Trout Recreant

Same here, and I concur completely.

Although, if he needs judges, I would happily serve, as long as I get a salary equivalent to that which I would get were I to serve as a judge in RL.

I promise to be completely arbitrary and capricious, to ignore the rules of procedure when it suits me, and to base my rulings on facts which were never admitted to evidence. I SOOOO can do that job. I also want to be appointed for life, like a Federal District Court judge. Some benefits would be nice, too. Health, a 401k, etc.

Trout Recreant

I just read as much of that transcript as I can bear to read. I've changed my mind. There isn't enough money anywhere to get me to touch this idea with a ten foot pole. I officially withdraw my application for judge.

Mark one more vote for complete anarchy, please.

Cincia Singh

I'm neither a judge nor a lawyer, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night; can I haz judgie job?

__________________
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Sooz Pascale

I see so many things wrong with this whole idea, it is difficult to know where to begin.

In no particular order:

1. Enforcement. Without LL participation, any enforcement scheme is a joke. LL is not even remotely interested in enforcing contracts, or going after fraud, except under a high degree of pressure. Why would they turn over the keys to someone else?

2. Elections. THIS is a nightmare waiting to happen. Can you IMAGINE the type of person who would WANT to be in a SL Parliament? The thought makes me shudder. Can you imagine the advertising? In the end we would wind up with a government by the blingtards, of the blingtards and for the blingtards. No thank you very much.

3. Judicial system. As a RL lawyer, the LAST thing I want to do in SL is to play lawyer. I get quite enough of THAT in RL. Can you imagine the type of lawyer and/or judge who would WANT to be a lawyer or judge in SL? I would run FLEEING from these types of people and so should you.

4. Although not mentioned, unless I missed it, some sort of Alternative Dispute Resolution System like arbitration or mediation, COULD be useful, if handled right. This is where the parties ina dispute meet with a disinterested third party with some legal and/or business expertise and try to find a way of agreeing to resolve their dispute.

Completely off topic, but how does one go about getting a Trout rating? Or is someplace I really shouldn't go?

Sooz

__________________
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Trout Recreant

QFT. The best lawyers I know have no desire to be lawyers anywhere outside of the office. All joking aside, I wouldn't be a judge or lawyer in SL if you pointed a gun at me and demanded I do it. Any lawyer who would want to participate in this should be immediately disqualified.

Trout Ratings? You rang? All you have to do is submit photos to me and I'd be happy to rate them. Most people do it in-world, but I've been making exceptions lately and looking at people's Flickr albums. Send whatever photos you are happy with.

That reminds me. I owe someone a rating - I promised and then it slipped my mind. It's been busy in RL lately.

Sooz Pascale

We SOOO agree on this!! Immediate disqualification PLUS public humiliation would be appropriate.

Re: trout ratings? Are you kind or mean? there is quite enough mean, so I would be reluctant to participate if meaness rules the day. What kind of photos, regular candid photos? , profoessionally done shots?, risque?, nude? [I do NOT do nude photos.]

Sooz

Ben Hoark

That's the one. That's where the whole is not so much going to fall to pieces as never get constructed in the first place. It's the killer for every attempt to impose any kind of order/law/whatever in SL.

[Trout ratings -- yes, we need a Trout rating for Sooz. Def. You send Trout whatever pics you are happy with.]

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Trout Recreant

I have never, ever been mean in a Trout Rating and I never will be. It's not like that at all. You can see some samples of them in people's sigs here and there, and there's a thread in this forum where people have posted complete ratings. I would never want to say anything that someone would find hurtful.

As far as pictures, send whatever you are comfortable with. I try to get a feel for someone's personality from the pics, so send more than one if you can because it's a little hard to work off of just one photo, but only send what you want. There are a LOT of people who didn't send nude ones.

armozel

But in all seriousness if you want to actually enforce a contract, just use the RL constructs already existent, don't try to magically add a new layer of bullshit unneeded and unproven. >_>

Jellin Pico

Hell, I'd do it for free and be just as crazy, corrupt and power hungry as you

Charlemagne Allen

I has this t-shirt, and agree wholeheartedly.

__________________
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Charlemagne Allen: I HAVE CHATLOGS!
smokergirl Lowenhar: HOMOPHOBE
smokergirl Lowenhar: CONTENT THIEF
Charlemagne Allen: RELIGION SUCKS DONKEY BALLS!
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Pretty things:
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Trout Recreant

Crazy and power-hungry maybe, but you have to be born corrupt. You can't learn it.

...Unless you come to me. I give corruption lessons for the low, low price of 15,000 Lindens. I'll teach you the art of accepting bribes, lying to your customers, failing to deliver, and hiding income. You'll learn the ins and outs of grift, the art of the classic scam, and how to avoid the detection of law enforcement. All this and much more can be yours. This class will pay for itself in no time flat or I'll refund you TWICE your money back.* Call now! Operators standing by!




*offer not actually available. "Twice" is defined, for the purposes of refunds as "none". There's you first lesson, sucker.

CaleVinson

I'm *not* a proponent of this scheme, but I'm also not sure its quite as ill thought out as people are suggesting here.

First, I'll admit I'm using a layperson definition of "Enforcement". If you're using a specific legal defintion, then please grab Trout and admonish me severely.

The scheme has an enforcement scheme. Failure to abide by court rulings is punishable by banishment. Banishment is implementable by residents without any LL involvement whatsoever - see BanLink. Whether banishment will prove to be a sufficient deterrent is anyone's guess.

It depends on the scale of the "crime" doesn't it? "Big" content creators with incomes of thousands of real dollars will of course properly ignore this scheme and pursue RL legal methods.

But if you pay me 10,000 $L to write a small script for you and I don't deliver, you're presumably not going to get William Shatner on the phone. On the other hand, I might decide that the 10,000 wasn't worth being banned from the Metaverse Republic, and hence refund the money or finish the job.

Perhaps I'm alone in this view, but as a content-creator-minnow, I keep my SL and RL separate. For example, I wouldn't issue a DMCA to protect my content, as I have no desire to risk some random SL fucktard deciding to "get me" by mailbombing by RL workplace.

Menchor Barbosa

After reading all this, except for the wall of text, my comment is, wouldn't this be easier to add a judicial system to banlink? People could agree in advance to let them arbitrate, and have someone, or some 3 preferably have the documents and logs submitted. A highly trusted system would be able to use an existing system to get someone banned in a number of places if they didn't pay up or perform.

The whole government thing is idiotic.

__________________
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Joannah Cramer

The free market is simply the exchange of goods/services where the individual decides on their own how to spend their money on said goods/services, and where the prices get ultimately shaped by decisions of these individuals. In short, "stuff costs what the market can bear".

Can you please explain my how the games (or software market in general) is not free market under these conditions, in your eyes?

But there's no collectivism here. Or if there is, i'm really interested where you see it.

This, ironically enough, means there's government regulations to the shape of the market. I.e. something free market ain't.

Corporations and monopolies are two very different things btw. Just mentioning it because the way you write it makes me wonder. The monopoly can be a pretty natural outcome of succesful elimination of competition (something that's also part of free market) and that goal isn't exclusive to corporations, if the supply side is handled by individuals instead then these individuals strive to achieve it as well. Meanwhile, multitude of corporations can (and typically do) exist and operate on the same market.

I don't think that answers my question, really -- a corporation is still merely basic unit of organization. That example of yours is of favouritism given some of such individuals over others. If this kind of favouritism wasn't given, the corporations in general would still exist just the same.

Travis Lambert

We've thought about something sorta like that before - making it so that if enough subscribers complain about a particular ban, it automatically becomes non-sharable. But that's about the extent to it - and that idea is so fraught with potential issues, it'll likely never see the light of day anyway.

Ironically, Metaverse Republic already subscribes to BanLink - although they've never really used it, and few people have chosen to trust them. And that's the rub: Anyone can create a government in SL, but it carries zero authority without landowner buyin. Part of it has to do with the way land permissions work, part of it has simply to do with our SL resident culture: few are willing to completely cede control of property they pay for to someone else. BanLink gets around that issue by being decentralized, and keeping each landowner's final authority intact.

SL isn't exactly like RL, and governmental analogies really don't translate well here - despite how hard some folks try to jam a square peg in a round hole.