[MUD-Dev] Wild west (was Guilds & Politics)

[JC Lawrence]

On Sat, 20 Dec 1997 19:20:57 GMT "Jon A. Lambert"
<jlsysinc at ix.netcom.com> wrote:

> I do NOT believe the logging of communications to be an immoral
> action at all.  However, some possible actions taken on this
> information CAN be immoral.  Any actions taken on log information
> should be done with the with the highest regard to privacy, ethics
> and morals.

Another approach of courae has making all logs public and
un-editable.  It then becomes difficult to define any action derived
from log contents as improper as that data is know "in the puiblic
domain" as it were.

>> This is awful...  To me this is a movement towards virtual fascism.

> Yes.  You are assigning a moral significance to a form of mud
> administration in the absense of any actual action.  I would not
> handle the above events the same as Derrik though.  The above is an
> IC event and would be handled IC if an administrative adjudication
> were needed.

I should note here that I make very little distinguishment between IC
and OOC for a game.  I see them as essentially the same, with the only
key difference being that IC actions and discourse of necessity
concerns the game (mechanically or internally), and OOC instead
concerns the real world.

> For instance, many of us on this list do not run our own E-Mail
> servers.  I have no doubts at all that the administrator(s) of my
> E-Mail server, whom I have never met nor likely to meet, have the
> ability to read my E-Mail.  I don't consider the logging, back-up
> and storage of my E-Mail to be an immoral act.  If, however, my ISP
> should abuse this trust then we have a potential immoral action.

I log and keep a copy of *everything*.  I have a copy of every single
email, with full headers, which has passed thru my system, to or from
me, in the last five years or more.  Heck, I even have (mostly
compleat) logs of all my BBS activities.

This surprises some people, especially when I dig up an old email of
their's and quote it back to them.  (As a matter of courtesy I won't
quote a private email without permission to anyone but the original
sender) Some consider the very fact of this logging and history
keeping as offensive and in some way a very personal and invasive
affront.  Others are merely surprised, and occassionally grateful ("I
forgot I sauid that!  Thanks!").  I consider it a mere mechanical
adjuct to my memory.  Were I to have an edetic memory, I would see no
difference in my logging, or in my later re-typing the text in exact
duplicate from memory.

The definition of abuse in the context wouild seem to be a cultural
item, and one based on expectations, not one of absolutes or common
morality.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
                                           Internet: coder at ibm.net
----------(*)                        Internet: jc.lawrence at sun.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...