Something like this happens on the mainland -- your property next to it is utterly devalued. What can you do? Nothing. Sell out, wait, or fume in silence. Where is the justice? Nowhere...unless you have a strong neighbourhood association of owners who band together and do several things: a) buy out those cheaper parcels that are within reason in price to prevent further blight; b) politely but firmly ask those who are trying to deface and devalue an entire sim to sell out at a reasonable price; c) boycott the products and services of those who chose to invade, deface, and devalue a neighbourhood in this way so selfishly by selling ad space on 16m2 at outrageous rates. Lindens can't help; only human solidarity can help; and only a rational plan for local governance and local justice. The market is free; here are the results, unless people begin to exact some civic responsibility to go alone with the licentious freedoms.
Just a quick post to alert the public to yet another attempt by the Bavarian cream puffs to create some sectarian system and appeal to the Lindens to change what they do. Go here and read Redaktisto's article that asks the question "Who Best to Settle Resident Disputes?" willy-nilly with the answer: "Gwyn Llewelyn and her proxies at Frieswiththat because they've been cooking up elaborate systems for 3 years and are the experts." Well, not why I have any breath left in my tiny avatar body : )
Scary stuff, when Lindens are going to re-do the abuse-reporting and policing and governance systems! And why-are-we-not-surprised that the smug and pompous Hiro Pendragon also feels he now pwns this system by magnanimously reporting on what was a secret meeting with developers, though Philip said there could be no signing of an NDA (Philip, go one better, and make these meetings public -- and have more of them -- please).
I've learned a few basic things already about Hiro's pompous postings.
A Linden has explained to me that these are their proposals, not yet set in stone, and they will not be ready for use for another 6-12 months. This developers' meeting was originally supposed to be about customer service, I guess, but ended up being about governance, since we, ah, have so many "competent tekkie wikinistas" who are only-to-eager to tool-and-die our governance systems for us, and thus pwn them.
Of course, I don't buy that -- time and again, we see Lindens float something precisely at the moment when they are not seeking actual input, but only trying to soften up the public for inevitable implementation. Sure, it might be tweaked a bit here and there, but basically, we'll be seeing the Lindens implement a Ban-Link mass-ban system and the other things they talk about. Fortunately, I've gotten the word that they ARE thinking about an appeals system, but clearly they do NOT want Linden Lab itself to be getting much, if any of these appeals. They want a resident justice system. The question is whether they will pick their own pets or let residents themselves duke it out with competing services by creating tools any can use, and any can opt in or out of. I hope the latter.
The Feature Voting Tools are not a good example of this, however, being as how you can't vote "no" on them, and Angel Fluffy took them over. They are going to put up new software soon, they say, that will make this "better". Um, yeah, I can't wait!
I also learned that yes, the police blotter WILL indeed be redone -- and not just the section of the Second Opinion called "police blotter" that now has been whitewashed into a name like "civic center," -- the police blotter with the list of abuses. Very few actual cases get there, so it is changing -- and I don't get the impression changing in any direction we've discussed, i.e. publicizing the names of all those party to the conflict and offense found. We are likely to see less, not more cases. We can only hope it has memory and searchability.
One good aspect of all of this is that I confirmed, with Lindens, that unlike some Linden liaisions' notions of what is right, it is NOT repeat NOT against the TOS to publish a chatlog OUTSIDE of the world of SL and its forums because LL simply does not claim jurisdiction over third-party sites. And that is how it should be. That means we still have hope of trying to war against these sectarian takeovers by exposing their true nature as they espouse various philosophies in public meetings or in IM debates.
So while Hiro has published a set of things discussed in his secret meeting with Lindens, there is still a chance to have some affect on it. Daniel Linden will be convening more meetings about this in early 2007. It's depressing to think about, of course, since it is really all pre-cooked, but as always, we have a chance at least to make them feel some accountability -- if not outright shame -- for once again cooking with their close cronies.
What the Lindens aren't interested in -- it's clear -- is various grad-school-like attempts to take all this RL justice and legal power in SL now and have people craft elaborate systems as if you were designing, say, a new Constitutional justice system for Kyrgyzstan. They are only interested in the most dumbed down, tool-based system of bans and mutes. It's a frontier justice in which the government is merely issuing everyone a pair of pistols and everyone a county jail. Then they are on their own. They are not creating elaborate court systems with segregated witnesses, cross-examination, the law of discovery SERVER side where it counts, adversarial defense, appeals, etc. etc. Nothing of the kind. This *is* Kyrgyzstan, but without the high-priced fancy Western advisors and liberal intellectual class devoted to human rights.
That's why sitting around in meetings and arguing whether there should be common law or civil law or what weight precedents will have in this system is likely time wasted -- unless you are planning roll-play on your own sim. What's going to happen, like always does happen in SL is that Lord of the Flies will win: some sort of resident disputes system will get started, in which the Lindens will either pick by actual picking, or pick by leaving Nature to take its course and reward the strongest and most organized sectarians, some sort of courts with judges (this, in a system with no separation of powers!!!). They'll likely enable sim owners and continent owners more to the point to be the biggest winners -- because their notion of justice is land-tool based.
I think we need to lobby for a set of abuses that we'd want only them to handle, after local remedy is exhausted, because only they will have the information and only they will have the non-sectarian impartiality we hope for (weak as it is).
These cases would include: hate actions like anti-gay or racist speech and attacks; disclosure of first-life information; persistent and non-land-based sexual harassment (IM'ing on alts, coming back on alts to harass in a home, etc.); returning persistent and systematic griefers on alts; etc.
What we can't expect of them is a system to handle copyright theft or fraud. This will have to be taken on by residents, and it will NOT be pretty. Get early and often to any meeting about any Better Business Bureau which will likely feature Not So Terrific Businesses Trying to Put Competitors Out of Business.
So I plan to revive the group we used to run called Fair Play -- for the history, and agenda, and topics for work, go here -- and I'll be updating soon. I head a lot of interesting ideas in the last two meetings we had in Sutherland Dam -- but the usual problem of people trying to substitute the busy-ness of making a wiki, a domain, a website, or a new group for the hard slog of actually crafting a workable agenda and plan of action. I think we need a very short lobbying list. Job One: insist that Lindens do not repeat DO NOT name by name any resident judge or resident court system or bless any mediators system by name, like the resmods. N.O. Non passarant.
Job Two: craft a reasoanble dispute system on those areas that are in our domain that is simple, workable, and not too complexified by RL considerations, and insensitive to SL realities. We only have banning and muting as tools for punishment -- so these have to be amplified by naming and shaming police blotters we make on our own. I'm all for creating a resident-run police blotter that has an integral part of it an appeals process in the public eye for anyone who has been mass-banned in ways they feel are unfair.
Job Three: make a list of what areas we want the Lindens to be sure to keep control over so that these areas don't become the provenance of sectarian fucktards.
Justice is not cheap; it needs lots of time or money or both. Don't let that make justice become something for the rich and strong and connected in Second Life, just as in First Life.
Comments:
Posted by: Cocoanut Koala | December 23, 2006 at 04:23 PM
Well, it's a balance, Cocoanut. Absolutely.
and of course what people like Ashcroft will tell you is, oh, but we're not here to take your land away. Nonono. we're here to place an effective system in which if you opt-in, you can get justice and then we only take your land away if you are bad. ETc.
Ashcroft will keep jumping up and down, saying we are making a caricature of his position.
Meanwhile the Lindens won't actually be so gross to appoint him as judge of all the lands. Instead, they'll do the usual stuff:
o hold special meetings just with him, as they hold special meetings just with Hiro
o have him -- like Lordfly or Catherine Omega -- or his equivalent -- come to the SL Views to REALLY discuss how "we" are going to make the "community" justice system
o feature him in Second Opinion
o have press conferences or interviews in which they'll say, "Oh, we're turning over power to residents now, and fortunately we have these nice young men like Ashcroft who have Done it All for You! Take it away, Ashcroft!"
In their hatred and their zeal to stop Prokofy from doing this -- these people always think it is my goal to "take over" which is why I bitch about others taking over, they're not going to get what is at stake: freedom.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 23, 2006 at 04:32 PM
Frankly, the governance issue is just as important -- arguably MORE important -- than the Lindens' initial emulation of IP rights by telling residents they could keep IP -- and then undoing this quite a bit later by not ensuring copyright and playing indifferent to CopyBot.
In the same way, they will be lauded by the supine media, first and second, old and new, for supposedly granting avatars "their rights" and giving them "self-management".
This will look a lot like Tito's "self-management" system given to "workers' unions" (anybody out there remember THAT?)
It will look like Putin's "managed democracy" (and Russians in SL now who can speak to how THAT is really like?)
It will look a lot like "the Democrats" in the U.S. who "look like" a real opposition to Bush -- but argghgh just wait until you see some of the stuff they cook up. Etc.
So... it's argubly more important to be fighting hard for this to turn out more free, with better checks and balances, but it will have far less interest for residents than IP that brings them money because it will involve them SPENDING time and money, not MAKING it.
The Lindens will shrug and give the franchise to whoever shows up.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 23, 2006 at 04:36 PM
Thank you for the free publicity for my study group, Prokofy! An entire 'blog entry: I'm honoured!
Incidentally, you wrote, "The question is whether they will pick their own pets or let residents themselves duke it out with competing services by creating tools any can use, and any can opt in or out of. I hope the latter."
You may be interested to know that the Local Government Study Group exists to promote (and very strongly) precisely that latter option, to promote, in effect, a market in governments.
You also wrote:
"Ashcroft will keep jumping up and down, saying we are making a caricature of his position.
Meanwhile the Lindens won't actually be so gross to appoint him as judge of all the lands. Instead, they'll do the usual stuff:
o hold special meetings just with him, as they hold special meetings just with Hiro
o have him -- like Lordfly or Catherine Omega -- or his equivalent -- come to the SL Views to REALLY discuss how "we" are going to make the "community" justice system
o feature him in Second Opinion
o have press conferences or interviews in which they'll say, "Oh, we're turning over power to residents now, and fortunately we have these nice young men like Ashcroft who have Done it All for You! Take it away, Ashcroft!""
I might ask why you dress me in borrow'd (judicial) robes - my plan was just to set up a group to persuade LL to implement *sophisticated* government tools (that allow things like courts and judges and cross-examination and appeals - you know, all those things that you like), and hope that LL will take the bait. I shall now know, from the self-proclaimed expert on how LL works himself, what I am to expect if my ideas are to take off. Very useful tips - thank you :-D
Posted by: Ashcroft Burnham | December 23, 2006 at 06:22 PM
Incidentally, thank you for putting me onto that Hiro fellow - looks like he could be a useful and productive member of the Local Government Study Group, so I've invited him.
I'm still impressed - I form a group, and, less than a week later, I feature in your 'blog. I am honoured to be among your foremost antagonists. I look forward to working with you further in the future in the capacity of arch nemesis (although the competition for that post is, I understand, really quite stiff).
Posted by: Ashcroft Burnham | December 23, 2006 at 06:35 PM
Back off, Ashcroft, there are plenty of Prokofy antagonists with far more seniority than you working toward the arch-nemesis goal.
Posted by: Cristiano Midnight | December 23, 2006 at 08:00 PM
Ashcroft, there's only one thing to be done in your group: create at least 5-6 officers, so that you are not the sole officer, and so that you do not have the sole authority to expel others, and so that there are some kind of grownups looking after this group, too, along with you.
That's all.
Anything else will be superfluous and instantly discredited.
And Ashcroft, as I've explained, you're merely a Gwyn-proxy, not any kind of nemesis on the premises.
>- my plan was just to set up a group to persuade LL to implement *sophisticated* government tools
"just" and "set up" and "persuade". But...who the fuck are you, Ashcroft? I mean, seriously. Just *who the fuck are you*? You are nobody. You're not even Nobody. You're just some kid in the UK with a lot of aggressive hormones and a lot of spare time, that's all.
We don't need *you* to establish what is needed for the Lindens to code to your pleasure.
Honestly, it has no credibility. If I did something like this single-handed, everyone would scream "foul".
Any effort at "study" or "making recommendations" or "persuading the Lindens" has to be a democratic effort open to any of good faith, interested in make a system that can work for all.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 23, 2006 at 08:25 PM
There is no fair way to implement any sort of "resident-run legal system" without having a democratic form of resident participation established under the framework of something akin to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
I'm afraid that I don't believe that Linden Lab is indeed thinking about implementing something like that. There are no cases in history where there was any chance of a legal system to be fair, impartial, neutral, and accessible, outside of a democratic framework. While that democratic framework does not automatically imply the existence of a fair system, it's a precondition. You simply can't have fairness of legal procedures under an autocracy, no matter how well intended those might be.
Linden Lab at this juncture has thus two options. One is simply to establish an unfair, partial, biased, crippled system, under the current model of Second Life, where authority is derived from Linden Lab only. That system will never be fair nor impartial, but it could obviously "work" in the sense that LL will not need to handle petty, local cases.
The other option, which is the much more reasonable one, is to make a case for "local justice". This means indeed better local tools for "applying justice" — and, in turn, encourage local communities to use those tools to enforce things locally.
I can't foresee LL to do anything else but this latter approach. Ashcroft's role is not really being "an antagonist" or "LL's advisor for setting up legal systems in SL". Rather, he's lobbying for something completely different, and quite more effective: better tools for government.
Those would *optionally* be used by whatever community would like to use them — locally. Prokofy, I don't understand why you're so opposed to the Local Government Study Group, or any similar group. Notice their name — *Local* Government, not *Global* Government.
You have been very loudly arguing for ages now about the plague of people deliberately stalking and griefing you and your tenants. I can't imagine why you would dislike having better tools to deal with those cases. Imagine that you'd be able to ban whole *groups* of people from your land. Or that you could ban users by IP address or Ethernet (MAC) address. Or that you could have a switch that would disallow some people (or groups of people) to enter the same sim where your tenants are — create a magic radius around yourself, your tenants, and the land used by them, that would simply be impassable by any griefer.
Locally, at Ravenglass Rentals and elsewhere, you'd act as Chief Justice of your "domain" — mainland or private island being irrelevant. Tenants could send abuse reports to you, and the result would be that you could simply ban these people out of your rental business, as well as anyone they'd be associated with. Sure, some would still create alts, log in from different computers and/or locations, and still be able to grief your tenants. But now imagine you could delegate the role of "policemen" to a small group of your most trustful tenants, who would be able to flag specific people as being banned in your domains. That way, you wouldn't need to be awake 24 hours a day to take care of law and order in your land — you'd delegate that power only to people you'd trust.
In effect, you'd have your own Abuse Report system, your own legal system, and an effective way to deal with all of those things.
What does Linden Lab benefit from it? Well, in your community, the number of Abuse Reports sent to LL would be rather low. Probably a few would complain about unfair treatment. But these would be mostly irrelevant — you would state very clearly the rules (simple or complex ones, whatever you fancy) for living in your domains, or even visiting them, and people would know what to expect if they'd break those rules.
And, of course, you would be able to publish the results of your decisions publicly. Not necessarily just on your own web site — but imagine that you'd have a mechanism to point people to an area where your rules and decisions are made public, and that these would be integrated in the SL user interface; perhaps a tab on the "About Land" dialogue box, or something like that. A history of "Local Abuse Reports" handled and what decision was taken to handle them, which could be viewed by anyone visiting your land.
That way, your tenants would gain confidence in you as a successful handler of local conflicts. They would be able to review your decisions. They would either agree or disagree with them — and eventually leave if they disagree too much — but that would be irrelevant: right now, you can even write down those rules, but these can't be efficiently *enforced*, and there is no way to track them down anyway.
The difference I see is that you'd prefer a global system, and thus are naturally afraid of having others making decisions that can affect you, and groups like the Local Government Study Group, who simply prefer a reinforcement of local authority — but without having an impact on whatever is beyond their jurisdiction.
Speaking strictly for myself, I've given up for long the notion that one day there could be a democratic government and a single legal system across the whole of Second Life. That is, I'm afraid, an utopia. The inhabitants of Second Life are tired from democracy. They're disappointed with it. They want strong, charismatic, paternalistic figures that protect their interests — or plain and simply anarchy or libertarianism. They want to congregate and discuss things that affect us globally, only to the point of "having a say", but not more than that.
This is a self-inflicted utopia again. You cannot ensure fair participation of *everyone* unless the process is democratic — globally. The reverse is not true, of course — just because you have some democratic structures, it doesn't follow that all participation is fair. The same argument for a fair legal system apply once more again.
I thus think that *most* people in Second Life don't care either about democratic processes or about a fair legal system — and I can only look at the factual numbers: 2 million accounts preferring anarchy/libertarianism/autocracy, and 65 involved in democratic self-governance in Second Life. The numbers are more than clear. Nobody cares about a fair system for *all*. They just want their *own* system.
It demands quite a leap in changing your mindset to understand what the *purpose* of these democratic structures *are*. These days, people in the Western world are so used of living in a democracy, that they forget what their ultimate social contract *is*. They forfeit their stubborn right in "doing what they please" to compromise in "doing what pleases the large majority of people". A compromise means abandoning that stubborn attitude at looking at one's own navel and understanding that without a compromise, you cannot live peacefully with your neighbour — unless you do it by force.
Since force is not an option in Second Life, there is really not much to choose: either you compromise with others willingly, or you keep being stubborn and try to impose your will upon others by the strength of your argumentation. SL has an unusual amount of very intelligent people which are quite good at rhetorics. This means that if one refuses to learn the art of compromise, it'll just be a "bikini contest" — trying to persuade others by the strength of your argumentation. And eventually becoming very frustrated when you fail to reach an audience.
What happens in that case? Well, if it affects LL's policies, they'll obviously pick the choice they like best — and not necessarily the choice that might be best for the residents. After all, democratic procedures take a degree of *maturity* — and sincerely speaking from what I've observed in SL for the past 2 1/2 years, there is simply not enough maturity on that area. People understand well enough that they have "rights" (ie. the right not to be griefed, for instance). They understand that LL is the only entity that has the power of enforcing any rights you might have. And they also understand that this power cannot be placed in the hands on other people who don't have the maturity to deal with the responsability fairly and in an unbiased manner.
So what is the alternative? Again, better tools, but *local* application *only*. So residents' communities will compete — in a free market of organised communities, where anyone can opt-in or opt-out of them — for providing fairer systems on a local scale only. And let the residents decide what they feel more comfortable with — a paternalising system where you have to trust the autocrat to deal with justice fairly, or a democratic system where basically the citizens have a vote to change the rules regulating their own community. As it stands, right now, 2 million people prefer the first alternative, and just a few dozens prefer the second one.
Ashcroft, Hiro Pendragon is definitely a useful and productive member of any group that might be created in Second Life :) However, don't be too disappointed with Hiro — having his own company to manage, he's one of the busiest people in the world, and while he would very likely be a strong supporter of the Local Government Study Group, he might simply not have enough free time for it.
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | December 23, 2006 at 09:08 PM
Gwyn, if you don't think there isn't a fair way "except," then why have your proxy from FriesWithThat start a group with himself as the sole officer -- even Sudane, the titular owner of the sim, having only rank-and-file member status? These little details are so telling.
If Sudane decides she's tired of all of you, she can pull the plug on the whole thing. Not a good thing, surely, for democracy?
Oh, I disagree about Linden Lab. They have a track record of making their regents and quislings and seconds to be the people in charge. After all, at one point, a third of the staff were made up of residents! Talk about leveling people up to power! Is it more or less today, I wonder? Everything in the past track record suggests that they'll elevate this or that group *as they are already doing*.
Your first premise was correct; if they are the sole authority it will never be fair. But then to proceed to say, oh, but local justice to work is merely to think up an apartheid system with "home rule" in the bantustans. That's not really justice; it's merely doing the Lindens' dirty work for them.
All local politics instantly becomes global in SL when people aspire *to have at the tools*. And that's how Ashcroft showed his hand: he said, let's make a group with only me as an officer, and let's have me stock it with loyalists to persuade the Lindens to change the tools the way I like.
Having debated Ashcroft inworld; having sat through hours of him debating others; having read the thread on SL Home Page, I'm here to tell you that this is a very bad scenario. I don't trust Ashcroft as far as I can throw him.
Your ideas about Ravenglass Rentals are naive and simplistic. Each tenant has the power to ban/eject on his own. These are routine matters now in the new group tools -- things we fought for, for years. But having the right to ban people who bother you is nothing -- it's not enough to handle persistent, severe griefing. Certain kinds of griefing has to be handled by Lindens and that's exactly the charge that has to be identified and pushed back on them if they push it on us. Why? Because we don't have the server side information about people's accounts such as to stop their alts and their groups.
Your notions, like the Bolsheviks' guard at the parliament who said he was "tired" from the debates and went home -- ushering in the violent and bloody 1917 Revolution -- that people are "tired" of democracy (which actually consisted of fuck-you hedonism and Linden licentiousness on things like the Bush Guy, not real democracy) -- is your notion alone. Ask the people; don't tell them; they want a lot of say -- that's why they clamour by the THOUSANDS of entries on the blog.
Your homiletic notions of navel-gazing are delivered in the usual school-marm tone you deliver all your prognostications, Gwyn. But in fact, you cannot ask people to compromise unless you have LEGITIMATE leadership and the rule of law. You can't ask them to forego something and take something away from them in a world where ALREADY so many rights are taken. That's wrong, and injust.
Your concepts of "maturity" are also biased, self-serving, and sectarian. It implies that you can render a judgement on other people's sims and structures -- and you can't.
Indeed, that's what is so appalling about you and the whole FriesWithThat fandago: your appalling notion that you can make meta-analyses of the entire grid, then make meta-recipes for it and then scurry around saying it is just for your own sim. Meanwhile, um, "just for your own sim," always seems to require "persuading the Lindens to change the tools"...your way.
Busted.
You are tyrants. Under the guise of sounding rational and reasonable and murmuring as pets to your favourite Lindens, telling them what they already decided on their own five minutes before they publish it, you will try to get your way. No way!
If the organised community were really a fair market, one might draw some conclusions. But it can't be a free market of ideas for social organizing when one very powerful, connected, and feted group with the Lindens constant ear "persuades them to change the tools".
The first thing to change, before you have at changing the tools (!) is to change your own ambitious hearts. Make a group that is fair and has equal-rights owners in it of some reasonable number that serves as a check and balance on one person's seizure of power.
Hiro Pendragon is not a good recommendation for any sort of study group. He's one of the most pompous, arrogant and at time even thuggish persons in second life. He threatened to get me banned from Second Life itself merely because I questioned whether a prominent Linden alt should get to use "General" for advertising his own projects -- when others are moved or disciplined.
In fact, that Linden later publicized his connection to a prominent resident AND acknowledged that his ad didn't belong in general.
Proving once again that if we have to have someone govern us, give us the tyrannical Lindens rather than the tyrannical Hiro Pendragons -- at least they get paid for governing the world and are accountable in ways Hiro will never be. Life is about choices.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 23, 2006 at 10:59 PM
>>There is no fair way to implement any sort of "resident-run legal system" without having a democratic form of resident participation established under the framework of something akin to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Amen to that!
Bad enough that any outside party would ever be able to tell you what to do on your own little patch of land.
Even worse, if an outside party could tell you what to do on a dozen sims. Hence my deep concern.
I appreciate the fact that the service terms *do* tell us how to behave on our own land. However they largely parallel ideals that I value.
In a very weak, general way, the service terms *are* a sort of 'declaration of rights' even if not very clear as such.
* * * * *
I joined Ashcroft's group. My opposition to many of Ashcroft's ideas are likely well known by anyone who even skims a forum.
But the topic is a worthy one.
Two issues really grab me.
1) Legitimacy of courts - anyone's courts: should a resident ever be able to put another resident 'on trial'?
Consider the fact that recording chatlogs, then sharing them with other residents in-world without consent is against the service terms.
2) Mainland 'justice' as mentioned in the first post - the case of one person destroying the land value for all neighbours.
If even a 16m patch of mainland is left unpurchased, your sim can still be brought down to near uselessness by it. While we ultimately need social fixes, it sure wouldn't hurt to allocate excess scripts or avatar density by 'parcel size' in the meantime.
Desmond Shang
Posted by: Desmond Shang | December 24, 2006 at 02:33 AM
Consider the fact that recording chatlogs, then sharing them with other residents in-world without consent is against the service terms.
Not to worry. They can be published outside of SL. LL will not overreach on this. I've confirmed it. They have no TOS to overreach and don't aspire to overreach, and they believe that Voice coming to SL will trump all this. I'm not at all sure of that people will text even with Voice and it can be taped.
I don't believe any court has any authority as a mere appendage to the executive power, without three real branches of government and checks and balances. It's a troika.
I believe they need to bill for CPU usage, not abstractly, like 2048 is always the same no matter what, but bill it like an electric meter for actual usage.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 24, 2006 at 04:56 AM
"Hiro Pendragon is not a good recommendation for any sort of study group. He's one of the most pompous, arrogant and at time even thuggish persons in second life."
Well, takes one to know one, eh, Prok? ;-)
"Bad enough that any outside party would ever be able to tell you what to do on your own little patch of land.
Even worse, if an outside party could tell you what to do on a dozen sims. Hence my deep concern."
No need to be concerned, Desmond: the concept of local government that I have entails each sim owner deciding which, if any, government to be under. Thus, you could set up your own "Independent State of Caledon" government and be entirely autonomous (and not have to fiddle around with those little meters for land fees, either, but collect them automatically), and nobody could stop you.
The point, incidentally, is that it is not up to the Lindens (1) to render resident-to-resident justice on the grid, and (2) to decide what a fair way of rendering resident-to-resident justice is, and that, further (3), things will inevitably go horribly wrong if any one person or group attempts to do either of those two things for the whole of SecondLife. So, each resident should be free to set up a government, and each landowner should be free to decide to which, if any, government to belong. Each government could then decide whether, and if so, in what way, to co-operate with what other governments, including by treaty, commonwealth, confederation or federation.
The idea is for there to be a a *market* in governments so that residents can vote with their virtual feet in deciding what systems that they think are fair and effective. The authority for each government will stem from the simple proposition that any given landowner has the absolute right to (1) to decide who should come onto her or his land; (2) to decide how that should be decided; and (3) permanently or temporarily to delegate that right to an external organisation of her or his choice.
Posted by: Ashcroft Burnham | December 24, 2006 at 06:01 AM
(3) permanently or temporarily to delegate that right to an external organisation of her or his choice.
This is the part that covers the multitude of sins.
This is the part called "Ashcroft's Confabulation of Democratic Sims" which people cede their land to.
No thanks.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 24, 2006 at 06:37 AM
"This is the part called "Ashcroft's Confabulation of Democratic Sims" which people cede their land to.
No thanks."
Well, you've won the paranoia prize again, two days in a row! Well done! "No thanks" will, of course, be an option for everyone. As will "form your own government and delegate the power to yourself".
Incidentally, on the topic of:
""just" and "set up" and "persuade". But...who the fuck are you, Ashcroft? I mean, seriously. Just *who the fuck are you*? You are nobody. You're not even Nobody. You're just some kid in the UK with a lot of aggressive hormones and a lot of spare time, that's all.
We don't need *you* to establish what is needed for the Lindens to code to your pleasure,"
surely even in Prokofy's Great Land of the Free and Home of the Paranoid, anybody can set up any group they like and talk about anything they like and try to persuade anyone they like of anything they like - or do we have to get a special permit from Chairman Prokofy first?
"And Ashcroft, as I've explained, you're merely a Gwyn-proxy, not any kind of nemesis on the premises."
Aww, and I was so looking forward to sitting in a high-backed chair, stroking a large Persian cat, and saying, "Ahh, Mr. Neva, do come in - I was expecting you".
Posted by: Ashcroft Burnham | December 24, 2006 at 07:16 AM
Konnichiwa, kids.
Never should people be allowed to form their own governments nor enforce their own rules beyond who can or can not enter their land or be a part of their groups. Why?
Do you want the average SL'er enforcing rules on you? Do you want masses of these people banding together to make one enormous (because it's easy and will surely happen) governing body, covering multitudes of locations, with jurisdiction over you?
Seriously, just the ability to make the rules, in a virtual world that naturally brings with it the problems of anonymity (and thus lack of ethical/moral responsibility to anything) among others, turns people into pricks. Absolute power (over a place of any size) corrupts absolutely. With a potential for connecting multiple governments, that makes it even worse.
The only way people can successfully keep coexisting, the only way that prevents one group from dominating another, is to have an outside, more naturally responsible (be it because of impartiality or ethical duty on the job, ie: Lindens) party bend all residents to a common will, a will that can be influenced by all said residents.
Posted by: Tyken Hightower | December 24, 2006 at 07:21 AM
"Never should people be allowed to form their own governments nor enforce their own rules beyond who can or can not enter their land or be a part of their groups."
I think that you'll find the idea is that people should be able to form their own governments precisely to enforce rules about who should be permitted to enter all that land whose owners have voluntarily allied it to that government.
Posted by: Ashcroft Burnham | December 24, 2006 at 07:28 AM
http://forums.secondcitizen.com/showpost.php?p=118758&postcount=1
Gotta read it to believe it.
Posted by: Check Out This Interesting Forum Post! | December 24, 2006 at 12:15 PM
>>No need to be concerned, Desmond: the concept of local government that I have entails each sim owner deciding which, if any, government to be under.
This I'm not too worried about, but I do think a basic set of 'avatar rights' or some such would be the first step. In other words, what are the *limits* of sim governance.
What happens to the sim owner that bans people based on sexual orientation, for instance? Would such a thing be allowed to stand? I would certainly hope not, but such values are found on the world stage.
>>Do you want the average SL'er enforcing rules on you? Do you want masses of these people banding together to make one enormous (because it's easy and will surely happen) governing body, covering multitudes of locations, with jurisdiction over you?
Well said, Tyken.
Most sim owners aren't interested in justice; they are interested in creativity, making money, or just about anything other than spending time resolving other people's disputes. Except perhaps as a form of personal entertainment. I can easily see a 'choice of tyrannies or anarchy' forming even now.
Regarding trials: yes, I suppose out-of-grid chatlog postings can facilitate a trial.
Meaning: anyone with enough money on the grid can 'try' you in their 'court' and then limit your actions gridwide due to 'treaties'. Definitely something to be approached with caution.
Not that our current methods are much better now, because if Sudane said: "Hey Des, ban Scammer McFly, he's been a pest harrassing residents here for weeks" - I'd seriously consider it.
But at least it isn't a streamlined, automatic process yet, where say ticking off one tin-pot land baron somewhere will deny you access to half the grid.
Something to think about.
Posted by: Desmond Shang | December 24, 2006 at 01:50 PM
Desmond, do you really think that the Lindens want the least to do with handling resident-to-resident grievances? Do you really think that it will be practical, if and when SL has not two, but twenty million users, for a bunch of Linden Lab employees to be able to deal with complaints along the lines of "The High Court of Gorea banned me after a trial that I think was unfair because they ignored Local Statute 4169, section 24 on the law of evidence, and held *this*, when, actually, they should have decided *this*, and here's a thirty page argument briefly outlining why I think they got it wrong"? They are software developers, not lawyers: from what I understand, they see SecondLife as a protocol for worlds, not a world in itself. Open-sourcing the grid would make it impossible for them to decide whom to ban. Who polices web forums - the people who write the forum software or the people who run each individual forum? In any event, I doubt that any system that relies on Linden Lab laboriously trying to work out what is and is not a fair system of government could ever work: do you really trust them to do that? Why not have a *market* in governments, and let the users decide?
In any event why do you think that you have the right to complain if somebody else bans you from *their own land*? If landowner X wants to let government Y decide who gets banned from landowner X's land, why do you claim that any of your rights are being infringed thereby? The reality is that none of us have any more right to be on somebody else's land than we have to post on somebody else's web forum, and there is no more reason for Linden Lab to deign to decide what rules for deciding who may go where are fair than PhBB or VBulletin should have a supreme court of forum bannings.
Posted by: Ashcroft Burnham | December 24, 2006 at 03:11 PM
>I think that you'll find the idea is that people should be able to form their own governments precisely to enforce rules about who should be permitted to enter all that land whose owners have voluntarily allied it to that government.
Oh, here indeed is the problem, and this is what is so subtly misleading and really ultimately fraudulent about what you are doing, Ashcroft.
Desmond is absolutely right that FIRST you need to devise the LIMITS on sim governance. What are the CONSTRAINTS on people who aspire to lord it over sims -- like yourself? Over people who fantasize about the "voluntary" accession of many other people to their fabulous kingdom -- *who don't themselves even own the sim they are living on*. Hello?
If one were an owner -- and not a tenant, as you are on Neufreistat -- one would think *one's own sim border* -- duh -- would be a really handy-dandy built-in limitation thoughtfully provided by the Lindens -- you can't set up ban lists on somebody else's property.
But that's going to be eroded soon. Of course the Lindens will be automatizing that sharing of banlists and that will make the effect of a few over the many even greater, with many concommitant mistakes.
You speak about this confabulation as if it is all opt-in and choice, and voluntary.
But as I've just pointed out, sharing of banlists isn't really so voluntary. The people wrongfully put on the first person's list now involuntarily get spread to 100 other sims with no recourse. And those people who spread them can't pick and chose -- they take the thing as a whole, good and bad. That's just to cite but one of many issues that occur in cross-sim "cooperation" which is more about the few having loads of influence over the many.
The confabulations that you concoct are going to have all sorts of elaborate shit in them. No doubt it will be just as elaborate, sectarian, and fraught with in-fighting as Neualtenberg itself has been. In fact, I guess I've never joined what was supposed to be a fascinating virtual experiment, or felt I could tell RL political scientists I know about it, because I'm embarrased by it. It's a sectarian hellhole filled with half-educated nutters. The persona of Ursula is a good example of how someone who is a mediocrity in RL can become an unparalleled horror in a virtual world not demanding any RL credentials or checks and balances.
I can just see a confederation created by 10 groups, for example. People will feel that they are all getting along and it's all good. But then it only takes one Ursula, or one sim owner who gets tired, like Sudane, and the entire thing is threatened. Coups, counter-coups, dramas -- and whoops, I lost my land AND my buildings.
Bitter experience in SL has taught me that unless I own the land, the view from it, and the buildings on it, I do not have a Second Life. Period. Full stop. No touchy-feely group-tools. No understandings and notecards. Ownership is 10/10ths of the law in SL. I have a whole lot of nothing otherwise. These brutal -- but necessary -- facts of ownership in SL trump even RL concepts, sadly (in RL, a squatter could squat on certain abandoned land in some states and be assigned ownership in time).
In RL, something like my father's company can lease a building they don't own on land they don't own for 50 years and never worry for a second that anything but a bank would take it away from them -- there is contract law, courts, a system -- the press if all else fails. RL has sudden and unfair seizures of property; they are nothing, nothing, NOTHING at all like SL, where at a whim, a builder can demolish and entire sim you spent months and hard-earned money working on.
Unfortunately, sim-ownership dictates the reality of law in virtuality, just like server ownership dictates the inherent unjustness of our system, and the inherent bantustan-like nature of our "self-governance".
Playing along with this vicious system is to institutionalize the server-side/client-side apartheid that game companies maintain without contest. Our rent -- our labour -- our world -- our imaginaton -- doesn't count in this scheme except as a PR come-on.
But if we are to play this bantustan or Tito's self-management role-play out, we need to make a basic list of restraints on sim owners and a basic list of issues we feel only LL could fairly and properly be adjudicating. They want as little as possible to do with any of it.
But I simply refuse to buy this bullshit about how "well they are software engineers, not babysitters or world managers".
Um, they created a world and they need to *take responsiblity for it*. These "only software managers" have entire departments now called "Community" and "Governance" so please -- spare me the bullshit about how they are "only software managers".
It now has 2 million signups and some 150,000 or so real people in it. That means its worldness and the need to manage it is now acute. Either they outsource it to some community management company or they take some care in turning over the reins to the residents in some rational way with due process that doesn't corrupt the entire process.
So at a minimum, we must agree that the Lindens must not name inworld stewards like resmods: no Linden-appointed governors, courts, judges, mediators; no explicit or implicit endorsement of any resident or group involved in self-governance. No celebrating of Neultenberg and Gor in Second Opinion and in gushy news press releases. Neutrality. They want "net neutrality" -- on this, too, they must be as neutral as distilled water.
NO RESIDENT GOVERNMENT means NO RESIDENT GOVERNMENT. That's what most people want. That's what they should get.
For me, any Neualtenberg or son-of-Neualtenberg is not the place from which any study of governance must be mounted. It's corrupted and tainted and a poisoned chalice. Some may wish to grasp this handful of nettles in the belief that people already spent all this time doing a government and talking about it endlessly. I would urge them to give it a pass. This is a group that began as hard-left socialists and now end with a right-wing conservative running the show -- typical of a lot of socialist situations, I might add, incapable of creating balance.
I could just as rightly insist that Ravenglass Rentals with its rule of law in notecards is a place to study governance -- but I don't inflict silly things like that on people.
The whole thing that needs "study" is the reality of what should be presented to the Lindens NOW before they are *done coding* (duh), not endless peering at highly flawed models made before their governance system was installed.
The Law Society got off to a very sectarian and biased start by studying Gor and studying Neualtenberg and populating the forums with gushing praise of these hugely, hugely dubious models for governance on the hard left and hard right.
What I'm hoping is that the now-inactive but still functioning SL Home Page could be the forums for discussing these issues. Why? Because the person running them isn't in any demonstrable interest group, and his waning interest in SL is in fact a plus in terms of serving as a neutral basis for a forum.
Ashcroft, your ridiculous infringement on the right of anyone to complain about unjust banning lets me know at a very early stage what a tyrant you are. You are absolutely ridiculous. People can and should contest unjust land bans as they contribute distinctly to ruiniing the enjoyment of Second Life. Some people are banned for completely stupid and specious reasons from entire continents and cannot enjoy any of their stores or concerts or even visit their friends who TP them to those continents. The idiocy abounds.
If the governance system will HINGE ON banning and muting then there must be recourse to UNBAN or else the essence of the punishment becomes a dictatorship.
>The reality is that none of us have any more right to be on somebody else's land than we have to post on somebody else's web forum
This is basically a flawed concept because we are not on a web forums; we're in an interactive 3-d social world with emulated property and a public commons. Your technical literalism in affirming the right of code-as-law here to on/off switch people's rights is HUGELY suspect. Of course people have a right to contest this, and often successfully overturn unfair bans through mediation or appeal. That alone lets us know you are utterly full of shit.
I move to have another discussion group created entirely if Ashcroft is not going to accept basic principles of avatars' rights other than some narrowly, technical code-as-law approach.
Seeing this group fill up with Kendra Bancroft, an Ursula-proxy and harridan all on her own, and Scout Detritus, the Griefer of Ravenglass, I can see it heading the way of Metaverse Justice Watch. Ho-hum.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 24, 2006 at 04:04 PM
Ahh, so you think that the answer is for Linden Lab to get *more* involved in resident disputes, do you, and spend *more* time and money sorting out "Jonny Random Griefer called me names last Friday" and "He said he'd build me a house and he didn't!" issues from millions of users? Even though you don't trust them to spot justice at five paces? Well, good luck in persuading LL to do that.
Meanwhile, in the world of the sane, I hope to be developing ideas about tools that are designed to stop just the sort of problems (over-reliance on trust, the possibility of coups d'etat, destruction of buildings, etc.) that you are raving about.
Posted by: Ashcroft Burnham | December 24, 2006 at 04:59 PM
No, I think the answer is having some significant civic movements fight both the Lindens, who intrude too much AND more importantly, the aggressive tyrants who appear in our midst, and get both the submit to the rule of law.
I've outlined the areas that I think LL does need to maintain control over (and frankly they will anyway). I've called for a robust discussion on what restraints should be called for to put in place not only on residents themselves aspiring to power over others, but on Lindens themselves.
The first step in that movement was to get them to publish their ethics guidelines. Well, we got something vaguely approximating it -- it's honoured more in the breach sometimes, and enormous vagueness and wierdness still abounds around the whole resident2Linden issue.
That's right, caricature my position falsely, imagining that I'm interested in she-said/he-said disputes, which I'm never interested in. Those disputes are solved by the parties involved hired thugs, absent any sort of normal government and separation of powers and rule of law and normal court system, eh? And more to the point, they are solved by mute/ban/eject/no push/no object.
And coming soon: no-see-'ems.
I'm not raving about destruction of buildings and coup d'etats; I'm soberly recounting the history of Newoldhat that you can't seem to remember yourself. And you know what they say about those who refuse to study the past.
Nope, I'm the one who will be working in the sane groups with those who are determined to prevent people with overweening ambitions from taking over.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 24, 2006 at 06:19 PM
Just an FYI. Ashcroft came to sl-forums back in Sept talking about his views on SL politics.
You can see that discussion here:
http://sl-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=867&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
Not a shameless plug, I just thought it may bring something to the present discussion.
Posted by: Macphisto Angelus | December 24, 2006 at 07:58 PM
Yeah, I recall that. With typical *modest*, I might add, too, he wrote this astounding drivel:
"This morning, in a quaint little medeival Bavarian-themed island sim somewhere in the West of the grid, a group of people met to discuss, and then agreed upon, a proposal. It had been discussed and debated for the previous two months, and, although had caused some controversy, had garnered considerable support. It was a proposal which many hope will revolutionise parts of SecondLife, and bring law to a hitherto unruly world. The place was Neufreistadt (formally Neualtenburg), and the proposal was the creation of a professional judiciary, and, separately, a means of bringing that judiciary to the wider echalons of SecondLife"
Why do people think they can get away with this arrant drivel?
The "wider echalons of SecondLife" (sic2) are not in *need* of young Ashcroft's blatherings.
This stuff is really awful. The pomposity would be great for the theater. But this is our real-life second-life stuff he is trying to get his grimy paws on.
Please. Never, ever, buy this Bolshevik stuff out of Nberg that speaks of "socialism in one sim". They ALWAYS have aspirations to take over the grid, and they ALWAYS need to be strangled in their cradle, just like the RL Bolshevism should have been.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 24, 2006 at 09:18 PM
BTW, in addition to the self-importance and bad spelling, I note that presumption that the rest of SL is "unruly". It's not. It's just not under HIS rule.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 24, 2006 at 09:19 PM
Don't confuse Ash with the rest of the CDS, or even the rest of Neufreistadt. Many of us do NOT have designs to rule the grid, but rather to find the best ways that democratic communities can govern themselves in virtual worlds. True, most of us want to see democracy spread, but we don't picture ourselves at the top of an overarching democratic system. If you check out the Nstadt forums, you will see there is also considerable debate over the judiciary situation. Don't paint with too broad a brush.
Posted by: Redaktisto Noble | December 24, 2006 at 11:16 PM
Oooh lots of interesting points here on this discussion :)
So when Bolshevism is dead, and is replaced by a more conservative approach, it's even more dangerous because people have decided one thing in favour of another? :) Democracy is *supposed* to be about rotation of positions in power. And beware, the next ones winning the elections in Neufreistadt might be the Libertarians... at least for a while.
Is it so horrible that citizens sometimes vote more to the left and sometimes more to the right? I mean, isn't that supposed to happen when different people with different ideas, goals, and concepts, are given the right to vote and to form their political affiliations in freedom, without restrictions? My history books tell me that Bolshevists were not so keen on letting their power be placed on other hands... but your own history books might tell a different story. Let's hear it!
All young democracies tend to embrace multipartidarism at their start. Some, like Italy, still have dozens of tiny parties in huge coligations, to this very same say, after decades of democracy. The notion that the "natural" way for democracies to evolve is to have just a bi-party system, both in the centre, one slightly to the left and another slightly to the right, is something that evolves over *time* — a very long amount of time; certainly not 2 years, but more likely two *decades* at least. It's nothing that should be "imposed" on people — they are *supposed* to be free to chose who does represent them better. And this is simply what we're seeing. Using the principle of democratic rotativity as an attack on democracy seems sadly to miss the mark entirely.
Democracy is mostly about learning to compromise. And this means that the most extreme activists — conservative and radical alike — will need to appeal to the broader masses, who are usually around in the centre. Over enough time, they will merge together, be less radical in their ideologies (or forfeit these completely), and join forces on the groups dominating the centre — where most of the voters will be, again, given enough time and enough people.
So it's hardly a great feat to predict that in the end there will be just the "centre", like what happened on most democracies. Yelling and screaming and waving the "Bolsheviks here!" sign will not speed up the process. Citizens need time to understand the difference between the radical extremes and the compromise and stability of the moderate centre. But in a democracy, you don't *tell* people that; you just record their votes, and patiently wait for a degree of maturity which will come by seeing what systems work and what don't. Most people, when getting older (in all possible senses of the word), will aim for more stability and less radicalisms. Marking individuals here and there as the epitoms of radicalism is just plain ostracism and witch-hunting; most voters simply don't want those extremes, if they are given a chance to vote otherwise. Democracies are about giving them the *option* to try the extremes out, and voting that way if they wish, but removing the extremists from office if they don't behave as expected... and going to the moderates on the next election. Just take a look at the recent cases in Austria and Belgium...
But Tyken wrote: "Never should people be allowed to form their own governments nor enforce their own rules beyond who can or can not enter their land or be a part of their groups."
Oh my — Tyken, for your sake, I hope that in RL you live under a democracy — a country that has at its own core the mandate to promote the right of a people's self-determination and giving them the freedom of choice of what model of government they want to live in. It has been a long time since I saw someone publicly stating in such a clear way that one should simply forget the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and forbid people the right to create their own governments in freedom. Prokofy, see what I mean when I claim that "most" people in SL simply abhor democracy and what it *means*? It frightens me, because it show that, these days, so many people simply don't give any value to what democracy is all about. Some political theorists claim that one of the weaknesses of democracies is giving people the freedom to publicly encourage others to overthrow that self-same democracy — it's actually the only political system that allows it, since it's also the only one that ensures freedom of expression as an unalienable right. One of democracy's strongest pillars also becomes its Achilles' heel.
Tyken, all I can say is that you should be happy to live under a democracy that allows you the freedom to encourage the end of democracies and the end of personal freedoms. No other political system would allow you that freedom. Be glad. You wouldn't be on Second Life — a product of one of the most advanced democracies of the world — if it weren't otherwise.
So before encouraging others to remove fundamental human rights — the right to associate freely, the right to have legitimate governments elected by the people, the right to vote and be elected to speak as a representative in government — just remember a bit of Humankind's history. Only in the past few hundred years have these rights become important — to the point that governments have actively defended them; only in the few last decades have over a third of all inhabitants of the Earth living under democratic countries. This was a long fight over millenia, and the results seem to be positive — more people live in countries where they have more and more rights, and, as a side-effect, the countries they live in are the most peaceful ones. There is really no turning back to the evidence.
Thirdly, it amuses me personally that Prokofy claims that Ashcroft is "Gwyn's proxy". While that is certainly a minor insult to Ashcroft, and a hilarious one to me, readers of the Neufreistadt forums can clearly see that I disagree with Ashcroft in *essential* aspects (not just minor, trivial ones) of his own interpretation on how a legal system, once written down, should be implemented. There are far more than "tiny details" at stake here, but it takes hours to go through each and every one of these, so I'll spare you the trouble — you're very welcome to join the Neufreistadt forums and go through the controversies there (no one seems to agree with anyone else — and in spite of everything, things go ahead). In essence, however, it can be easily shown that in several areas I don't support Ashcroft publicly, and that I have even raised some serious questioning on the way he proposes to implement his own interpretation of the rules. Anyone knowing us both could only smile — we're viewed at being on opposite points on a triangle of opinions, the third one being people disagreeing with both of us :)
Does that mean that I oppose Ashcroft's theories in principle? No, just in practice. The principles are sound — any legal system (and RL or SL are irrelevant; there is no "magic" that turns SL into something different just because someone wishes it ardently to be different. We're still human beings in SL) needs to be approved by the community that will live under that system; legal systems should have independence, but systems of checks and balances need to be devised to control that independence, since people running the system are not perfect, but regular human beings prone to error and bias; and more important than that, the system is more important than the people ("rule of law"), which is usually translated as "no one is above the law" — but it's the people, through a social contract, that establish the system (and not the other way round). These are the points that tie me to Ashcroft, and I think I can claim that we both are strong believers in those ideals. We both also believe — a belief that stems from research and scientific facts — that only a democratic system can allow a fair and impartial legal system to exist. Anything else can become fair only by *chance*.
Yelling at the Lindens to have them implement the "perfect" legal system is totally contrary to our beliefs. Nobody wants an autocracy without checks and balances by the residents to establish *their* legal system over the residents. It's naive, counter-productive, and even a blatant lie to claim otherwise — the notion that "Lindens can be influenced to provide a fair legal system" is totally contrary to the beliefs of either Ashcroft, myself, and any of our respective supporters. It can be demonstrated that it's simply impossible, and thus, claiming otherwise, is just feeding upon the naiveté of others. Linden Lab can be influenced to create *a* legal system, of course (and they certainly are prone to influences!). But it's never the legal system that either Ashcroft or myself want — since it will be one deriving power from Linden Lab, and we don't want an autocratic form of SL-wide government. Ever. We'll fight — with words, since that's the only "weapon" we have — these autocratic forms with our strength and passion; but mostly by also showing how it is *possible* to establish a *democratic* system that allows justice to be dealt *fairly*. Locally. And then the residents can compare and see for themselves where they prefer to live.
The "last-resort" argument of anyone claiming to believe in democratic ideals is always to point at one of the many weaknesses of Second Life — ie. "all the talk of democracy is fine, but once the Estate Owner pulls the plug, democracy ends".
That is such a silly, weak, infantile argument that I'm amazed why people still employ it. Everybody knows the limitations of Second Life; even with the new ToS, allowing people to share passwords of Estate Owners, as well as shared PayPal accounts, we all know the limitations and weaknesses of SL in that regard. But using the argument that a *nation* in SL exists only as long as the Estate Owner allows it to exist is plain narrow-mindedness — which in some circles would be called "stupid". If the Estate Owner has an attack of insanity and bans everybody from the land, all it takes is to buy new islands and place the whole buildings there again. It's a *technicality*, not a "problem". Neufreistadt, for instance, was already rebuilt three times — it takes a lot of of time, but it can be easily done, and with the new modern scripts that can rez whole sims at a time, it becomes easier and easier every time. And once the concept of a "virtual nation" emerges — something that is more than pretty buildings and individuals paying land fees — having the land temporarily unavailable for a month until Linden Lab sets up a new pair of islands becomes a "nuisance" — again, *not* a problem.
Thus, when Ashcroft, for instance, campaigns for "better tools for self-governance", one of them is simply co-ownership of land. Not "grouped land", which is a different concept, and a purely "technical" one. Co-ownership is, for instance, allowing, at the Linden Lab level, several people to be listed as Estate Owners of the *same* land. Or having a common "bank account" which can be used for paying land fees. Or a method to backup a whole sim and restore it quickly, in the case something happens to the Estate Owner (say, getting hit by a truck, without giving out the passwords). These are ultimately the sort of tools that would be asked from Linden Lab on a first round of discussions.
One can argue that these tools do not have the slightest importance for non-democratic forms of government in SL. I do agree — autocracies don't need those tools. Still, the right to create a "pressure group" to demand equal rights for a minority of residents who just happen to look at their own community under a different light is certainly within the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Like 2 million of SL residents have the right to live under the autocratic system of their preference, and lobby for their status quo, 65 or so residents have the right to demand better tools for *democratic* structures inside their own jurisdictions.
Don't cook up new conspiracies, Prokofy. Your soup is just hot water with some rotten eggs half-boiled in it — there is no *substance*. Claiming that "oh, Ashcroft PRETENDS to want these tools locally, but IN FACT, he wants to RULE THE WHOLE WORLD and thus HE MUST BE STOPPED AT ALL COSTS" is childish, insane, paranoid, delusional, and sincerely, I would expect much more convincing arguments to support your newest conspiracy theory. Just yelling out loud will not help you much with it. It just means that "yelling out loud" and repeating things over and over again is the last resort of someone who has no more arguments to support yet another conspiracy theory. In effect, you might try to convince your audience of something quite different: that Ashcroft (among many, of course) is pushing for SL to become a *democracy* where every resident has a vote and a right to decide upon the way they want to live in this synthetic world. Wow, how nasty of Evil Ashcroft, the corrupt leader of a minority who fights for a democratic world!
I find it amusing. One of our distinguished citizens — aged 74 — has been promoting democracy for most of his lifetime in RL. He's a Nobel prize nominee. Ashcroft does the same in SL. He's labeled as a World Conspirator, a Bolshevik (or a Bolshevik puppet) or a "conservative" (depends on what suits the mood of the moment better), or, worse, a Nobody, "just some kid in the UK with a lot of aggressive hormones and a lot of spare time". Well, I imagine that our distinguished citizen would laugh at this and remember his own experience in the 1950s when he was also "just a kid" promoting democracy. Wow, I never thought the fight for democracy would be so hard :) I'm glad I'm 37, and thus probably have to be labeled as a "housewife of a socialist European country with nothing else to do with her spare time" since I sadly can't claim to be a "kid" any more. Well, yesterday I was called "Euro trash" by a newbie :) so now I expect anything...
So, Prokofy, start to back up your claims with some hard facts and actions. You claim that you want more transparency and democratic methods of establishing things in Second Life. So show us your cards. When were the last elections in Ravenglass that put you in the role of Overlord of your tenants? When will the next round of elections take place there? When will you provide moderation facilities in Ravenglass, under an independent body that is not under your control, and that will have the power of enforcement? When will your tenants be able to vote on the rules *they* want on their land, and not the rules *you* have set up for them?
Your answer will very likely be: "NEVER, because Ravenglass is NOT a democracy but a BUSINESS".
I rest my case.
Now you can accuse me of Bolshevism again, just because I defend the right of people to establish their own democratic governments with their own legal systems, either in SL or RL... :)
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | December 24, 2006 at 11:49 PM
Oh dear, Redakistso, are you a member of that set-up? You really should have mentioned that very salient fact in your very gushing suck-up coverage of this group. Ugh.
That's really unfair. Is SLNN going to be the organ of this outfit? Ugh ugh ugh.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 24, 2006 at 11:54 PM
I'll answer you in full when I have more time to read this Gwyn, but I haven't presented any half-cooked soup of paranoia here -- it's actually a pretty apt diagnosis of the situation. One kid of very opinionated views has formed a group with himself as sole officer -- I remember when little Lordfly did the same thing. A dead giveaway about someone's intents.
One of the more touchingly naive things you've written is this: "He's a Nobel prize nominee."
You *do* understand that such a statement is meaningless, correct? I mean, I could become a Nobel prize nominee tomorrow; so could you. We could have our groups in Second Life nominate ourselves by writing to the Nobel committee. We could then go around writing press releases about ourselves as Nobel nominees.
There is no such thing, and people who do that or call themselvse such things are horrendously naive and pretentious. The real Nobel Prize Committe does not work through a nominations system. They work in secret, at their own discretion. What matters in life are Nobel Prize WINNERS not NOMINEES.
The other hugely laughable thing is that I was familiar with the works for Ruml for years and read them assiduously, recommended them to Salzie, and she recommended them to you. That's how you "discovered" him -- through me. And it's great he's on board. It's too bad that what he is presenting right now seems to me to be too dense for SL. I personally would like to come to his seminars, but he sets the bar too high when he insists on people reading all the essays before you can speak. I'm someone who actually has read the essays, but I often find myself too busy to come.
There are many things wrong with what you are saying, and you can't rest your case with me. Indeed, I bet I've hit a home run here by getting you to turn out twice today and write these wordy screeds.
I oppose every bit of it. You are indeed making Ashcroft scurry around and do the dirty work of organizing people precisely so that you can let someone with whom you agree "in principle" but not "in practice" take the hits for dealing with people and organizing them.
The way someone who is genuine about making a group concerned with governance would work is by holding OPEN MEETINGS. IN PUBLIC.
And forming a group of equal-rights officers. Not just himself. And not just in his sect, FriesWithThat.
He doesn't meet with sectarians on his sim and pre-cook it for 2 months and then announce this group that has precooked something on SL Forums. That's a sure sign of trouble.
People who are sincere about not trying to take over and create something even-handed meet regularly, in public, and publish the transcripts. Like I do. It's slower going and people constantly hobble the effort by trying to pull the blanket on themselvse. But at least they build into the process something that looks like the result -- democratic processes by consent.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 25, 2006 at 12:05 AM
I don't know Ashcroft from Adam and therefore I have no happiness about him taking upon himself to decide the political future of SL.
I also have to wonder if all these corporations that are spending money on sims, builds, promotion,etc know that the Lindens are passing off the security of their servers to a handful of people's thoughts?
Why are we allowing LL to do this? I don't pay Ashcroft my monthly dues nor does the big corporations, Anshe Chung or anyone else for that matter. LL owns the servers. How is it we sit by and let them push off the responsibility they themselves should hold. SL is a service they provide. They should be responsible for it. LL increases prices and decreases service at a warp speed rate. I wish the prized corporations they woo would study what is happening some. I don't think Nissan, IBM and the like would be happy that the tools to combat griefers are being trusted to subscribers and cast off by the service provider. The tail is wagging the dog here.
Posted by: Macphisto Angelus | December 25, 2006 at 01:10 AM
What I've noticed is that these big corporations, which have entrusted the care and feeding of their sims to various metaversal consulting companies, aren't terribly interested in problems like lag, blight, and griefing. They don't live here. They are absentee landlords. Even their own events aren't managed very well -- you have to wonder how it could happen that during a press conference even on Anshe's home base, that it could take so long to get rid of griefers. (Of course I know that 10-15 minutes can easily go by as you attempting to deal with people who keep flying back to neighbouring parcels, etc.
It's a lesson always to turn off every conceivable thing you can think of -- push, objects, creation, scripts, etc. etc. It does hamper your event -- nobody can rez objects, etc. But at least you seal yourself off from griefing a bit better.
I think we need to push for recognition of this basic principle:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech"
and rewording to fit this situation, say
"Linden Lab shall make no law respecting an establishment of any resident or residents' group, or prohibiting the free exercise therefor; or abriding the freedom of speech one one's property.
That's probably how we'd have to limit it -- only being able to claim freedom of speech on our own servers (but then how to deal with hate speech? -- LL could say, oh, eject the people, your problem).
They'd be responsible then for curbing speech on Linden land.
But having a principle affirmed that LL will not bless or establish any resident or residents' group under any guise will be absolutely vital. And if they don't hear this really loud, frequently, and clear, they will install it.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 25, 2006 at 01:50 AM
Good job Gwen, immediately upon addressing my post, you head for the irrelevant. We're not talking about RL, in which my democracy is all well and good as far as one can be expected to be satisfied with the current elect - bleh. Don't even begin to lecture me about how grateful I should be in RL; it's just not the subject of discussion. I by no means abhor democracy, nor do I wish to prevent people from forming government. However, if you expect me not to want a say in HOW or what type of government is created, I call bullshit. I'm not forbidding anyone from doing anything - I'm a part of the process of what will eventually effect me, so I'm just giving my opinion.
Also, this world is not like the real world. It's more like a kindergarten. You might say there's no 'magic' that separates the two, but there really is. Anonymity and the following lack of responsibility or shame are exactly that magic. But hey, we like our anonymity, we like being able to get away with what we want. It's part of internet culture now, everyone's doing it, maaaang.
It's interesting how you accuse Prokofy of not allowing democracy on his own land, but expect that multitudes of other people in similar situations might want what you plan on getting for them. Considering that so very many residents are indeed business owners, do they really want other people governing their land with them? Mostly, I'd expect they just want more tools for enforcement within their own jurisdiction. Even for landowners who rent out to other residents or sell estate land, I'm sure they'd like to let residents solve disputes locally through some judicial process, but still, they have to remain in control in the end, right? It's never a truly democratic situation, inherently.
Posted by: Tyken Hightower | December 25, 2006 at 01:55 AM
>>Considering that so very many residents are indeed business owners, do they really want other people governing their land with them?
I certainly do not.
I have no issue with Ashcroft's ideals on a sim he is elected to enforce them on. On the entire grid though? That is another thing entirely.
If SL is truly to be viewed as a world wide platform then a handful of people making decisions and suggestions for the whole is ludacris.
Posted by: Macphisto Angelus | December 25, 2006 at 02:38 AM
Gwyn, you really are over the top with this stuff, and it's really hugely unacceptable.
Tyken said, "Never should people be allowed to form their own governments nor enforce their own rules beyond who can or can not enter their land or be a part of their groups."
He's got a literal point here, not about RL or the UDHR, which unfortunately we can't invoke in a place that is a game company's server, but just a point about what we can and cannot control. I said the same thing. We can't control beyond our borders -- thought this distinction is eroding with the ban link lists.
You go off on a total outrageous sidetrack which has no bearing on our immediate problem: your stalking horse Ashcroft, and his desire to trump other people's suggestions for tools by invoking Neualtenberg's bloody past and Neufriestat's very dubious present.
Dubious, because I don't care if it has 50 or 500 people in it, it doesn't represent anything -- not even itself! How can it with such anonymity, lack of information, and even fair play? Judging from the few meetings I've seen at FriesWithThat, I'd have to say that some of the people even *in* it haven't been so happy with the political process.
Just because you've been role-playing a government all these years doesn't mean you get to run the entire world for the rest of us in any fashion.
>Democracy is *supposed* to be about rotation of positions in power. And beware, the next ones winning the elections in Neufreistadt might be the Libertarians... at least for a while.
I just don't buy into the whole thing of FriesWithThat, as you can see. I don't see that it has any viability or validity. If it did. I might join it. But it doesn't. It's almost like a parody of itself. A socialist sim lurches around, has a coup, then falls under the sway of conservatives, and the socialists then hold bunches of events every week trying to recruit new members and the whole thing lurches forward again, peppered by tedious and rancorous debates about the Scientific Council.
I think it's because the entire thing was conceived as a Linden project with utopian, leftist ideas, Ulrika left her stamp on it as did Kendra, it attracted what it attracted, and always had a certain profile then as being FIC, hard-left on positions like hatred of land barons, and riven with its own sectarian splits.
That it now exists as two split faction/islands -- or is it three? lets us know that it is unstable, and sectarian. Starting a country off as a Linden creature with a free sim is going to yield the results we see.
I think if a body politic could get started that a) had no Lindens in it, hidden or open (I'm told there are at least two-three Linden alts who live in Neufreistat, hmmm? What's THAT rumour all about?) b) had no basis in socialism, which creates unfreedom; c) wasn't somebody's free sim project or had only one owner and d) was open to the public to get started from the beginning, we might see happier results.
But why must the rest of us go through the painful assays of making a fake government on one sim just to have a say in governance of our world??? Hell, no.
>Is it so horrible that citizens sometimes vote more to the left and sometimes more to the right? I mean, isn't that supposed to happen when different people with different ideas, goals, and concepts, are given the right to vote and to form their political affiliations in freedom, without restrictions?
What sort of rhetorical bullshit is this, Gwyn? The fact that a society LURCHES from the left to right so sharply, having factions, and fights, and coups, and struggles the whole time, let's us know there isn't really a body politic with some basic consensus about the very nature of the republic. In RL, various types of governments come to power, sure. But you don't have far left one year and far right next without some real explanation.
And the explanation here seems to be only about a power vacuum left after Ulrika's demise, and you being too busy. That's about it.
>My history books tell me that Bolshevists were not so keen on letting their power be placed on other hands... but your own history books might tell a different story. Let's hear it!
I don't get what this point is about at all. Bolsheviks seized power -- there were like putchists, terrorists, in how they did this. It is well documented, especially now, with more archives available.
>All young democracies tend to embrace multipartidarism at their start. Some, like Italy, still have dozens of tiny parties in huge coligations, to this very same say, after decades of democracy.
Would you stop it with the fake Old Europe worldly-wise bullshit, Gwyn? It's REALLY unattractive. THere's now LAW that says you have to have two parties or lots of parties. But what you have is soup to nuts, not lunch. It was never formed by a free, democratic open process.
The Lindens didn't say, "Let's see if we can get resident governance going across the sims" back when it was smaller -- like they do in ATITD. Nothing was ever established but conspiracies with their FIC and rampant anarchy everywhere else.
They said, "Let's give Ulrika a sim as the only winner in the contest with no applicants and help her pump up the socialist vision we as California utopians love best."
I hope you can accept that is the reality -- because it IS the reality and you know it. If these leftist Americans then picked up a few sectarian Europeans like yourself down the road, that doesn't make a body politic -- it makes soup to nuts.
In the RL countries I've worked in, democracy gets started by groups first; civic movements next; constituent assemblies/congresses of democratic forces/people's parliaments of some source. You can't start with a full-blown government machinery tooled in its fine points by fancy American lawyers and British barristers. That's absurd. In order to have a democracy, first you have people, not machinery. People gathering in a Congress or meeting of some sort -- and sometimes over months or years. That's the history of every democracy in the book.
Only if there were a Constituent Assembly of Sim Parliament or some such entity that had real participation and fairness could we consider that some entity existed which could discuss and debate and present to Lindens ideas. But...we don't have that. In the absence of a proto-legislature, we're being served up harsh executive authority.
>The notion that the "natural" way for democracies to evolve is to have just a bi-party system, both in the centre, one slightly to the left and another slightly to the right, is something that evolves over *time* — a very long amount of time; certainly not 2 years, but more likely two *decades* at least. It's nothing that should be "imposed" on people — they are *supposed* to be free to chose who does represent them better. And this is simply what we're seeing. Using the principle of democratic rotativity as an attack on democracy seems sadly to miss the mark entirely.
I don't know WHAT THE FUCK this is about Gwyn, except some cheap anti-American bullshit. I just got finished saying that time is needed, and not time for YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS to work up a government model on your sim, but for people to hear what the issues are, debate them, and see what they want out of this exercise.
As usual, the Lindens made an announcement, and then didn't come clean with their real plans. They made it sound like it was "under discussion". Sure...by them, because they decide, not them.
All they do is see how painful it is and how much people scream, and adjust slightly. So frankly, the job has to be for us to make it painful for them, too. That is, not to let them get away with some utter piece of bullshit like appointing YOU and YOUR FRIENDS as regents, stewards, quislings, or to bless your model.
I don't hear you saying that, oh, of course not, we dont' pretend to have a model for everybody. Instead, I hear you spinning your wheels trying to justify this government RP on your sim as a model, and trying to lecture me and hector me on the ABCs of politics and say, gosh, we can't have a 2-party system, Prokofy. That's just insulting -- especially to someone who often votes for a third party in a country where it has little chance of succeeding.
We're not IN parties. We're not IN parliaments. Because the Lindens are not willing to work with a parliament -- they are only willing to create tools. It's a sick situation where we have no rights, but we have the leverage of social power and our tier.
>Democracy is mostly about learning to compromise. And this means that the most extreme activists — conservative and radical alike — will need to appeal to the broader masses, who are usually around in the centre.
Uhhhhhh where is the appeal to the masses? Only after you've cooked and fixed your plans for two months THEN wheeled them out -- with Lindens in your midst and behind the doors nodding their heads in approval?
You're trying desperately to portray me as a kook, an extremist, a nutter, a tinfoil hatter. But that's silly, and only reveals you to be the cunning extremist in sheep's clothing.
I'm no extremist; I am a liberal; I'm calling for due process here; and raising very, very basic stuff, like "Let's have a group where Ashcroft isn't the only officer" or "Let's try to make a conference of people interested in governance that isn't just all based on Neualtenberg".
You have long been laying tracks to take over, with Thinkers, with many things you do -- trying to influence the basic warp and woof of the world. I'm puzzled why you have such aggressive ambitions, but what I do have to say is that you utterly dissemble about them, and the way you most often do that is to somehow accuse me of being the same way.
>Over enough time, they will merge together, be less radical in their ideologies (or forfeit these completely), and join forces on the groups dominating the centre — where most of the voters will be, again, given enough time and enough people.
If we were in a normal society, this might not happen, but in the accelerated hothouse of SL, there is this personalty or that personality. As in a country like Russia or Chile making the transition to democracy, there are tribes, or warloards, or "teams" with just a strong leader and a following -- not anything so coherent as a party yet.
>So it's hardly a great feat to predict that in the end there will be just the "centre", like what happened on most democracies.
Oh, there's no guarantee of that. Where's the centre in the US? It's supposed to be a liberal democracy, but it has lurched hard to the right in its national politics. These notions are based on Old Europe, not the rest of the world.
>Yelling and screaming and waving the "Bolsheviks here!" sign will not speed up the process.
Excuse me Gwyn, but I'm dead serious here. What we do have here is Bolshevism. We have a few people hijacking a process. We have one fucktard taking it upon himself to make a high-profile group where he is the sole officer (imagine what YOU would say if I did that!!!) and where he goes around pompously issuing manifestos and inviting people calculated to annoy or play some cunning role. I think it's thoroughly discredited.
There's only one thing to do and that is have 5 or some reasonable number of equal rights officers and work out procedure of the group itself before you arrogate yourself to running SL!
>Citizens need time to understand the difference between the radical extremes and the compromise and stability of the moderate centre.
Right, and we didn't get that time with your little grouplet did we, Gwyn? It stewed for 2 months mainly in secret, and then rolls out and says fakely, "We're here to study -- hey, just in time for the Lindens to bless us and for us to persuade them to change the tools!"
Suspect, suspect, suspect.
>But in a democracy, you don't *tell* people that; you just record their votes, and patiently wait for a degree of maturity which will come by seeing what systems work and what don't.
Like...a group where there is one officer? Like...a group of you all plotting behind the scenes and having intense discussions no one else can follow? Like...your insistence on branding the issue of governance to be firmly emanating from Nberg? Ugh ugh ugh.
>Most people, when getting older (in all possible senses of the word), will aim for more stability and less radicalisms. Marking individuals here and there as the epitoms of radicalism is just plain ostracism and witch-hunting; most voters simply don't want those extremes, if they are given a chance to vote otherwise.
Listen to yourself sometimes Gwyn. You are a pompous windbag. An example of an extermist is Ashcroft. I'm not the extremist. I object to extremism, which is why I object to one already proven, demonstrable pain-in-the-ass kid running this entire thing. I don't see someone thoughtful and inclusive. I see an aggressive, testosterone-driven asshole trying to take over. Nobody elected Ashcroft in the rest of SL; did you even elect him in Nberg?
You don't form groups this way by having one person make it and invite others. You announce publicly that you think such a group should be made and invite people to come who care about governance in SL. It has to be as inclusive as possible.
For example, if you wanted to deal with the various communities across SL, and try to work out some common denominator that they'd like to see, you'd have to talk to everyone from michi Lumin to Magnum Serpentine to Prokofy Neva. Yes, indeedy. And don't forget...Anshe Chung.
>Democracies are about giving them the *option* to try the extremes out, and voting that way if they wish, but removing the extremists from office if they don't behave as expected... and going to the moderates on the next election.
This outlandish and juvenile notion of democracy sounds like what somebody in a country that had been under fascism for 30 years and relatively recently emerged into a tenuous democracy would say, Gwyn. Two can play at the game of trying to ascribe national origins to people's SL views of politics.
>Just take a look at the recent cases in Austria and Belgium...
Like...these are things to emulate in SL? Little European countries with wealthy classes and an influx of poor guestworkers, still not done with their Nazi pasts?
>Prokofy, see what I mean when I claim that "most" people in SL simply abhor democracy and what it *means*? It frightens me, because it show that, these days, so many people simply don't give any value to what democracy is all about.
Huh? Gwyn, you've gone off your rocker here. Tyken isn't some totalitarian. He's talking literally about the limitations of SL. After all, Robin Linden stated very plainly that LL is not going to create a democracy. They run it as an authoritarian state with themselves as the all-powerful executive. ALL that is going to happen is that we will have 20 bantustans -- that's it. "Home rule" or "self-management".
>Some political theorists claim that one of the weaknesses of democracies is giving people the freedom to publicly encourage others to overthrow that self-same democracy — it's actually the only political system that allows it, since it's also the only one that ensures freedom of expression as an unalienable right.
I don't understand WHY we are getting these long-winded pompous homilies from you Gwyn, about stuff we covered already in 10th grade. Cut out the crap, please. We're talking about much more basic stuff: how to get some basic grounds rules to curb the tendency of the Lindens to pick their pets to do stuff (that means YOU) and how to establish some common denominator of rules inworld for sims that would help people get along.
The issues are going to be rather straightforward -- should everyone join BanLink or not? How can BanLink be appealed? How is BanLink to operate, under what ground rules, i.e. inclusion of first-time offenders? Removal after 30 days of no further offenses? etc.
>You should be happy to live under a democracy that allows you the freedom to encourage the end of democracies and the end of personal freedoms. No other political system would allow you that freedom. Be glad. You wouldn't be on Second Life — a product of one of the most advanced democracies of the world — if it weren't otherwise.
This is such a misplaced lecture against Tyken that I'm really just goggle-eyed. It's stupid and uninformed. We all understand the premise that democracy contains the seeds of its own undoing. But we're not talking about abstractions, nor about RL scenarios.
We're talking about this kid Ashcroft hijacking the topic. It's an Angel Fluffy on the voting tools, people, wake up!
>So before encouraging others to remove fundamental human rights — the right to associate freely, the right to have legitimate governments elected by the people, the right to vote and be elected to speak as a representative in government — just remember a bit of Humankind's history. Only in the past few hundred years have these rights become important — to the point that governments have actively defended them; only in the few last decades have over a third of all inhabitants of the Earth living under democratic countries. This was a long fight over millenia, and the results seem to be positive — more people live in countries where they have more and more rights, and, as a side-effect, the countries they live in are the most peaceful ones. There is really no turning back to the evidence.
This long-winded, ridiculously out of place lecture of truisms is something I can throw back in your face, Gwyn. Where are the rights in Second Life? There aren't any. They have to be fought for, scratched out of the pixelated soil. We don't have even a Magna Carta, or a compact, or even, as I once asked for, public ethics guidelines that prevent Lindens from favouritism or biased prosecution. Favouritism and biased prosecution continue rampantly.
>Thirdly, it amuses me personally that Prokofy claims that Ashcroft is "Gwyn's proxy". While that is certainly a minor insult to Ashcroft, and a hilarious one to me, readers of the Neufreistadt forums can clearly see that I disagree with Ashcroft in *essential* aspects (not just minor, trivial ones) of his own interpretation on how a legal system, once written down, should be implemented.
As noted, you're merely content to have him thrash around and beat up on people like me and wax arrogant and aggressive on forums so that by contrast, you can step in later after the spade-work is done to appear as a "pacifier".
>There are far more than "tiny details" at stake here, but it takes hours to go through each and every one of these, so I'll spare you the trouble — you're very welcome to join the Neufreistadt forums and go through the controversies there (no one seems to agree with anyone else — and in spite of everything, things go ahead). In essence, however, it can be easily shown that in several areas I don't support Ashcroft publicly, and that I have even raised some serious questioning on the way he proposes to implement his own interpretation of the rules.
Right -- another invitation into the highways and byways and mazes of sectarian -- and largely irrelevant -- Nberg politics.
I've preferred field work with actual people and conditions rather than this philosophical onanism myself.
And my field work has merely been about trying to find a few basic rules that would work for everyone, that could encourage freedom on basic things like building and creating, but not create instability or fuel griefing.
>Anyone knowing us both could only smile — we're viewed at being on opposite points on a triangle of opinions, the third one being people disagreeing with both of us :)
Whatever little sectarian bullshit thing this is about, don't let's get snowed by this to see what Gwyn is up to -- having Ashcroft soften up the public for the punch.
>Does that mean that I oppose Ashcroft's theories in principle? No, just in practice. The principles are sound — any legal system (and RL or SL are irrelevant; there is no "magic" that turns SL into something different just because someone wishes it ardently to be different. We're still human beings in SL) needs to be approved by the community that will live under that system; legal systems should have independence, but systems of checks and balances need to be devised to control that independence, since people running the system are not perfect, but regular human beings prone to error and bias; and more important than that, the system is more important than the people ("rule of law"), which is usually translated as "no one is above the law" — but it's the people, through a social contract, that establish the system (and not the other way round). These are the points that tie me to Ashcroft, and I think I can claim that we both are strong believers in those ideals. We both also believe — a belief that stems from research and scientific facts — that only a democratic system can allow a fair and impartial legal system to exist. Anything else can become fair only by *chance*.
These truisms are things that I think most people having this discussion agree upon -- but that's not important. What's important is how they agree about them playing out *in Second Life*. And for me, they start with really basic, basic stuff. No groups with sole officers being a pointed example.
>Yelling at the Lindens to have them implement the "perfect" legal system is totally contrary to our beliefs. Nobody wants an autocracy without checks and balances by the residents to establish *their* legal system over the residents. It's naive, counter-productive, and even a blatant lie to claim otherwise — the notion that "Lindens can be influenced to provide a fair legal system" is totally contrary to the beliefs of either Ashcroft, myself, and any of our respective supporters. It can be demonstrated that it's simply impossible, and thus, claiming otherwise, is just feeding upon the naiveté of others. Linden Lab can be influenced to create *a* legal system, of course (and they certainly are prone to influences!). But it's never the legal system that either Ashcroft or myself want — since it will be one deriving power from Linden Lab, and we don't want an autocratic form of SL-wide government. Ever. We'll fight — with words, since that's the only "weapon" we have — these autocratic forms with our strength and passion; but mostly by also showing how it is *possible* to establish a *democratic* system that allows justice to be dealt *fairly*. Locally. And then the residents can compare and see for themselves where they prefer to live.
This is really a masterwork of Orwellian doublespeak, Gwyn. On the one hand, you seem to speak vehemently against the idea of influencing Lindens. Yet young Ashcroft here has aggressively announced that he will "seek to persuade the Lindens".
Well, even I wouldn't launch the enterprise in that fashion. I wouldn't say "our group should lobby to change the tools our way" as some kind of entitlement spoils system.
I've been saying the job is different: let's identify those areas where we'd wish to have our own governance and areas where it appears they must go on handling the disciplining. They of course may have pre-decided this but I think we need to think through where we will feel in a lurch if abandoned and where we will feel the pinch of oppression.
>The "last-resort" argument of anyone claiming to believe in democratic ideals is always to point at one of the many weaknesses of Second Life — ie. "all the talk of democracy is fine, but once the Estate Owner pulls the plug, democracy ends".
But it's a reality. We've seen too many sims go down. It's a real big flaw in the island model. The group model holding tier to hold a mainland sim is a better model.
>That is such a silly, weak, infantile argument that I'm amazed why people still employ it. Everybody knows the limitations of Second Life; even with the new ToS, allowing people to share passwords of Estate Owners, as well as shared PayPal accounts, we all know the limitations and weaknesses of SL in that regard.
So? The reality is, one person owns the sim and pays the tier -- the others are paying that person their rent. It's a dynamic that makes for certain scenarios.
>But using the argument that a *nation* in SL exists only as long as the Estate Owner allows it to exist is plain narrow-mindedness — which in some circles would be called "stupid".
I'm not aware of any public pledges by Sudane Erato that no matter what happens in FriesWithThat, no matter who or what is elected, no matter what kind of system comes into being, she'll just give it her blessing. She has her own political agenda, too, of course. Is there any kind of contract that would restrain her dumping the sim? CAN there be any kind of contract? She may be lovely and generous and thoughtful, but SL has taught us time and again that when crunch time comes, people bare their fangs for all kinds of reason when cornered.
>If the Estate Owner has an attack of insanity and bans everybody from the land, all it takes is to buy new islands and place the whole buildings there again. It's a *technicality*, not a "problem". Neufreistadt, for instance, was already rebuilt three times — it takes a lot of of time, but it can be easily done, and with the new modern scripts that can rez whole sims at a time, it becomes easier and easier every time. And once the concept of a "virtual nation" emerges — something that is more than pretty buildings and individuals paying land fees — having the land temporarily unavailable for a month until Linden Lab sets up a new pair of islands becomes a "nuisance" — again, *not* a problem.
I don't like this concept of taking on and off islands like gloves. Perhaps your patroness can buy islands and not worry about having lost the past one, or commission buildings and not worry if they are deleted; not everyone is so wealthy.
>Thus, when Ashcroft, for instance, campaigns for "better tools for self-governance", one of them is simply co-ownership of land. Not "grouped land", which is a different concept, and a purely "technical" one. Co-ownership is, for instance, allowing, at the Linden Lab level, several people to be listed as Estate Owners of the *same* land.
I don't see what this "listing" will do whatsoever. Like a restaurant check, either the waiter brings separate bills, or you sit and divvy up the bill yourself. What are the Lindens to do if some people in the restaurant don't pay then after they bring the separate bills???
>Or having a common "bank account" which can be used for paying land fees. Or a method to backup a whole sim and restore it quickly, in the case something happens to the Estate Owner (say, getting hit by a truck, without giving out the passwords). These are ultimately the sort of tools that would be asked from Linden Lab on a first round of discussions.
This sounds awfully high-handed. I don't think the Lindens should be dropping their work on either stabilization and new features to whip up for you sectarian socialist communards these kinds of things.
Other people handle it more normally. There is an enormous amount of sim-sharing. People make a group or even RL companies and they share expenses by contract or by consensus even outside the tools. Sure, I suppose it would be a nice add-on for LL to make it possible for you and michi Lumin to realize your dreams of creating absolutely equal owners of sims. But the overwhelming majority of sims will belong either to one person, or to a husband and wife team, or to a company that merely has one maintenance group handle the sim.
In fact, I think all these BiG Business corporations in SL that have so casually turned over the reins of management and even building ownership to these building and consulting groups are an accident going somewhere to happen; will they insist on Linden Lab honouring a contract they may have written in meatworld that requires an architect to turn over the "work for hire" and not steal it back to inventory?! Can't wait to see one of those cases develop!
>One can argue that these tools do not have the slightest importance for non-democratic forms of government in SL. I do agree — autocracies don't need those tools. Still, the right to create a "pressure group" to demand equal rights for a minority of residents who just happen to look at their own community under a different light is certainly within the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Yuh, and the right for me and others to respond that such pressure groups are sectarians with their own agenda to force the Lindens' attention on to their own sectarian desires, like "let's have a way for islands to be billed to two people" are a clear example for why I object to what you're doing.
Of course anybody can form a lobbying group. But others can also resist it in the name of freedom.
Certainly many people felt right in doing that to those of us who started Metaverse Justice Watch.
>Like 2 million of SL residents have the right to live under the autocratic system of their preference, and lobby for their status quo, 65 or so residents have the right to demand better tools for *democratic* structures inside their own jurisdictions.
Um, there's no 2 million, Gwyn!
And why are these 65 having to bend the Lindens around their will?
Long ago, if Nberg had been more serious, it could have formed a non-profit to have the assets legally distributed. And of course that's possible now. SL merely becomes a machine then.
I'm just not getting why democracy in SL needs new technical tools. It does not. It doesn't need code; it needs real law. It needs some kind of break on the Lindens' tendency to do two bad things: favour their pets and disfavour their enemies -- to not play fair.
This not being a democracy, the Lindens are likely to be hold very tight to the concept of ever being able to challenge a clear case of abuse of the rule of law like Torley's ban of me from the blog or Pathfinder's banning of me from the community round table. Both of these were clear violations of the rule of law because they did not follow due process, and enabled discretionary decisions to take the place of real adjudication.
>Don't cook up new conspiracies, Prokofy. Your soup is just hot water with some rotten eggs half-boiled in it — there is no *substance*. Claiming that "oh, Ashcroft PRETENDS to want these tools locally, but IN FACT, he wants to RULE THE WHOLE WORLD and thus HE MUST BE STOPPED AT ALL COSTS" is childish, insane, paranoid, delusional, and sincerely, I would expect much more convincing arguments to support your newest conspiracy theory.
Um, well, I find this really over the top Gwyn. Here's a string of adjectives to describe you: vain, ambitious, duplicitious, insecure, unhappy. And I think my arguments are totally convincing: you can't even start with Basic Principles likes, "Could we have more than ONE officer in the group, Ashcroft????"
>Just yelling out loud will not help you much with it. It just means that "yelling out loud" and repeating things over and over again is the last resort of someone who has no more arguments to support yet another conspiracy theory.
Oh, I think now is a time to yell out loud about three points:
o Ashcroft should not be the only officer
o The Lindens must not nominate any resmod-type judges or adjuciators or mediators whatsoever
o The Lindens shouldn't golf-clap any experiments they are partial to, like Nberg, where they even have staff as members (!) but allow there to be an open market in systems for local governance, and not prejudge the outcome.
I find it amusing. One of our distinguished citizens — aged 74 — has been promoting democracy for most of his lifetime in RL. He's a Nobel prize nominee. Ashcroft does the same in SL. He's labeled as a World Conspirator, a Bolshevik (or a Bolshevik puppet) or a "conservative" (depends on what suits the mood of the moment better), or, worse, a Nobody, "just some kid in the UK with a lot of aggressive hormones and a lot of spare time". Well, I imagine that our distinguished citizen would laugh at this and remember his own experience in the 1950s when he was also "just a kid" promoting democracy. Wow, I never thought the fight for democracy would be so hard :) I'm glad I'm 37, and thus probably have to be labeled as a "housewife of a socialist European country with nothing else to do with her spare time" since I sadly can't claim to be a "kid" any more.
Guess what, Gwyn. I'll label Ashcroft *exactly* what he is, and *fear not* whatever label you might cook up for me. I'm not the point. Because I didn't form a group with only myself as officer. I have a group at least with some other officers. And I hope to activate it now that governance is more of a pressing issue and get others involved.
There are other people like Little Gray who are very new who will also have their own ideas about what should be done and no doubt you'll aggressively try to co-opt them into your spider web out there.
>Well, yesterday I was called "Euro trash" by a newbie :) so now I expect anything...
>So, Prokofy, start to back up your claims with some hard facts and actions.
oAshcroft is the sole officer in the group.
oNo meeting across the grid open to the public was called to thrash these issues out in some public way
oA good-faith effort of this could have been begun, passing the torch around a circle of interested people to meet on different properties -- but that's not how it was done. Instead, you grabbed the franchulate
o Ashcroft has announced on forums that he has drafted a system of justice and now all there is to do is to persuade Lindens to adopt it
o you cannot readily concede my points here about asking for limitation on sim governors' powers; restraints on LL not to intervene in some areas but protect in others
Thus, far from a hysterical conspiracy rant, I have a very pragmatic, logical set of premises and issues I've placed before you. You've ducked on every single one of them.
>You claim that you want more transparency and democratic methods of establishing things in Second Life. So show us your cards. When were the last elections in Ravenglass that put you in the role of Overlord of your tenants?
I am not running a government or a country, Gwyn. I'm merely running a rental agency. I don't make the pretensions you do of running some kind of nation-state. That would be preposterous. This is merely a place people rent homes. They have rights to ban/eject on their land. They pay their rent and keep to their prim limits. It's a business, a service, in which I attempt to create fair, open, useful procedures to keep people happy and the service running.
You don't take a business with a limited set of activities related to people's lives, and suddenly transform it into a "democracy in a country". In that sense, I'm a mini model of Linden Lab itself, and can only speak as they do.
What does holding democratic elections mean in Ravenglass? They vote someone else into power? But what does that mean? Does that mean they will pay the tier bill? Or not? And therefore sacrifice 1000 people and their payments and land? That would be horribly unjust.
What you say is merely sectarian, provocative, and mean-spirited. It's like when you got on the forums and called me and my group, where you were a member paying tier contributions yourself (!) a "despot and a despotism". For shame. As if being a sole proprietary in a small business in Second Life is being "a despot". Shame, shame, on you.
People enjoy more leniency in my set-up than anywhere else on the grid. They join a group on their own without queueing up and waiting for a prim diva to clear them. They build in pretty much any theme. They refund any time. They get discounts out the wazoo. I don't hear anyone calls for an election to be held in Ravenglass -- and it's silly to impose these standards we would want for a country or state or sim governance concept on a person merely running a business.
It's petty, and frankly stupid.
>When will the next round of elections take place there? When will you provide moderation facilities in Ravenglass, under an independent body that is not under your control, and that will have the power of enforcement? When will your tenants be able to vote on the rules *they* want on their land, and not the rules *you* have set up for them?
When they pay tier themselves? They have that option. They buy their own land, or if they don't like my rules, they go over to Anshe or D'Alliez. People in fact shuffle back and forth to the tigher rules in Ansheland where there is less blight, and then wash back into my rentals where it is cheaper and they have more freedom but then may have to suffer a bit more griefing -- though this is vastly over propagandized on the islands.
>Your answer will very likely be: "NEVER, because Ravenglass is NOT a democracy but a BUSINESS".
I rest my case.
No, that's silly. It's a business in which I try to practice the best possible democratic rules. If someone complains, I fix things, and most of the rules I have evolved in two years are a direct result of hearing people's problems.
The reason Ravenglass isn't a democracy isn't only because it's a business; it's because it has only a very limited role in people's lives. It governs merely their payment arrangement for land in SL and their physical location.
It doesn't decide what features will come in SL or not. It doesn't decide whether ageplay or Gor are viable lifestyles or not. It doesn't take a position on net neutrality. It doesn't issue manifestos of avatar rights. I doesn't what sort of governance system all of SL might benefit from.
I might have opinions on this as an individual, but a company only has a few limited things it does for people. It's not there to be in their face about the issues of the day. I don't think I can enlist my tenants in political causes, the way Anshe does, i.e. saying in a strange poll recently that any RL business that claimed it was "the first" in some areas where "indigenous" SLers had been first would be boycotted (I'd never mount such a preposterous thing that is basically anti-business; I can't be sure among my tenants there aren't people who either work at those businesses in RL, or have some relationship to them in SL, and I can't imagine telling my tenants to vote to boycott another business, for any reason -- it would have to take some profoundly desperate situation that affected the very land under their feet -- and little else.
>Now you can accuse me of Bolshevism again, just because I defend the right of people to establish their own democratic governments with their own legal systems, either in SL or RL... :)
Yes, I do indeed accuse you of Bolshevism, Gwyn. All the signs are there. Not because you're leading a brave struggle for freedom, that's silly. You're not. I'm afraid I'm doing a good bit more of that than you are, but with one-tenth of the pretentiousness because I don't go around waving a banner and telling people to follow me once more into the breach!
Your misrepresentation of me and people like Tyken; your sidestepping of the very real problem of Ashcroft; your refusal to deal with the bread-and-butter inworld issues like "why is there only one officer in this group" all say "Bolshevism" to me.
If you WERE for freedom and democracy Gwyn, you'd have larger meetings open to a broader group.
But you don't, because you want control.
I imagine that the way it will flow is that you, and Caledon, and a few other "like-minded" groups will ban together in the confederation and begin to pressure others to join. People will be made to feel as if they are tyrannical and not democratic if they don't join!
Already, all I've done is criticism the undemocratic nature of Ashcroft's group and his past record and Nberg's past record, and whoops, I'm branded as a tyrants because I don't hold elections with the people who pay me rent.
It's all pretty fucking transparent, Gwyn, and I'm here to tell you -- don't try to pull this shit.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 25, 2006 at 04:30 AM
Finally, I rest my case, too: if Ashcroft was only interested in governance on his own sim, he'd have no need to invite lots of people into a "study" group and roam around forums looking to post and recruit.
His ambitions are obvious, as are yours.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 25, 2006 at 04:41 AM
"o Ashcroft should not be the only officer
o The Lindens must not nominate any resmod-type judges or adjuciators or mediators whatsoever
o The Lindens shouldn't golf-clap any experiments they are partial to, like Nberg, where they even have staff as members (!) but allow there to be an open market in systems for local governance, and not prejudge the outcome."
Prokofy, if you would get of your conclusion-jumping pogo stick for however long it takes your paranoia-addled mind to focus on reality rather than ranting, it might interest you to know:
(1) I voted "yes" in your vote to have more officers in the group. If that vote is carried, I will ask for nominations for officers;
(2) one of the central aims of the LGSG is to design systems to present to the Lindens that do not involve them doing any of their own adjudication (including adjudication as to who does the adjudication) at all;
(3) what the LGSG is all about is precisely developing ideas for tools to enable there to be an open market in governments, so that, instead of having to rely on the Lindens to tell what is fair and just and what is not, people can vote with their virtual feet and their Linden dollars, and leave unfair governments without enough money to pay for their teir;
(4) if you had bothered to read the agenda other than through your "they're coming to get me" paranoia spectacles, you would have noticed that public meetings are very much on the agenda (would you like to host one in Ravenglass land?), but it does not make very much sense to hold public meetings until one has finished recruiting people to go in the group and attend those self-same public meetings;
(5) the Local Government Study Group has an aim that is entirely distinct to the Confederation of Democratic Simulators; the former is a group for anybody interested in local governance as a way of improving SecondLife in general, although the kinds of local governance in which they are interested may be very different, and the latter is one specific local government.
As for the suggestion that, whilst your business is very real, and your land is very real, and the people are very real, to such an extent that any attempt by anyone to suggest to the Lindens new ways of doing things must be met with a wave of verbose protest, but, meanwhile, of course we can't create nation states because it's all just binary code on a computer, silly, readers might be interested in the works of the eminent Professor David Post, a salient article by whom can be found here:
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_2/post/index.html
And as to aggression, yes, sorry, Gwyn and I have been terribly rude and aggressive, all those expletives that we have been using, all those capitalised words, all those pointless insults that we have been making. We should, of course, instead follow your model of calm and rational argumentation that deals only with the substance of the matter, and isn't paranoid at all.
Posted by: Ashcroft Burnham | December 25, 2006 at 09:41 AM
Well, at least we can agree on some fundamental things here — which is not bad for a start!
First of all, there should be some separation of the goals here. You see, Prokofy, I do totally agree with you on some sentences, and then, just by bundling together everything in the same paragraph, I cannot agree with you any more.
Let's give you an example. Discussions of "democratic processes" in-world have been ongoing for several years now. Most have been ignored; most have been public; a few start at some forum or other; others are one-time events; and so on. There has been no *systematic* discussion so far — like having a set agenda and expect, after a few rounds of discussion, to reach some objectives, whatever they might be.
I'm not underestimating your own events, Prokofy — attendance is usually quite high for that sort of discussion, there are often conclusions and agreements on some actions to be taken. But I'm also afraid most get unnoticed. The best that can be claimed is that certain groups (informal groups, not SL groups) that discuss these things tend to grow over time and get similar-minded people together (even taking into account that people come and go).
But then there is ultimately the issue of what is to be expected from "democratic processes in SL".
Is it SL grid-wide government? Immediately the question has to be raised — how can LL, as a company, delegate policy powers to their customers? How could this work? Is ATITD a model that can be used as an example? Are there more similar examples? Would this be *satisfactory* to an ever-increasing number of residents, and, as you well put it, an ever-increasing number of companies? What would the average resident gain from SL-wide government, after all? (I could list tons of things, but I would have to list tons of things that you would lose in the process as well)
I'm quite sceptic about SL-wide governments these days. We haven't managed a RL world-wide government yet, and my best understanding is that we never will, or at least definitely not in my lifetime. Our model of "nation-states" simply does not fit well inside the concept of world-wide government, and I would argue that the current generation is too tied to the "nation-state" concept to be able to think beyond that (what is there, beyond the nation-state, that is NOT an utopia? I have no answer to that)
So, then, we'll discard "SL-wide government" for "local government". Here the focus on the discussion is quite different. First, are there any good reasons for local government? One can argue that the reasons for it are far weaker than the reasons against it; again, the distribution of examples in SL (1 local government in the middle of 5,000 or so sims not needing any sort of government at all) tend to point to clear evidence that it is "not needed".
If there *were* a need for it, one would claim that more people would be wanting to have it. But they clearly don't. I personally attribute it to the ease of switching landowners — if you're unhappy where you are, go elsewhere. It's fast and easy to do so. So the "need" is not real for most.
Still, that doesn't mean that one cannot ask some questions on a hypothetical basis. For instance, what is required to enable "better local government"? What is, indeed, BETTER local government? You argue very well that "tools" are less important than "people" and suggest simple things like having RL companies running a bunch of sims to solve the issue of sim ownership. You're right; that is one of those ideas that keeps getting discussed, and to my recollection, the first time this was seriously discussed among the Neufreistadt group was in February 2005 or so. It keeps popping up. The only reason for not doing that right now is the RL cost of keeping and maintaining a running operation in RL — paying for accountancy fees, taxes, bureaucracy, business logistics, and people that would need to work on those. All that for something that has less than US$400 of monthly income — it's overkill. But naturally people like Desmond who have a much higher income from their SL business might feel quite differently — it might even be better, financially, to run a 10 or 20-sim operation from a RL company with limited liability, for instance.
So one could argue that while "better governance tools" are important for organisations with less than a handful of sims, they are not required for anything that grows beyond that. I have no problem in accepting that. It seems a pretty strong argument for NOT implementing ANY kinds of "new fancy tools" at all, and simply let the market choose where people prefer to live; if you're successful, you'll grow, and if you grow, you'll be able to afford RL incorporation.
Then there is the issue about "SL business" vs. "government". I also claim it's nonsense to "demand" that "tenants get a vote to overthrow their landlords". I'm almost surprised that you didn't use the "communist co-op" argument in this context :) Indeed, I'm rather sure that most people prefer to be tenants under a simple business arrangement, and that "simple business arrangements" is what dominates almost exclusively the SL landscape. Is that so bad? One could only claim that "if people only knew about alternatives, they would probably chose them". In practice, this had never happened — there has been a long-term alternative (ie. not something that popped up "just yesterday" and that will disappear next month as people leave SL) for a couple of years. People did not "flock" to it in eagerness. One can thus postulate that they simply don't want it.
Of *course* it is silly to "demand" that Ravenglass (or any other land rental/real estate business) works like a "government". That was my whole point — it's silly to pretend otherwise. I don't subscribe to Anshe's "pseudo-democratic" experiments in her business — but of course, if she thinks that is a way to have her tenants be more happy, I guess she's just doing her best in customer support, and that's all right. Other — like yourself — will not need those "tricks" to get people to pay their weekly or monthly fees on time. So the question is again: "what will make tenants more happy — running the operation as a business or as a local government?" I would bet all my money that a staggering majority would vote for the former, if LL put this question on a poll.
Again, one could also argue that one reason for that is that "things like Neufreistadt are too complex" and that people would prefer "simple models". This would probably be speaking to the heart of around a dozen people I know :) who always claim that things are "far too complex". My answer has always been the same: nobody prevents anyone to start their own "less complex" system anywhere on the grid. Just buy some land and start it. I'm personally still waiting for that to happen, and, being stubborn, I'm prepared to wait quite a long time :)
The whole purpose of things like "local government" is putting the emphasis on long-term aspects that are more important for some people. Who deals with moderation and arbitrarion? In a business, it's the landowner. Who deals with griefers? Again, the landowner has the tools to do that, and that's part of the service they pay for. What do you do if you dislike the results? You leave. What happens when the landowner goes away? You move to another place. These are simple, straightforward answers to what most people expect from such types of businesses.
It's just a handful of people that worry about an alternative: "ok, but what if I want to have a saying in the way the operation is run, have no intention to go away, and don't want the place to fall apart because the landowner just doesn't bother to log in to SL any more?" How many people are truly worried about that? Even if we consider that SL just has a couple of hundred thousand active users, the answer is: "less than a hundred worry about it". 0.05%! They hardly show up on any statistics. Do you seriously believe that these handful of people will have any saying at all on the matter? Why, you might be surprised and shocked to know that no one at LL has even formally or informally contacted anyone from Neufreistadt to talk to them about "models of self-governance". No one! Not even a "hi there, we're creating a group of people discussing models of self-governance in SL, would you like to make a comment?" Unlike you, they don't overestimate the importance of Neufreistadt. I'm pretty sure that we're viewed as an anomaly in the whole system, a sandgrain that makes a squeaking noise on the whole complex system of gears, but mostly irrelevant at the end of the day.
That doesn't mean, however, that people like Ashcroft don't have the right to form a group and discuss these kinds of things in public, beyond the borders of Neufreistadt. And definitely encouraged by the local government — an encouragement that, at this point, is not even official — since there is hardly a existing democracy iRL that is *not* proselytising... so of *course* we do that as well. *Obviously* we try to grasp the attention of the media, way beyond the real "impact" we might have in SL. Why, we're just copying LL, a tiny start-up that is treated by the RL media as some sort of "the Next Google" or something — although, in terms of business, it doesn't make a difference in the GNP of the US (unlike, say, Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft). So, yes, you can accuse us to be gloating and over-inflating our *real* impact in anything that goes on in SL. But that's just public relations, and, to be honest, we've been neglecting it lately. It's still interesting to see how people haven't forgotten us, although I miss the days when every month people would "predict the downfall of the Bolskevik Republik of Neufreistadt" with absolute certainty. And sure, things are not rosy — just a peek at the forums will show how heated the debate has been lately — but the astonishing bit is that people don't threaten to leave if things don't change the way they want it to change: they threaten to *get elected* instead :)
And finally, there is the issue of what constitutes a lobby/pressure group and how it should be handled. My own experience, as yours, Prokofy, is that all these groups start with lots of energy and support, but need a strong charismatic figure to lead them to a goal. When the strong charismatic figure is removed from the scene (as it happens most of the time) the group disappears as quickly as it has formed. It seems very hard to antecipate, from a group that has just started, if Ashcroft will be that strong charismatic figure or not :) I can only wish Ash good luck — having been part of so many "failed groups", I'm naturally a very careful optimist.
There is then the issue of what Linden Lab will make out of such a group. Surprisingly, the less a group interferes with Linden Lab's own plans, the more it has a chance to succeed — or perhaps I'm just in the wrong groups :) The last attempt to change the way the in-world help should work, by rallying people willing to contribute to a better system — and believe me, there was no lack of dynamic and charismatic people in that group — met with a solid wall of denial by Linden Lab. It was quite clear that there was a line that should not ever be crossed.
So, does Linden Lab has some plans in the area of local governance tools? If they do, the LGSG is doomed to fail, whenever it'll be crossing that line. However, the assumption is that LL does not really know what is needed and what should be done. So, any groups discussing these things publicly will very likely be able to present *something* as a result. If it's worth anything or not, that's up to LL to decide.
Prokofy, what I can't really understand is why you oppose in principle anything that hasn't been created by you as a founding member, and why you do spend so much time and energy by attempting to destroy something that others are organising. In my mind, there are really just two good ways to push one's agenda, when it disagrees with a group's own agenda. The first is to "work from within" — join the LGSG and present your own views there. Obviously not everybody likes that idea, so there is a much better alternative: create your own LGSG, invite your own group of friends, make it open and public and let everybody be an officer on the group if you like (what is your issue about the "officers" anyway? Since groups have "roles" these days, I thought that discussion was basically pointless), and start agressively push your own agenda, attract people to your meetings, and present your own conclusions. The net result? People get an additional choice — ie. they can join Ash's LGSG or Prokofy's LGSG, depending on the model they like best — and if both share the goal of presenting suggestions to LL, LL will have *two* sets of (possibly) different ideas to pick from. Surely it's far better to do it that way.
Instead, you — and others — prefer to create an anti-LGSG "group". This immediately puts you at a huge disadvantage — showing that instead of pushing your own ideas, you only wish to prevent othes from presenting their own ideas. The lesson about how LL views destructive criticism should have been obvious by now. Believe me, Ashcroft is stubborn enough to push the LGSG ahead, however hard the opposition will be — and yes, even if the group meetings are under a shower of griefers and sim hackers and whatever might happen to prevent them to meet :) From the point of view of the SL-wide audience, which also naturally includes LL, all that is being shown is a group that is *trying* to do some open discussion, and a group trying to do their best to prevent them to discuss *anything*. You can't seriously claim not to see what will move the public opinion more, no matter how much people dislike the whole concept.
And I'll stop being condescending :) and do apologise if I got angry on the other comment. I simply get mad at anyone who publicly states that people should NOT have some basic human rights just "because this is SL and things don't apply here". I remember very well your arguments against Raph Koster, Prokofy. He didn't get *that* either and I'm afraid that very few understood your arguments during that discussion. I did; and since then I have been seriously suspicious about people "pretending" that SL is "so different" that we can simply shrug it off and say things like: "oh, in RL, we might need democracy and basic human rights for some reason or another, but we don't really need it here in the Metaverse".
My wishes of a Merry Christmas, from this Bolshevik Christian of yours :)
Posted by: Gwyneth Llewelyn | December 25, 2006 at 10:09 PM
Gwyn, I don't have to attempt to discredit you as a "democratic political leader in SL" -- you do that all by yourself with this long-winded and self-serving post. Geez, if you have time to write such long screeds, use it to write a better Constitution for your little toy snowglobe "government," for God's sake.
Officers rights in groups may be toggled now and that's precisely my point. Anyone making a group now who wants credibility as being democratic should create a class of people who can eject others from the group -- so that he is not the one who alone has that authority. In fact, ideally, the group of founders all make themselves owners, or if some special role must be conceded to the "owner" (and I don't see that Ashcroft at all deserves that social influence or recognition), then all the officers should have an array of powers.
I don't feel a group like this will be successful if kept on open, given the active participation for griefing by W-HAT and other griefers like Scott Detritus. It's a real shame, of course, but it's a necessary job to keep the discussion open and free of griefing.
I made other people officers when I made Fairplay and the same was done with Metaverse Justice Watch by Anshe Chung.
So this very simple matter, about which you've danced around in an utterly ridiculous manner, remains very open, and i've put a proposal to the group. It may get ignored -- that's fine. The point is somebody has to keep chafing Ashcroft's butt; he's a young and stupid tyrant and a pompous blowhard. He just happens to be *your* young and pompous blowhard so you protect him -- for now.
I'm happy to have a tiny group that meets no alternate Tuesdays and merely barks at other groups that are pompous and trying to take others' freedoms away. That's quite a lot to accomplish in life : )
My meetings on Fridays aren't about forming governments or movements or coup plots -- they're merely informal discussions I keep trying to keep open.
I don't like it one bit that once again, you cannot concede some basic common denominators for the rule of law, namely that "Linden Lab shall make no law, such as to establish any resident or group in world -- period!" Full stop! None!
Separation of church and state -- no Linden Lab endorsement of any single thing, in any way shape or form. It's the only way. If they can't do this, and lay down this basic building block of freedom and civil society, then they are doomed to ages of sectarianism and faction-fighting and coups.
"Linden Lab shall make no law, such as to establish any resident or group."
What you fail to see is that somebody long ago did start a less complex system -- me, and dozens of other people like me, all over, with all kinds of entities, businesses and non-profits, without you. And they did it by recognizing some basic principles, of the rule of law, and of not recogniting code-as-law as trumping human judgement.
And I can only return to the two great premises upon which must hang all the law and the prophets:
1) Linden Lab shall make no law, such as to establish any resident or group....
2) Ashcroft cannot be the sole officer in any group to discuss governance; there must be 3-5 officers, persons of eminence and repute from a plurality of groups in SL, all with equal powers to eject others and other relevant powers.
You haven't affirmed either of these, Gwyn. You merely voted "yes" on my poll. That's not really campaigning -- that's leaving to nature a "no" vote that could come in from indifference -- tricky, trick, so typical!
Furthermore, I utterly disagree with your setting up of the task to be done.
There must be fields that LL still adjudicates. Because only they have the server-side information. These will include RL disclosure and various other matters related to RL crime. I think the issue of permabanning is something that LL itself will likely wish to control. The idea of going to the Lindens with an extremist agenda of "we don't want you to adjudicate anything" when they essentially hold all the power is just lame to the extreme.
Your notion of how people should behave in groups is merely your notion; I'll be blogging about my idea of how groups should work soon.
The answer isn't for people to come into the group formed by Ashcroft with only himself as officer, or frankly, even to come into his group if the is forced to concede other officers. He needs to be fought -- strenuously. When I can find the time for it -- I will.
Sure, lots of enterprises get started with great pitch and moment, lose the name of action, and go awry in SL, unable to complete the octave. That's ok. The process of getting started is useful. The unfinished business and shattered groups of the past all contain lessons (like MJW).
Dissident groups are very important to maintain in a setting where an overarching executive power is trying to set up a pseudo-democracy. All kinds of co-optations, compromises, etc. will be happening and it's very good if one little group at least knows its own mind and keeps its conscience clear of not become embroiled and entangled with this pseudo-democracy.
Your concept that Ashcroft's aggressive little grouplet will 'win' public opinion because he is "trying to do something positive" whereas if I'm opposing him I'm "merely a negative losing public support" is the age-old cry of co-opted sectarians carrying water for tyrants. I heed it not : )
The *way* in which you go about doing "constructive positive things" matters, too. If the are done by himself as officer; if they are done by suppressing dissent; they cannot create the lasting, democratic peace about which your Prof. Ruml waxes so eloquent.
"Constructive engagement" scenarios often offer the peace of the graveyard -- peace without justice, peace with crushed dissent, peace with cover-ups of atrocities; peace with no recognition of the troubles still laying below to undermine peace at the first juncture.
I still don't think Tyken was *advocating* no human rights in SL; he was *describing* and *diagnosing* the situation and adapt a simpler plan to work with it.
The concept of "threatening to get elected" can work in a group where the founder was thoughtful enough to attend to things like group dynamics, having checks and balances and a trusted group to make "more heads better than one" with multiple officers. Ashcraft's group is not that group; therefore it is discredited to me.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 26, 2006 at 07:50 AM
"The answer isn't for people to come into the group formed by Ashcroft with only himself as officer, or frankly, even to come into his group if the is forced to concede other officers. He needs to be fought -- strenuously. When I can find the time for it -- I will."
Please do - the harder, the better, please. It seems that anything you oppose is considered, for that reason alone, something worth supporting by many. The more free publicity the better!
So, if you can, please set up the "Ban Ashcroft Federation", and round up all your fellow paranoids in SL to join it. You can have them all as officers if you like.
Meanwhile, all the high-profile (and ordinary) SecondLifers who have joined my group, and don't care twopence who the officers are because all they want to do is try to help to sort out governance in SecondLife, will get on with what we are all here to do in the first place, no doubt delighted to get all the free publicity.
All publicity, after all, is good publicity. So fight the good fight and help to make my group *huge*!
Posted by: Ashcroft Burnham | December 26, 2006 at 08:03 AM
>Meanwhile, all the high-profile (and ordinary) SecondLifers who have joined my group, and don't care twopence who the officers are because all they want to do is try to help to sort out governance in SecondLife, will get on with what we are all here to do in the first place,
Ah, yes, that's what the Bolsheviks said about *their* revolution too. Form doesn't matter; only function; a sect taking over doesn't matter; it's the higher, noble cause that matters.
People who join your group are seen by you as pawns, people not able to care "twopence" about something very significant: who has the powers in their own group. Oh, we can just dismiss that 'little detail'.
Very, very telling.
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 26, 2006 at 05:01 PM
Some relevant Kant:
"The Sixth Thesis: This problem is at once the most difficult and that which will be resolved by humanity at the last point in time.
"… The human is an animal which, living in the context of its species, requires a master. For one human certainly abuses his freedom with respect to his fellows, and although as a rational being he wishes to have a law which limits the freedom of all, his selfish animal impulses tempt him, where possible, to exempt himself. He thus requires a master, who will break his will and force him to obey a will of universal validity, under which each can be free. But where does this master come from? Only from humankind. But then the master is himself an animal, and needs a master. Let him begin it as he will, it is not to be seen how he can procure a leadership which can maintain public justice and which is itself just, whether it be a single person or a group of several elected persons. For each of them will always abuse his freedom if he has none above him to retain order in accord with the laws. The highest leader should be just in himself, and yet a human. This task is therefore the hardest of all; indeed, its complete solution is impossible, for from such warped wood as man is made, nothing quite straight can ever be fashioned. That it is the last problem to be solved follows also from this: it requires that there be a correct conception of a possible constitution, great experience gained in many paths of life, and – far beyond these - good will. These three things will be hard to find in the same place – indeed, if they are ever to be found it will be only very late in the course of human history and after many failed efforts."
- Immanuel Kant, Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht (1784) (in Immanuel Kant, Sämtliche Werke vol. 1, pp. 230-31 (Großherzog Wilhelm-Ernst ed.)) (trans. Scott Horton)
Posted by: Prokofy Neva | December 26, 2006 at 09:28 PM
Aha, Mr. Neva, no amount of Kant quotes can stop my *real* masterplan:
Posted by: Ashcroft Burnham | December 27, 2006 at 01:11 PM
"Job One: insist that Lindens do not repeat DO NOT name by name any resident judge or resident court system or bless any mediators system by name, like the resmods. N.O. Non passarant."
I'm with you on that. The idea that other residents, named by Lindens, Linden favorites, whatever - will be able to take my things away, or the things of any other resident - their land, their money, their goods - is just a freakin trip back to cave days.
We KNOW how much some people are salivating at the bit to take other people's things away. They have said so, and often, on various forums.
And worse, that they feel this is right.
Who wants that? I don't know.
But then, who wants Advertising World, either? By the time all this comes to pass SL may be nothing but a sort of fancy book of corporate ads that people sometimes come in and look at, then go off someplace else to actually do something fun.
coco