[MUD-Dev] Declaration of the Rights of Avatars

[Raph Koster]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu [mailto:mud-dev-admin at kanga.nu]On Behalf Of
> Travis Casey
> Sent: Sunday, April 16, 2000 1:23 PM
> To: mud-dev at kanga.nu
> Subject: Re: [MUD-Dev] Declaration of the Rights of Avatars
>
>
> On Sunday, April 16, 2000, Raph Koster wrote:
>
> The *users* of a virtual space may have rights -- but the *avatars*
> are nothing more than representations, and do not and *cannot* have
> rights.  I'd reword the whole thing to talk about "users" or
> "participants" rather than "avatars".

I chose the word carefully, for the shock value.

> Ridiculous point 2:  The entire document fails to recognize that many
> virtual communities are *games*, and that the violation of people's
> rights may occur within the game, even though the mud itself assures
> those rights in out-of-character contexts.  I'll point to specific
> examples as I go through.

The document largely addresses OOC matters, not IC matters, and the "game"
thing mostly points to IC things. The nasty supposition is that there's no
way to make a game that keeps OOC matters out of the game entirely, and that
you shouldn't try.

> I don't buy this.  Why should the creator of an online community --
> especially one which is created explicitly for the purpose of
> entertainment -- be bound to do certain things simply because others
> have chosen to make an emotional or social investment in his/her
> construct?

A sense of responsibility?

A coworker and I got into a argument over this. Let's say you publicly say,
"Hey, my empty lot is now open to the public, anyone can squat there!" In
the real world, you can actually get in trouble for not providing adequate
sanitation. You'd certainly be reviled as an insensitive slob for kicking
the squatters off. The sense here is that by making the invitation, you are
entering into a social contract with the people who may or may not come by
and use the empty lot.

We can argue endlessly whether this is fair or not. It's not, IMHO. But it's
still the case. If I personally invite people to squat in my empty lot and
then some of them die because I failed to cover the open mineshaft, well,
I'd feel a sense of responsibility. It'd sure be nice not to, but I will
because I have developed a certain level of personal ethics that entail
feeling that way.

Plenty of mud admins do not have this particular ethic--nor am I arguing
that they must. But I think arguing whether they should IS a good debate to
have.

I WOULD argue that if your goal is to have a thriving empty lot that
develops into a small town, then you probably WANT to feel this sense of
responsibility, because the squatters are not likely to thrive unless
someone with authority over the lot does have that personal ethic.

> Analogies are inevitably not quite right, but I'm going to give some
> anyways:  Should the author of a series of books be required to keep
> writing them simply because people who have read them want him/her to?

Depends who you ask. If you ask the public, the answer is yes, of course!
Plenty of examples in literary history. :)

The key issue is, when the author decides that they don't want to keep
writing the books anymore, do they get to make all extant copies
spontaneously combust without regard to the integrity of people's libraries?

[ Article 4 snipped]

> This makes no sense.  Taken as it is written, this means that if two
> virtual communities run on the same server, the participants in one
> community can do whatever they want without regard for how it might
> affect the other community -- e.g., cause their communities
> process(es) to use most of the CPU.

Heh, that scenario sounds like warfare between two countries to me. The
greater good of both communities (eg, of the economic participants in
exploiting a limited natural resource) would require cooperation, of course.
Otherwise, the most effective consumer of the resource is going to drive the
other out. It's beyond the scope of this document, though.

[snip a whole lot of "this doesn't apply to games" points, which I think
mostly aren't relevant to the direct point of the document, which is OOC and
not IC]

[ Article 13, the payment article]

> This last part makes no sense, and doesn't recognize that virtual
> communities also have an existence in the real world.  I can't
> discontinue someone's account because they don't pay their bill?  In
> combination with #16, I can't erase someone's account for not
> paying their bill unless I pay them for the inconvenience!  (Since it
> would destroy their "property".)

As I read it, you can. The bill goes directly towards maintaining that bit
of data. No money, no data, presto. It's pretty clear that just accumulating
data endlessly is detrimental to the survivability of the mud, and that's
the single exception to the "must compensate" article.

> The middle part (about "special rights and privileges shall never
> pertain to the avatar who contributes more...") would prevent a
> community from selectively appointing administrator/coders/whatever,

*based on whether they PAID to become a wiz*

> since it requires that anyone who can make that contribution be able
> to choose to gain those powers and privileges.

*unless ANYONE can pay to be a wiz*

Of course, one of the other articles says that being a wiz isn't something
you can get just by paying for it.

-Raph




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