[MUD-Dev] Declaration of the Rights of Avatars

[Geoffrey A. MacDougall]

Raph Koster wrote:

> Many admins do see themselves as above the community. Should they see
> themselves as above the community?
> 
> One of the most cogent arguments I have heard against the 
> existence of this
> document is that it places these rights in primacy above the 
> real world
> right to property (defining the mud and its dataset as the 
> property of the
> admins).

There is one, major assumption in that statement - and that is that an
entity can never be more than the sum of its parts.  The above arguement is
founded upon a rather technical belief that the reality of a MUD can never
exceed its roots in ones and zeroes - and I think that is inherently flawed.

A community is an intangible, a society is an intangible, relationships are
an intangible, emotion is an intangible, friendship is an intangible...
(Bear in mind this is Geoffrey of Intangible Productions writing. *g*)

And I would challenge anyone to argue that these attributes of a MUD space
can be represented by the information stored on a server.  While the storage
space of a MUD may exist somewhere in the real world, the interaction and
sense of 'Muddish-ness' exists solely in the minds of its inhabitants.

Therefore, if any real world concept of property law were to be applicable,
it would be Group Intellectual Property Law - which hasn't yet figured out
how to deal with these kind of scenarios.

The admin may own the box, but they don't own the community that exceeds the
boundaries of that box.  And I think this reality is proved by the fact that
when an admin brings down a world, the community often reforms elsewhere, or
moves on.

> 
> If admins see themselves as above the community, do they have any
> responsibilities towards the community whatsoever?

No.  But neither do the players have a responsibility to the admin. 

> If they do, can they be articulated?
>
>
> If they can be articulated and generally agreed upon, are 
> they players'
> rights or are they merely good ethics on the part of a mud 
> administrator?

Both - Rights are an exercise in double think - in that you are voluntarily
surrendering the power to do something about someone else who is doing
things against your will.

So, if Rights are to apply to the virtual context, and adminstrator would
have to empower their players, and submit him/herself to the authority of
his/her own creation.

> > This is destined for failure - because rl governments do 
> not have the
> > power to control physical reality, metaphysics, and 
> spiritulity in the
> > stroke of a button.  So the administration of a vw is never 
> going to be
> > comparable to that of the rw - and any conclusions based upon this
> > assumption are going to be inherently invalid.
> 
> The quote is virtual spaces as compared to other virtual 
> spaces. Seems to me
> to be something we engage in on this list every darn day. :) 
> And something
> of intense interest to every player, as well. Do you not feel that
> administrative methods on different muds should be compared?

I was hoping no one would notice this mistake. ;)

When I read the post at 4:00am - I thought you were comparing the rw and vw.
Then, I reread it after I submitted my post and read what you had actually
written.

So - my earlier comments were in err.

 
> Is it of any value whatsoever to have such a list of rules? 
> If you had to
> put together said list of rules, would you then avoid muds 
> you saw as not
> sticking to those rules? (Presumably as a player, it would be 
> in your favor
> to avoid them.)

I think the value lies in the rules as a form of guide for new admins.  Sort
of - it has generally been proven that if you follow these guidelines, your
players won't burn you in effigy.  And the cloak of a Charter of Rights does
nothing more than add to the Look Cool Factor.

> > May I suggest the United Nations Charter of Rights and Freedoms as a
> > more contemporary, and cross-culturally minded guideline 
> from which to
> > continue this rather cool exercise.
> 
> Sure, I expect your draft by the end of the week. :) (This 
> document took me
> about 4 hours to write using the US Constitution and the 
> French Rights of
> Man docs as sources. The tortuous language is ripped verbatim, btw).

I'm actually pretty interested in taking you up on that and carrying this
exercise further, and actually try to take what's been written and suggested
so far into a semi-finished product.

We could then throw it out there - as you suggested - as a document for MUDs
to sign, and then advertise to their player base that they were a party to
the Charter.

Would anyone be interested in this endeavour - i.e., should I bother?

> Damn good question. What do you think constitutes affirmation?

If we were to use the rw model - the moment someone drew from the 'common
pool of resources' - physical, mental, and emotional - they would be
affirming their membership to the community.

> Rights aren't laws. Of coruse a community can reject them. 
> Happens all the
> time, right? They exist more as an ideal guideline than as 
> anything actually
> observed in practical terms. :)

Actually - if you live within the legal confines of either Canada or the US
(I don't know about anywhere else) you cannot reject your rights.  You could
sign a contract saying 'I, Joe Bob, do hereby state that I never, ever,
ever, ever, possibly want the right to freedom of religion."  and the proper
authorities would say - tough s***, you got it anyway.

> Does public or private access to the mud affect aspects of 
> this document? By
> opening a mud to the public, are you formingany sort of 
> social contract?
> (Apologies to those who find the notion of social contracts 
> repellent).

I have a problem with anyone who finds the notion of a social contract
repellent. ;)

There is no way anyone who has ever utilized any service of any other human
being outside the realm of their family can legitimately claim to reject the
notion of a social contract.  The mere fact that you can walk down a street
unarmed in certain areas of the world is a direct result of the social
contract.  Leisure time is a result of the social contract, in that someone
else is going to tend to the practical aspects of survival while you kick
your feet up.

One can legitimately claim to dislike the social contract, but no one in
Western Society can claim that they have not exploited their rights within
it.

I think, however, in the vw - since participation is voluntary - that a
social contract can be willfully constructed or ignored.  A social contract
in the vw would require the kind of double-think I outlined earlier.
 
> Er, not for a thougth experiment, I hope. :) Now, if you want 
> to develop
> this into a real declaration, please do go ahead and use as 
> many sources as
> you can. :)

Again - as with above - I'm tempted...  

> > Part of the wonder of the vw is the ability to explore 
> alterior paths of
> > existence without doing significant damage to rw persons.  
> By imposing
> > rw values on the vw, we limit the exploratory nature of the vw.
> 
> An excellent point. We should allow spamming offlink, murder 
> threats, and
> sexual harassment online forthwith. After all, they are 
> viable explorations
> of self-expression, all the more important to permit in a 
> virtual setting
> because they cannot be expressed in the real world. There may even be
> therapeutic value in allowing these expressions.

So long as the player body populace understands the nature of the
environment into which they are entering.  I think it is in this area that
we have to start worrying more about the rights of the person at the
keyboard.

As you state below...

> In the real world, this is dubiously enforceable, but 
> nonetheless widely
> upheld. You can translate it as "The user gets to read the 
> code of conduct
> before he signs up." 

> >  I've posted before
> > about contrary perceptions and definitions of freedom.  There is the
> > freedom from choice, as well as the freedom to choose.  
> Many argue that
> > having other people make decisions for you is more 
> liberating.  Are we
> > correct to strip people of this privilege?
> 
> I am not sure how this article does that. Can you clarify?

You language condemns tyranny - or at least that is the implication I
received from the wording.  If people want tyranny - because they do not
want to have to think for themselves, a Charter that strips them of this
privilege would be doing harm, rather than good.

> The question at hand is, should the judges have a rulebook to 
> follow, or do
> they get to make each call in a vacuum with no regard to precedent,
> established custom, or law?
> 
> To extend it to muds, should admins be judging players on the 
> fly, or should
> they have some sort of code of conduct that establishes standards?

Again - I think we're getting confused between the Code of Conduct and the
Charter of Rights.  The latter would be a set of powers granted to the
player base to ignore the former.  The two must function independently of
one another, or the Charter of Rights becomes powerless.  I'll leave this
here, because I've touched on this point before...

> > Basically - all this does is tell the admin that they have 
> to listen to
> > their players.  But listening to and acting upon are two different
> > things - as made obvious by majority governments, who do 
> what they want
> > regardless of the comments made by the official opposition.  The
> > government listens, says thanks, and then does what they 
> want anyway...
> 
> I don't know ANY governments where this isn't the case. 

Non-coalition, minority governments have to listen.  So do governments
formed in countries with a history of effective civic rebellion - i.e. many
South Asian and Latin American countries.

> > Otherwise, the rights have no teeth.
> 
> We already established that the rights have no teeth PERIOD, 
> they all exist
> at the whim of the guy whose finger is on the power switch. 
> That is why this
> whole thing is hypothetical. The only power the rights have 
> is if the admin
> signs up to them and self-polices.

But - and this requires a bit of mental jumping through hoops - the same
argument can be made against rights in the real world, substituting admin
for government - which I'm sure the majority of us will agree does have
teeth.

I believe that it is possible to self-impose a set of rules from under which
it is impossible to escape - no matter how badly you wanted to.

Rights may be implemented by an individual, but once released, become the
domain of the body politic.  And it is up to the body politic to enforce the
rights.  So, the cat is yours to let out of the bag, but once it's out, you
can have a bunch of other people preventing you from putting it back inside.

Now - concentrate the power of the other people into one body - i.e. a
monarch or a government - and you have a rather effective tool forbidding
you from undoing what you started.

The only solution becomes to kill the other people, before they kill you.

At any rate - the finger on the power switch thing is why I suggested that
the theory of divine rights may be more applicable to the vw.

> Are you actually suggesting that this document be signed to? Save your
> energies for the plain English version. :) THAT, I'd be 
> willing to sign to.

Again... Any takers?




_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
http://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev