Bill 4-1 : Notary

Summary:

The city would purchase and install a Notary system and install it at the Rathaus. The city would have the deeds of all current citizens notarizedusing the system.


Text:

The city shall purchase a notary system similar to that found on Democracy Island.

The city shall have notarized, at city expense, all Neualtenburg land deeds in existence as of February 15,2006.

We discussed this issue in the following thread:

/103/f9/64778/1.html (sorry, I offer this reference with some feeling of pain, since it vividly displays the atmosphere of discourse prior to the recent upheaval)

I wonder if we could list the pros and cons of establishing this system. To me, there are two very simple issues at work here.

1) The current system is not broken, has not been abused, so therefore why spend money to fix it?

2) The virtue of the system as proposed is not that we *need* it, but rather that it becomes the first building block in the role of NBurg as the guarantor of "last resort"... that the City be identified as an integrity "standard" and a place where contracts are enforceable.

If we place the notary project firmly into position in role number two, then I wholeheartedly support it.


Sudane

Gwyn has pointed out that our political and legal frameworks are probably our most unique feature and perhaps our most marketable asset. I certainly don't meant to suggest anything negative about the current system. My thought was that the notary is known around the grid, and would be a natural addition to our setup. In addition, it would allow us ,as Gwyn suggested, to offer outsiders the opportunity to notarize documents here and use the Nburg legal system as a dispute resolution framework.

I think for our deeds to be taken seriously and for the over arching goals of cooperative sims, the notary is both symbolic and a legal enhancement to the cities infrastructure. I whole heartedly support this.

I have to admit I'm not 100% clear on this issue at the moment.

On one side, the RA has approved a bill to use Zarf's Nota Bene notary on subsequent deeds (putting the costs of its use in the upfront payment that a citizen makes on their land deed purchase), and slowly "paying back" the conversion of the old deeds to the new system from the Treasury. This was something that was approved but never implemented.

Secondly, since that approval, Nota Bene has become de facto the "official" notary, since Zarf became an employee of Linden Lab. While this still means that all trust have to be deposited on the notary (the only person who would be able to forge signatures!), at least we know Nota Bene has "Linden approval". In a lawless world that has no authority beyond LL, this is the best a notary can expect to have.

Thirdly, Nota Bene is slowly creating a very positive reputation. The only thing that Zarf cannot provide is a legal framework to enforce the notarized agreements; but in Neualtenburg, we can! So it seems natural that the two come together at some point. I hope to be forgiven to quote Claude quoting me but it seems that having both — a Linden-supported project and a legal framework — will give us the opportunity to compete successfully (since the competition is virtually nil) in the market for legal services.

Fourthly, I find it interesting to use the notary as a "bridge" between two interesting projects: one addressing in-world democratic processes (Neualtenburg), the other addressing off-world ones (Democratic Island). Unlike what some have claimed in the past, both projects are actually completely different in purpose and scope; but you might have noticed that we have a "common ground" (and common members!). Nota Bene would, of course, reinforce that.

On the other hand, we don't really need the notary service. Nota Bene relies on proven technology and Linden endorsement to offer a service; we rely upon a legal framework instead. A semi-broken, 5-lines-of-code notary system is good enough for our purposes, and its cost is zero; admitedly, people who know how to hack the system are able to modify permissions (but they would be seriously breaching ToS and risking a permanent ban from Second Life), but, if we don't go to extremes, our system is good enough for our purposes. Like Sudane said, if it's not broken, why try to fix it?

Thus I'm a bit divided, but the truth is, the RA has approved the use of Nota Bene. I think we should go ahead then, and place a notary desk in Neualtenburg as approved!

That RA meeting transcript also briefly describes that the City should try out Nota Bene, and after evaluation, we may reconsider our position if it doesn't satisfy our requisites. But for now — we should get in touch with Zarf!

Well....there it is. Perhaps the oversight was not assigning someone to execute the contract with Zarf.

Given this bill's redundancy, I withdraw it.