Caliandris

I'm SO sorry... I know I felt exhausted, but didn't realise just HOW long that convo was.

I promised to include the whole faq, so I am just going to get on a do it:

Metaverse Republic FAQ
2.2

1. What is the Metaverse Republic?

The Metaverse Republic is an independent, non-profitmaking organisation that will provide enforceable dispute resolution to SecondLife by means of a judicial system (in other words, courts) and a democratically elected Parliament.

2. Is the Metaverse Republic up and running yet?

No. We are still in the process of designing the constitution and technical systems. It will take quite some time before we are ready to go, since we must be very careful to get things right.

3. How will the Metaverse Republic work?

There will be courts, where anybody will be able to bring a case, and the outcomes will be decided by skilled, professional judges, and possibly also juries. The decisions of the court will ultimately be able to be enforced by the use of a banishment database. Anybody who, for example, fails to observe a court order, can have her or his avatar name(s) placed on the banishment database. Using sophisticated systems currently under design by our Techincal Team, landowners (both of individual parcels and whole estates) will be able to “subscribe” to the banishment database (for free), which will automatically eject/ban from that land all the avatars whose names are on the database.

All subscribers will be entitled to vote in regular elections to the Parliament (as well as the executive and a body called the Public Oversight Panel). The Parliament will, in turn, be able to pass laws binding on the courts. It will also be possible for entire local communities to subscribe en bloc by subscribing all of their land (such as a whole estate), and every citizen of that local community (whether directly a landowner or not) will be entitled to vote.

4. Will the courts only be able to deal with disputes between subscribers, or on subscribing land?

No: the courts will deal with all people who use the virtual worlds in which the Metaverse Republic operates. Creating artificial boundaries would serve only to undermine the effectiveness of the system and create unnecessary confusion.

5. Who are you to be making laws for other people?

Ultimately, we are not: because the democratic Parliament will, subject to some necessary constitutional limits, have the power to pass laws binding on all the courts, we are just setting up a structure within which people can make laws for themselves.

6. Why is a system like this necessary when just banning griefers ourselves or using BanLink is a faster way of dealing with problems? Isn’t it enough that there are real-life courts?

The main point of the Metaverse Republic is not to deal with griefers – it is to support enforceable contracts, and other behavior rules, by having a fair and inexpensive system for impartial dispute resolution. That could be used for griefing issues, and other land use or behavior disputes, but is also likely to help maintain a fair and efficient business environment for the micro-payment transactions that are becoming common in Second Life and other virtual worlds, as well as better enabling local communities to form and enforce their own rulesets.

Disputes about virtual world transactions and and in-world local rules often cannot be efficiently regulated or adjudicated in off-world legal systems, due to the transaction size, the nature of the parties or the subjectmatter of the dispute.

7. Are you just role-players?

No. This is a serious system for a serious commercial economy. SecondLife is not a game; we are not playing at running a judicio-political system any more than Anshe Cheung is playing at running a business.

(That is not to say that there are no role-play governments in SecondLife; there are no doubt quite a few, perhaps the most well known of which are the Goreans.)

8. Isn’t banishment too harsh a punishment for most cases?

Yes. That is why we will not use it in most cases. Banishment is the ultimate penalty, just like, in off-world legal systems, going to prison is the ultimate penalty. In both cases, it is, ultimately, the only thing that can be done effectively to a person against that person’s will; however, lesser penalties (or other orders, such as compensation, etc.) can be enforced by threat of invoking the greater penalty.

In off-world jurisdictions, for example, a criminal court will impose a fine or a civil court will make an order for damages. If the person refuses to pay the fine, he or she can ultimately go to prison. If he or she refuses to pay damages, the court can make a further order, for example, for seizure of assets. If the person then physically stops the bailiff taking the assets away, or takes them back after they have been taken, he or she can be convicted of assault or theft and, ultimately, go to prison.

In the Metaverse Republic, a person, for example, who is the beneficiary of an order against another person to pay compensation can bring another case against that person if the compensation is not paid, and if successful, the court would be likely to order that the person be banished until the payment is made.

9. Won’t people just be able to say that they’ve paid their compensation or whatever even when they haven’t, and nobody will know for sure whether they’re telling the truth or not?

We are in the process of developing an automated payment object that will automatically register any payments made pursuant to court orders. People will be presumed not to have satisfied the court order unless payment is made through the object.

10. Why is it important to have enforceable contracts in SecondLife anyway?

An economy can only flourish in so far as its transactions can adequately be safeguarded against exploitation or intractable dispute. For simple transactions, such as the purchase and sale of in-world objects, SecondLife provides such a means in the software code itself. However, no such system is available (or, without unimaginably huge advances in computer technology, possible) for more sophisticated arrangements, such as contracts of employment or for the provision of services. Unsurprisingly, therefore, most of the SecondLife economy is founded almost exclusively on simple transactions.

If more sophisticated transactions in the future become effectively enforceable in a way that they are not now, all this could very well change. Far greater collaboration will be possible, such that work could be carried out by large teams of individual specialists, rather than singular and personally trusted individuals slowly doing all of the work themselves. A wage-based economy could well come into being; think, for instance, of the World of Warcraft gold farmers, and how they were able to earn a better living farming virtual gold than they were by working in actual mines, and what benefit could be brought to SecondLife by legions of such people working as part of large SecondLife specific organisations to provide an ever increasingly sophisticated set of virtual goods and services.

If the SecondLife economy is to be anything more than a bubble, or is to be based on anything more than sex and gambling (not that we make any judgment as to the propriety of either of those activities), then enforceable contracts, amongst other incidents of a sophisticated judicial system, are essential.

11. How will the enforcement work if people can just come back as alts?

People who have built up reputations and large networks of friends and contacts have much to lose by switching to an alternate account. A reputation, often built over months or even years, would have to be built from scratch – entire networks of contacts would have to be re-accumulated. If the person simply told all her/his previous friends that he/she was returning as an alt, the friends may very well want to know (or guess) why, and having to tell all one’s friends (and business associates) that one has been banished by the Metaverse Republic might become embarassing. Furthermore, any one of them might report the alternate account to our enforcement people, resulting in that account being banned, too.

Of course, not everyone has an established reputation: just as with off-world legal systems, some people will be worth bringing actions against, and some will not. In off-world legal systems, it is the size of the person’s pool of assets that counts: in virtual worlds, it will be the investment in reputation and social networks.

There might also, in the future, be technical means of linking accounts, such as a better version of the credential verification system that Linden Lab uses to track who is an adult, or IP linking (possibly already used by Linden Lab).

12. Is there not potential for abuses of power in such a system?

We are working very hard to design the constitution to minimise the possibility of abuses of power by distributing power carefully amongst a series of quite independent institutions of state, in accordance with the principle of the separation of the powers. Further details of that can be found in our Founding Charter, or its executive summary.

However, in this system, unlike any first-life government, there is an additional, powerful check against abuses of power: market forces. Because subscription to the database is voluntary, and because the system cannot work unless a good number of people are subscribed, if the system becomes corrupt or abuses its power, people will simply unsubscribe, and its power would collapse. Conversely, if it acted fairly and justly, more people would be inclined to subscribe, and its power would increase.