that I hypothesized. I think there will always be a significant number of "Independents" adding a significant amount of creative chaos.

Many theories of evolution and economics include the idea that challenges, environmental threats, "Shumpterian destruction" and the like all enable and push systems and organisms toward change and growth that actually makes them stronger. One of the ways they adapt is through forming markets and "firms" (see Coase's Theory, for which he receive the Nobel Prize in 1991 - http://nobelprize.org/economics/laureates/1991/press.html ). And that we will always have some chaos (hmmm ... there may actually be a law of thermodynamics about that ... 'entropy'?)

I also suspect that there could emerge more than one federation of Sims, each with a different goal structure and pattern of culture and customs to enforce. We already see a broad divergence between Neualtenburger and the Gorean sims, a divergence unlikely to be bridged by a Federation. What if the Gorean sims formed a federation? Would it not have different rules and mores than a federation that Neualtenburger might join?

Who knows, we might even see cultural/economic/legal/military competitive struggles between a "Federation of Free Fun Sims," an "Alliance of Capitalist Sims," and a "Commune to Free The Metaverse From Crass Commercial Sims." Sort of like a struggle between RL superpowers and their allies.

Like in RL, those various "flavors" of allies might share Dispute Resolution resources, as well as other resources and have reciprocal enforcement agreements (like extradition treaties). Worth exploring and watching to see if it emerges as the SL population grows in size and diverse complexity.

Frank