One or two questions about N'berg legal proceedings

Hey all,

I'm not a member of the project, and have lately taken only a distant interest in SecondLife, but I find the recent blowup involving former citizen Ulrika Zugzwang to be quite interesting. I'm sure that you all would rather that I ask about artistic creations, project expansion or Bavarian architecture, but let's face it, publicity is what it is, so here goes:

As part of the fallout from the hearings, it was declared that Ulrika had the right to seek redress from a N'burg citizen for emotional distress/pain.

-Does N'burg enforce laws among its citizenry even when their actions impact on non-citizens?

-If a non-citizen can sue for redress/compensation from a citizen, how is such a trial managed? What if the citizen countersues? Does N'burg have the means to seek or extract redress from a non-citizen? Would each defendant have to put up a "bond", to be held in trust and returned to them if the case found in their favor (and be used for payment if not)?

-Would N'burg commence a trial against a non-citizen if a citizen issued a complaint against them? If so, would it proceed? Would N'burg refuse to try a non-citizen, or try them and issue a verdict with (possibly) no way to enforce it (unless that person later wanted to become a citizen)?

-If N'burg allows outsiders to sue citizens, but not the other way around, isn't that a rather one-sided way of doing business? Citizens are at-risk for their actions not only to other citizens (who also have a stake in the community) but also to people who have no vested interest in N'burg or any responsibility to follow the very laws that they might sue citizens for violating.

-If a N'burg citizen is considered legally (and perhaps financially) responsible for their actions towards non-citizens, how far does this responsibility extend? Would N'burg courts only hear cases which occurred inside N'burg domain (land parcels, N'burg website, group forums)? Related to N'burg but outside of the city-state domain? Completely unrelated to N'burg but within the confines of SL? Email flamewars? RL confrontations? If I were a N'burg citizen and grossly insulted the parentage of another non-citizen, say in the Sandbox sim (or forum), could I be held liable for my actions?

Ok, so there were more than one or two questions.

Here's one other thread of thought:

Is N'burg citizenship exclusive? May a N'burger retain citizenship in more than one city-state or SL governmental project? What if a N'burger joins a secondary community whose Founding Documents completely contradict N'burg principles? What if, for example, I became a N'burger and then joined a SL city-state whose founding documents required me to refute and ritually desecrate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

Brilliant questions. Thankfully I'm not a member of the SC, as I wouldn't have answers for any of them. Instead, I thought I'd interject my own experiences and add a couple of questions that expand upon yours, since I am the only individual tried (or mistried as the case may be) by the city.

This relates directly to my situation in that I am not a citizen but was put on trial. Drawing precedence from all modern democracies, due process is applied to both citizens and foreigners for proceedings in the state's domain. Indeed, there is authority for this concept in the city, as Article 6 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (recognized by the city) states, "everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law."

The problem is that N'burg denied (and still denies) me a trial by jury, which is guaranteed in the constitution (Article 3 Section 6). In its stead, several members of the SC held a meeting (that most thought was a fact-finding hearing) that returned a conviction and sentence. When it was pointed out that this was a violation of the constitution, the SC stated that the clause in the constitution does not apply to foreigners. This sets the precedent that foreigners can be punished by the state yet are denied due process by the state.

Also interesting to note is that there are no guidelines or standards for punishment for citizens or foreigners. In my case, the sentence which was returned was both extreme and unusual. It is extreme in that it is an indefinite ban on citizenship and unusual in that it's duration is based on the tenure of the judging official (the are elected for life).

To add to the confusion, as you have noted, they have offered me, a foreigner, the opportunity to sue another citizen in court, if I feel I have been wronged. What a contradictory mess!


I suspect that the unfortunate precedent, contradictory statements, and extreme sentence are the result of taking a hard-line with an individual they want to divorce from the project. The claim that foreigners are exempt from due process most likely emerged without much thought, in a quick attempt to deflect accusations that the SC conducted an illegal trial. Sadly, the situation remains unresolved, as members of the SC have refused to discuss the trial further and have encouraged silence in the forums among their ranks, as a defensive measure (the ostrich maneuver).

With this said, let me add my more specific questions to yours:

1. Given Article 3 Section 6 of the constitution and Article 6 of the UDHR, why are foreigners denied the right to a trial by jury?
   
2. If the SC is found to have violated C-3-6 and UDHR-6, will the SC follow through with trying the Dean for constitutional and human-rights violations?
   
3. If foreigners are denied the right of due process in criminal hearings, why are they allowed to sue for defamation?
   
4. If citizens and foreigners are convicted, what guidelines are there for sentencing and will the sentences be the same for both foreigners and citizens?
   
5. Will foreigners want to incorporate in N'burg's (a special city program) if they know they are denied due process by the city and there are no guidelines on sentencing?

~Ulrika~

Hi Ulrika,

Actually I disagree pretty heavily with a lot of your assertions. Granted, my opinions on the matter should be taken for what they are; as an outsider I'm relatively dispassionate and neutral on this whole situation but I've also not done more than read the relevant threads and the N'burg Constitution.

I disagree that it was a trial. We both agree that if it was a trial, it would have been mis-conducted as you were obviously not "judged" by a jury of your peers. I rather suspect that even if you had been given a trial, you'd be complaining about the definition of "peer" after the fact. Were they citizens or non? Did they contribute as much to the project as you? Were they your intellectual equal? Age? Sex? In what way were they your peers? I also think that it was a bad slip of logic for Gwyneth to try and argue the proceedings did involve a jury of peers; she should rather have pointed out rightly that it was not a trial, no jury was needed. Further, not being a citizen, there is no provision in the N'burg constitution for trying non-citizens and you have no right to a trial from them.

Other democracies aside, N'burg does not have a constitutional provision for trying foreigners. In other, real-world democracies, this is quite a bit more important: Foreigners tried in real-world courts are subject to imprisonment, loss of property, or loss of life. At a minimum, they can be subject to extreme financial/physical hardship if they are deported and have no means to travel to another more welcoming country, or to feed or shelter themself.

1. N'burg has no responsibility to follow the laws, constitutions and precedents of other countries. It does have a responsibility to follow its own constitution and founding documents, and interpret their intent when exploring new legal territory. If you wanted it to model itself on worldwide democratic precedent, you should have included a clause in the Constitution requiring the N'burg government to do so.

2. Since N'burg has no means to enforce imprisonment, "death sentences", penance or fines against foreigners, it seems sensible not to try them at all. The maximum penalty that they can enforce on you is banning you from the property (which they have not done), and this is hardly a hardship in your larger SL existence. You don't require food, water, shelter, finances in Secondlife, and you can easily fly or teleport to something else which interests you.

The administrative actions taken against you seem quite mild, Ulrika. I disagree that they are extreme for two reasons:

1. Your punishment might have been more severe, and easily so. You are not restricted from visiting the sim or participating in events there, and you are permitted to petition to have the remainder of your restrictions lifted after a maximum of 6 months (the term limit of the Dean). Since they did not enact the maximum punishment that they could on you, how is it extreme?

2. They followed their own precedents of administrative actions towards outsiders. You weren't the first person banned from the sim(however temporary your ban was), and you won't be the last. You were the first person to have so much of a to-do involved with your punishment, and I suspect that is a courtesy which was extended to you because of your previous positive history with N'burg. If you'd just been a random troublemaker, you'd have been banned without such a big fact-finding hearing. As it is, now you can roam the property at will, and may petition to have your citizenship sanctions lifted after 6 months.

I agree that the sentence was unusual, but we're talking about a virtual government with limited powers because they exist at the whim of a larger private government/entity. EVERYTHING about N'burg is unusual, and you're bound to love that in some areas and not like it one bit in others. I find interesting that you used the terms "extreme" and "unusual".... like "cruel and unusual". Yet you avoided use of the word cruel. Was that because even with your extensive abilities at debate, you still found "cruel" to be too much of a reach for how they treated you? Or were you hoping to avoid the term coming back to be levelled against you, with regards to how you silenced another person's post in the N'burg forum?

Honestly, did you want a trial from them? What if, in addition to any criminal trials, you were sued for financial damages for improperly silencing the voice of another citizen? How would N'burg collect from you? Have you considered the possibility that, with no direct way to enforce recompense from you, they might assign someone to assess the monetary value of your claimed Intellectual Property left in N'burg and deduct from that? Or seize it outright and sell it at auction in order to pay damages out to the city and to Sudane?

I do agree with you that it is a "contradictory mess" that they would allow you to sue one of their citizens, even though they really have no way of allowing him to sue you for damages. I think that N'burg needs to come up with policy for this, and I think the most sensible policy is that non-citizens have no expectation of redress from citizens UNLESS they also subject themselves to city laws (essentially, becoming a citizen or putting up sufficient financial bond to cover potential damages).

I will go so far as to say that it was pretty amusing to read that the SC voted itself as not-negligent in neglecting to have you and Kendra removed from moderation duties in the group forum. Not only were they negligent by definition, they admitted in the same fact-finding hearing that you, Ulrika Zugzwang were a known threat, dating back as far as January, and the reason you were banned from the sim (after deleting that post) was to minimize the other damages you might cause to the city. More, they assert that they had legal control of the group forum, *outside* of their technical ability to do so. If you were a known danger Ulrika, then the SC most definitely had a responsibility to minimize your ability to cause harm. *Further*, if they assert that they had legal control of the forum then they were quite negligent in not taking steps to also assert technical control over it. All this aside, although they were negligent in my estimation, they should not be held responsible for financial/punitive damages for the erasure of Sudane's post. Only you, Ulrika, should be held responsible for that, because it was you who took the action.

Ulrika, I'll try to answer your bullet points as best I can, from my limited perspective as an outsider. I think my answers are pretty spot-on though.

Article 3 Section 6 of the Constitution applies to citizens. Non-citizens cannot have fines, loss of property, or penance enforced against them, they are "outside" the domain of the N'burg courts and subject to administrative action rather than trials. The administrators taking these actions (being citizens) are subject to N'burg laws and review for their actions. Article 6 of the UDHR does not declare that individuals have a right to governmental redress from any particular governmental entity; just so, individuals "wronged" by N'burg do not necessarily have the right to pettion N'burg for redress. You have not been denied this right, Ulrika, and may petition the Lindens if you feel that N'burg has overstepped your SecondLife rights in their treatment of you.

I seriously doubt that they will have been found to have done so. Aside from the high improbability that they will find themselves guilty of doing so, I do not think that they actually have violated these tenets. The best you could hope for would be a future N'burg ammendment granting trial rights to non-citizens. Since the Constitution as-is does not *specifically* grant foreigners these rights, then I do not believe the N'burg SC is guilty of violating present law; only perhaps future law.

I agree that this is highly contradictory, and puts and undue burden on N'burg citizens, who may be sued by outsiders but may not realistically sue back. I would suggest that N'burg disallow outsiders from being permitted to sue, unless they put up financial bond with the city in the amount they are suing for; if the decision is reversed or the suit found to be spurious, the foreigner could have any judgements against them deducted from this bond.

I think the guidelines are loosely understood; N'burg has the ability, and therefore the right, to deprive citizens of property, citizenship, and access to the "country". They also have the ability to enforce penance (example, community service or apology) under threat of these larger punishments. They don't have the ability, and therefore don't have theright to enforce larger SL sanctions against anyone, citizen or no: inventory (if owned by the person), finances (personal $L account), imprisonment or death(deletion of account).
I really don't know. If the program wishes to grow, I would think a more important question is: How will it impact interest in citizenship, if N'burg allows foreigners to sue citizens but does not do the reverse?

Any chance that any N'burg citizens, particularly government officials, might address my original questions? I'm actually pretty curious about how you would handle cases like this. It's OK if the answer is "We don't have an answer yet, but we're addressing it in our next Assembly"

Hi Unhygienix, sorry, it's Friday, and, as you know a thousand things are going on. Let me give my own personal opinion, albeit as a (non-voting) member of the SC.

A lot of the questions you raise are actually unresolved issues, as there is almost no precedent for any of these, or laws other than the founding documents. These matters will probably take up some of the SC's time in upcoming meetings.

Your questions boil down to questions of jurisdiction -- who can the SC try, who can file suit, and for which actions? Let's begin with "who can be tried," from cases where we know the SC has jurisdiction, and cases where we know where the SC has *no* jurisdiction.

Neualtenburg has jurisdiction over actions done by Neualtenburg citizens in Neualtenburg "territory," including the sim of neualtenburg, the official website, and (in my opinion) the Neualtenburg group forums.

The SC has *no* jurisdiction over actions by non-citizens outside of Neualtenburg's territory. If for example, Anshe Chung made a scriptable object that crippled the mainland, the SC has no authority to try her, nor can they impose sanctions.

Now the tricky questions are when a) the action is done by an nburg citizen outside of nburg, or b) by a non-citizen inside nburg.

a) Can actions by nburg citizens outside of nburg be tried in nburg court?

If Claude released a scripted prim that crippled the mainland, should we be able to try him in Neualtenburg court? If I were kicked out of WoW for embezzling its players, can the SC try me and kick me out of nburg if found guilty? This is a veery open question, I think and requires a lot more thought.

My tentative inclination is to say *no*. No criminal or civil trial can be done, unless the nburg citizen specifically has a prior agreement to subject himself to the nburg court system for actions outside of nburg (this has implications for nburg registered corporations). However, I think if the action was done by an official of the city, he may still be impeached.

b.) Can actions by non-nburg citizens inside nburg be tried in nburg court?

This, I think is where the case of Ulrika falls into, since the SC has declared that it considers itself to have sole jurisdiction over the nburg forums. Again, I think this is very much an open question. (Let me say here that I do not believe the actions against Ulrika required a trial, it is a simple administrative action akin to when I was denied a visa to go to Japan).

I think the answer here is *yes* non-citizens *can* be tried in nburg court. The question is, do we want to? There is no easy way for the SC to force any non-citizen to do anything. We cannot detain him, we cannot force him to pay fines, we cannot revoke a citizenship that he does not possess.

Now, if the non-citizen agrees to pay a bond pending the results of the trial, there may a way to effectively sanction the non-citizen. However, I think the current SC is leery of imposing monetary fines for criminal conduct, so this may be possible, but right now only for civil suits.

Ok, I think I've given my opinion in this post on *who can be tried* (again, I reiterate, this is my personal, non-binding, tentative opinion). The other issue here is *who can file suit*? Unfortunately, I have a lab to teach, so I'll have to post that later.

Unhygienix, I must say you deserve at least congratulations for your very elaborate post here, and the reasonable way you've expounded complex arguments and explained them fully. These take time to think about and write in a neutral, objective form; that's why they were rather appreciated. Thanks!

The good reason for a certain silence on your pending questions is two-fold. Flyingroc has stated the obvious one; many of the members of the Government are not available this weekend. The other reason, of course, is that no one at the SC has currently the pretense of being omniscient In other words: no, we don't know everything. We don't even know if it's possible/desirable to extrapolate from RL cases, since Neualtenburg hardly fits perfectly a RL case that could be drawn as an example.

What we do know is that any quick, unthought measure taken at this point will be used against Neualtenburg; more discussion at the appropriate places (SC & RA in-world meetings) are required. Precedent does not help in this case; sadly, before January 2006, non-citizens that were caught (even a posteriori) to do active griefing in the sim, or — more important than that — engaging in forum trolling, personal attacks or offenses, or simply by displeasing The Powers That Be, were summarily dealt with: banned from the sim, abuse-reported to Linden Lab, and their posts deleted without a second thought on the forums. This "damage control" worked quite well in the past; a whole lot of residents never posted here again or came to Neualtenburg (even when the ban was lifted). Still, there was no explanation given, no official record (except perhaps on the abuse reports; but records of those are not to be found anywhere but on Linden Lab's AR database), no clemency, no right to appeal, a total denial in addressing their questions/demands (or even an ackowledgement that they might have good reasons). From the point of view of the past, these residents of SL had, effectively, "no rights" on Neualtenburg.

This is the legacy we have — the way "foreigners" were treated in the past. And oh yes, they complained publicly on external forums — the old "General" threads are full with those complains, at least the ones that weren't deleted by a Linden moderator when they engaged in persona attacks. The history shows that the previous way to deal with these issues was to simply suppress those that were arbitrarily designed as being "contrary" to the spirit and laws of Neualtenburg — specially when they posted on the N'burg-"controlled" forums (who were not really controlled by N'burg but by the forum moderators...).

Times have changed, and hopefully we have learned a bit about the autocratic methods that were employed in the past. Right now, decisions are taken not by individuals, but by groups that work inside Neualtenburg and to whom authority was delegated to deal with the issues. Naturally, that authority can be abused; and naturally as well, they can be held responsible for abusing that power — either by having them voted out of office, or through hearings at the SC. All of this takes time and requires patience.

Just a minor point of disagreement.

While I think your assessment of the facts is very accurate (the SC actually recommended that the RA or Guild look in to sanctions against themselves for this oversight), I would point out that in replying to our original judgment Ulrika deleted the one qualifying statement in regards negligence with an elipsis. Subsequent repeats of the arguments have not replaced it so I will.

We said that we were not negligent in terms of the most common definition of the word to wit: "failing to act as any reasonable person would act." The definition of negligence that Ulrika is using in all her attacks is the legal definition used in a civil court case seeking damages. While you might argue that we should have used that self-same definition in that ultimately Ulrika would perhaps seek civil damages, we considered that she was using the word "negligence" in her posts as a general pejorative statement about us and thus replied in kind by dealing with the most common everyday definition of negligence.

Since Gwyn is an eminently reasonable person and since she already knew that it was physically impossible to remove Ulrika from moderating the forums, she did not attempt to do so, and while this was wrong, we did not think this was an unreasonable conclusion to come to at the time.

The SC definitely failed in it's responsibilities to attempt to have Ulrika removed and has asked the RA and Guild to look into whether such failure requires punishment or sanction. We merely disagreed with Ulrika's repeated attempts to characterise this as irrational, unusual, unexpected or particularly unreasonable behaviour.

She is also an officer in some groups connected to N'burg. In the fountain downtown there is a script accepting donations. After donating, I looked at which group was benefiting, Ulrika is an officer of that group. How funny!

Thanks for the replies. I will say that it's interesting to see how this governance project is going, though I admit to being skeptical about its eventual success, since it is being conducted at the grace of two different entities: The sim owner, who could overrule any N'burg actions, and the Lindens themselves, who have remained uninvolved but could overrule either of the other two.

I do have a suggestion to offer, and likely it's one that is already percolating in the minds of citizens preparing for the meeting this week. If the goal of the govenrment is to honor the UDHR even towards non-citizens, then any foreigner accused of a "crime" in N'burg should have the following applied to them:

-Immediate banning from the sim, pending the results of any trial or hearing. This is to protect the city/citizens until a more final decision can be reached.

-Ask the person if they wish to be tried; if so, they may request that access to the sim be re-instated, but must put up bond deemed sufficient to cover further damages that they may cause. The bond may be in the form of $L, items or land, so long as the value is agreed-upon by the accused and the N'burg-appointed rep. N'burg representatives may deny bond, if they feel that it is insufficient in value to cover potential damages, or if they feel that the accused represents an unacceptable threat to the community.

-(I think there is some question here as to what represents a "jury of peers" to an outsider. Good luck deciding this one, since a random selection of outsiders are unlikely to be well-versed in N'burg proceedings and precedents).

-If the outsider refuses trial, they are dealt with as an administrative action by those empowered.

-Commence a trial as seen fit. The main things that should be provide for are a "jury of peers", a judge or panel who agrees to remain impartial, and representation of both sides of the issue.

-Any penalties imposed due to a "guilty" verdict can only be enforced by exile from the sim. Ironically, this underlines the ultimate powerlessness of the N'burg government with regards to outsiders. If a non-citizen does not agree with the guilty verdict, and are willing to live with the fact that they won't be allowed back into the sim, they may disregard their sentence completely.

I think that the main problem with the recent issue was that there were no provisions for "trying" non-citizens, and the governmental machinery didn't allow the possibility that a non-citizen may actually have *wanted* a trial.


Ulrika, good luck in pursuing your case, if they allow it. Make sure your evidence is of the concrete kind, since your forum signature seriously cals into question any value that you would have as a witness.