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Devolution of abuse reporting and parallelism
A commentary
Introduction
Recently, Linden Lab, creator of SecondLife, announced a change of policy with respect to abuse reporting, introducing what it termed, "Estate level governance", and in so doing, made some substantial reconceptualisations of certain aspects of SecondLife, with potentially important implications for local governance.
The change
Traditionally, all those who use SecondLife have been bound by two separate but linked standards: the Terms of Service, the general legal agreement between all users of SecondLife and Linden Lab, which serves much the same function as the terms of service of, for example, an ISP or web hosting provider, and the Community Standards, a document prescribing generally acceptable behaviour within SecondLife. Those standards were both enforced by Linden Lab, with such sanctions as warnings, or temporary or permanent banishments from SecondLife as a whole, and policed by individual users filing abuse reports, using a dedicated tool in the software client to do so. The abuse reports would be sent straight to Linden Lab, who would consider what, if any, action to take in respect of them.
The new model that is going to be introduced soon (the date for its introduction has not yet been announced, although the scheme has been piloted since January) is that, on private island estates only, the owners of those private islands will have the option of receiving at least some categories of abuse reports themselves, and dealing with them themselves. (Wisely, Linden Lab will retain certain sorts of abuse reports, including reports of suspected underage people and password fraud). There will also be the chance for owners of private island estates to pay for as yet unspecified premium Linden-based abuse reporting system. Also promised are as yet unspecified further governance tools.
The reconceptualisation
It is quite clear from the responses to the official announcement that the change is designed to be part of a reconceptualisation of SecondLife as a whole: the term "SecondLife" will, it seems, apply just to the mainland (where hitherto it described the whole virtual world, including software and protocol), and the whole of what is now called "SecondLife" will be called "the grid" (a term previously reserved for specific sets of connected estates, such as the main grid, the teen grid, and the beta grid). Whether exactly this renaming will stick remains to be seen (what will Linden Lab call the software if the term "SecondLife" is reserved for just the mainland(s)?), but the substantial change of policy is one of exercising a fundamentally different level of control over private islands (which are now to be known as "estates", presumably in contemplation of the prospect of whole private continents) as distinct from the mainland, a move earlier hinted at by Robin Linden during the most recent meeting of the LGSG.
This appears to be a firm resolution to the tension that hitherto existed, at least in theory, between SecondLife as a single virtual community (Philip Rosedale/Linden is known for saying that he was intending to create a whole country), and as an abstract technological platform for virtual worlds in general; in other words, is SecondLife a virtual world equivalent of one huge website (a wiki, perhaps), or the whole web? The answer now appears to be, eventually at least, both. The mainland(s) will be a single (sort of) community, governed by the community standards as well as the terms of service, in which Linden Lab will decide (and enforce) the way in which people should behave (as moderators on a web forum would), and the wider grid, consisting of private islands, will be a network in a technical, but not necessarily a social, sense, on which those individuals (or, hopefully, one day, individuals and groups) who rent servers from Linden Lab (or, eventually, anyone) to run private islands, or even, perhaps, private continents, will have near total freedom to decide what, if any, behavioural standards to apply to their regions, and how, if at all, to enforce those standards. It might well be that the Community Standards themselves will one day apply only to the mainland and those private estates whose owners choose voluntarily to adopt them, only the Terms of Service being generally applicable.
The implications for local governance
Putting aside for a moment the very promising, albeit somewhat vague, announcements that Linden Lab is working on further, as yet unspecified, governance tools, the implications for local government in SecondLife (or "the grid", or whatever is now the appropriate term) are mixed: on the one hand, the move is positive, in that it shows that Linden Lab are, in respect at least of private estates, firmly committed to devolving control to local regions, and giving localities the power to set and deal with their own standards of behaviour. The next important development would be to allow group control of private estates to give real choice and flexibility in self-governance. On the other hand, however, the mainland/private estates split implies that Linden Lab might believe that no governance tools at all ought be implemented on the mainland.
That would be of some considerable concern, since there is substantial demand (and need) for governance tools, of a voluntary, opt-in nature, throughout the grid, both on the mainland and private estates: Linden Lab is not, for example, ever going to make itself responsible for enforcing covenants or in-world contracts or preventing land blight: it simply does not have the judicial resources to tackle such conceptually complicated disputes. Nonetheless, those disputes are very real, and just as real (if not more so) on the mainland as elsewhere. A substantial number of people want a proper way of securing a formal resolution to those disputes, and it would be a terrible waste of an opportunity if those means were only made available to those on private estates. It would greatly impoverish the SecondLife experience if only some regions had even the technical wherewithal to set up means to resolve such disputes.
The relevance of parallelism
In reality, there is no inherent conflict between, on the one hand, a virtual continent, or series of continents, over which Linden Lab retain a substantial degree of control over standards of behaviour, as distinct to private estates over which it retains no such control, and, on the other hand, tools for effective local governance throughout both sorts of region. The key to the compatibility is in normative parallelism.
The principle of normative parallelism in this context is simply this: it is easily possible for two separate normative systems to exist in parallel in the same domain. So, for domain X, normative system A might impose duties P and Q, normative system B might impose duties Q and R, and normative system C might impose duty S, each with its own, independent, means of enforcement, without necessarily creating any conflict. With one exception, the same is true of all kinds of normative relations, including rights, liabilities, privileges, etc. The one exception is that a conflict would arise if any normative system purported to mandate that which another normative system prohibited.
A good practical example of parallelism is sport. A person who engages in, say, football (or "soccer" as those from the States call it) is bound by (at least) two normative systems in parallel: (1) the rules of soccer; and (2) the law of the land of whichever legal jurisdiction the football match is taking place in. The two do not conflict: they live happily side by side. The rules of soccer prohibit handling the ball, whereas national law permits it (but does not mandate it). So, handling the ball during a soccer game might result in being sent off (the soccer game's means of enforcing its norms), but would not result in a criminal conviction and sentence (the national law's means of enforcing its norms). Both the rules of soccer and national law prohibit physically beating another player during a match: such conduct would likely result both in being sent off and a criminal conviction and penalty. The national law, but not the rules of soccer, prohibit stealing another player's wallet from the changing room: such conduct by a player would not result in, say, a free kick or a change of the score, but would result (if detected) in a criminal conviction and sentence.
There is no conflict between the two normative systems: those who play football are not doing anything wrong merely because the rules of the game do not prohibit, for example, theft (there is no duty upon those devising their own normative systems independently to prohibit everything already prohibited by any other given applicable normative system), nor are those norms that exist only in soccer unenforceable through want of status in national law (it would be absurd to imagine somebody suing somebody for handling the ball), nor is the football referee improperly meddling in national legal affairs by sending off the player who beats another player during the course of a game. Another interesting point to note is that soccer is played in many countries in which different legal systems prevail, yet the rules of soccer remain unchanged in all of them. What would create a conflict is if a sport encouraged or required of its participators, for example, that they assault innocent members of the public: then there would be a conflict between the two normative systems, and, in that case, the superior normative system, that of national law, would prevail and rightly prohibit taking part in that particular sport at all.
That analysis, I think, fully answers those critics of local governance who claim that it is not possible or desirable merely because a given system of local governance might not replicate exactly any given national legal system (or, alternatively, private international law), or that, absent enforcement in national courts, it is worthless: the rules made by local governments in SecondLife would be just as lawful, and just as enforceable, as the rules of soccer.
The relevance of the analysis of parallelism to the recent Linden Lab announcement about abuse reporting,and the reconceptualisation of SecondLife, is that there is nothing intrinsically incompatible between a mainland in which one normative system (the Linden Lab community standards) applies, and having individual local governments apply and enforce their own normative standards in that same domain in parallel.
Just like the game of soccer and the national law, the two normative standards would have different, albeit occasionally overlapping, functions: local rules might prohibit, for example, contravening a covenant, whereas the Community Standards do not (the equivalent of handling the ball); local rules might also prohibit general griefing, also prohibited by the Community Standards, but have a different enforcement mechanism (the equivalent of the foul that is also a battery/assault); and local rules might be silent on unauthorised disclosure, that is prohibited by the Community Standards (the equivalent of the theft from the locker room).
So, whilst private estate owners perhaps need even more tools than mainland landowners to deal with their private estates, mainland landowners too need tools that they do not presently have to form themselves into governments, with the flexibility to assign different powers amongst different members of the group without having a residual sovereign with absolute power, and the power to enforce effectively all of its decisions, in order that local normative systems, running in parallel to the Community Standards, can grow up and serve the very real needs outlined in the discussion on benefits of local government in virtual worlds. The tools that I propose are, I should suggest, just what are needed to achieve those important aims.
Ashcroft Burnham
25th of April 2007
Introduction
Recently, Linden Lab, creator of SecondLife, announced a change of policy with respect to abuse reporting, introducing what it termed, "Estate level governance", and in so doing, made some substantial reconceptualisations of certain aspects of SecondLife, with potentially important implications for local governance.
The change
Traditionally, all those who use SecondLife have been bound by two separate but linked standards: the Terms of Service, the general legal agreement between all users of SecondLife and Linden Lab, which serves much the same function as the terms of service of, for example, an ISP or web hosting provider, and the Community Standards, a document prescribing generally acceptable behaviour within SecondLife. Those standards were both enforced by Linden Lab, with such sanctions as warnings, or temporary or permanent banishments from SecondLife as a whole, and policed by individual users filing abuse reports, using a dedicated tool in the software client to do so. The abuse reports would be sent straight to Linden Lab, who would consider what, if any, action to take in respect of them.
The new model that is going to be introduced soon (the date for its introduction has not yet been announced, although the scheme has been piloted since January) is that, on private island estates only, the owners of those private islands will have the option of receiving at least some categories of abuse reports themselves, and dealing with them themselves. (Wisely, Linden Lab will retain certain sorts of abuse reports, including reports of suspected underage people and password fraud). There will also be the chance for owners of private island estates to pay for as yet unspecified premium Linden-based abuse reporting system. Also promised are as yet unspecified further governance tools.
The reconceptualisation
It is quite clear from the responses to the official announcement that the change is designed to be part of a reconceptualisation of SecondLife as a whole: the term "SecondLife" will, it seems, apply just to the mainland (where hitherto it described the whole virtual world, including software and protocol), and the whole of what is now called "SecondLife" will be called "the grid" (a term previously reserved for specific sets of connected estates, such as the main grid, the teen grid, and the beta grid). Whether exactly this renaming will stick remains to be seen (what will Linden Lab call the software if the term "SecondLife" is reserved for just the mainland(s)?), but the substantial change of policy is one of exercising a fundamentally different level of control over private islands (which are now to be known as "estates", presumably in contemplation of the prospect of whole private continents) as distinct from the mainland, a move earlier hinted at by Robin Linden during the most recent meeting of the LGSG.
This appears to be a firm resolution to the tension that hitherto existed, at least in theory, between SecondLife as a single virtual community (Philip Rosedale/Linden is known for saying that he was intending to create a whole country), and as an abstract technological platform for virtual worlds in general; in other words, is SecondLife a virtual world equivalent of one huge website (a wiki, perhaps), or the whole web? The answer now appears to be, eventually at least, both. The mainland(s) will be a single (sort of) community, governed by the community standards as well as the terms of service, in which Linden Lab will decide (and enforce) the way in which people should behave (as moderators on a web forum would), and the wider grid, consisting of private islands, will be a network in a technical, but not necessarily a social, sense, on which those individuals (or, hopefully, one day, individuals and groups) who rent servers from Linden Lab (or, eventually, anyone) to run private islands, or even, perhaps, private continents, will have near total freedom to decide what, if any, behavioural standards to apply to their regions, and how, if at all, to enforce those standards. It might well be that the Community Standards themselves will one day apply only to the mainland and those private estates whose owners choose voluntarily to adopt them, only the Terms of Service being generally applicable.
The implications for local governance
Putting aside for a moment the very promising, albeit somewhat vague, announcements that Linden Lab is working on further, as yet unspecified, governance tools, the implications for local government in SecondLife (or "the grid", or whatever is now the appropriate term) are mixed: on the one hand, the move is positive, in that it shows that Linden Lab are, in respect at least of private estates, firmly committed to devolving control to local regions, and giving localities the power to set and deal with their own standards of behaviour. The next important development would be to allow group control of private estates to give real choice and flexibility in self-governance. On the other hand, however, the mainland/private estates split implies that Linden Lab might believe that no governance tools at all ought be implemented on the mainland.
That would be of some considerable concern, since there is substantial demand (and need) for governance tools, of a voluntary, opt-in nature, throughout the grid, both on the mainland and private estates: Linden Lab is not, for example, ever going to make itself responsible for enforcing covenants or in-world contracts or preventing land blight: it simply does not have the judicial resources to tackle such conceptually complicated disputes. Nonetheless, those disputes are very real, and just as real (if not more so) on the mainland as elsewhere. A substantial number of people want a proper way of securing a formal resolution to those disputes, and it would be a terrible waste of an opportunity if those means were only made available to those on private estates. It would greatly impoverish the SecondLife experience if only some regions had even the technical wherewithal to set up means to resolve such disputes.
The relevance of parallelism
In reality, there is no inherent conflict between, on the one hand, a virtual continent, or series of continents, over which Linden Lab retain a substantial degree of control over standards of behaviour, as distinct to private estates over which it retains no such control, and, on the other hand, tools for effective local governance throughout both sorts of region. The key to the compatibility is in normative parallelism.
The principle of normative parallelism in this context is simply this: it is easily possible for two separate normative systems to exist in parallel in the same domain. So, for domain X, normative system A might impose duties P and Q, normative system B might impose duties Q and R, and normative system C might impose duty S, each with its own, independent, means of enforcement, without necessarily creating any conflict. With one exception, the same is true of all kinds of normative relations, including rights, liabilities, privileges, etc. The one exception is that a conflict would arise if any normative system purported to mandate that which another normative system prohibited.
A good practical example of parallelism is sport. A person who engages in, say, football (or "soccer" as those from the States call it) is bound by (at least) two normative systems in parallel: (1) the rules of soccer; and (2) the law of the land of whichever legal jurisdiction the football match is taking place in. The two do not conflict: they live happily side by side. The rules of soccer prohibit handling the ball, whereas national law permits it (but does not mandate it). So, handling the ball during a soccer game might result in being sent off (the soccer game's means of enforcing its norms), but would not result in a criminal conviction and sentence (the national law's means of enforcing its norms). Both the rules of soccer and national law prohibit physically beating another player during a match: such conduct would likely result both in being sent off and a criminal conviction and penalty. The national law, but not the rules of soccer, prohibit stealing another player's wallet from the changing room: such conduct by a player would not result in, say, a free kick or a change of the score, but would result (if detected) in a criminal conviction and sentence.
There is no conflict between the two normative systems: those who play football are not doing anything wrong merely because the rules of the game do not prohibit, for example, theft (there is no duty upon those devising their own normative systems independently to prohibit everything already prohibited by any other given applicable normative system), nor are those norms that exist only in soccer unenforceable through want of status in national law (it would be absurd to imagine somebody suing somebody for handling the ball), nor is the football referee improperly meddling in national legal affairs by sending off the player who beats another player during the course of a game. Another interesting point to note is that soccer is played in many countries in which different legal systems prevail, yet the rules of soccer remain unchanged in all of them. What would create a conflict is if a sport encouraged or required of its participators, for example, that they assault innocent members of the public: then there would be a conflict between the two normative systems, and, in that case, the superior normative system, that of national law, would prevail and rightly prohibit taking part in that particular sport at all.
That analysis, I think, fully answers those critics of local governance who claim that it is not possible or desirable merely because a given system of local governance might not replicate exactly any given national legal system (or, alternatively, private international law), or that, absent enforcement in national courts, it is worthless: the rules made by local governments in SecondLife would be just as lawful, and just as enforceable, as the rules of soccer.
The relevance of the analysis of parallelism to the recent Linden Lab announcement about abuse reporting,and the reconceptualisation of SecondLife, is that there is nothing intrinsically incompatible between a mainland in which one normative system (the Linden Lab community standards) applies, and having individual local governments apply and enforce their own normative standards in that same domain in parallel.
Just like the game of soccer and the national law, the two normative standards would have different, albeit occasionally overlapping, functions: local rules might prohibit, for example, contravening a covenant, whereas the Community Standards do not (the equivalent of handling the ball); local rules might also prohibit general griefing, also prohibited by the Community Standards, but have a different enforcement mechanism (the equivalent of the foul that is also a battery/assault); and local rules might be silent on unauthorised disclosure, that is prohibited by the Community Standards (the equivalent of the theft from the locker room).
So, whilst private estate owners perhaps need even more tools than mainland landowners to deal with their private estates, mainland landowners too need tools that they do not presently have to form themselves into governments, with the flexibility to assign different powers amongst different members of the group without having a residual sovereign with absolute power, and the power to enforce effectively all of its decisions, in order that local normative systems, running in parallel to the Community Standards, can grow up and serve the very real needs outlined in the discussion on benefits of local government in virtual worlds. The tools that I propose are, I should suggest, just what are needed to achieve those important aims.
Ashcroft Burnham
25th of April 2007
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Latest page update: made by ashcroftburnham
, Apr 25 2007, 4:23 PM EDT
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | ||
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| GwynethLlewelyn | Excellent analysis and comparison | 0 | May 11 2007, 12:33 PM EDT by GwynethLlewelyn | ||
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Thread started: May 11 2007, 12:33 PM EDT
Watch
Ash,
I finally read this article of yours, and the comparison with soccer/football rules co-existing peacefully within the context of national law is a great example. I usually give a different example, like an association or a club having their own code of conduct inside their club HQ. An example: while national law protects the freedom of expression, a club can forbid members to write on the walls — and both things co-exist, since the freedom of expression is not "removed" arbitrarily just because someone joins a club. But the soccer analogy is far easier to understand :) Just a slight note: Linden Lab always called private islands, or, more precisely, <i>sets</i> of private islands, "estates". Their idea was that from the Estate menu option you could set/control <i>all</i> your islands as a whole (ie. for banning; or having the same setting for the sun in the whole estate; or even sending messages to all users on all islands inside the estate), as well as some "fine-tuning" on individual islands. LL tends to use both terms interchangeably, since, by default, when someone buys their first private island, both the island and an estate with that island are created. Sometimes LL "forgets" to add further islands to the *same* estate. I don't read LL's words as implying that the mainland will <i>not</i> have access to the new "governance tools", although that might happen (LL has the strangest ideas sometimes!). In effect, I believe that "Governor Linden", the "enforcer" of the mainland (which is also an "estate"), will very likely want to use those "governance tools" as well (thus allowing LL to place the burden of running the "Mainland Estate" in the hands of an employee without the need of "God mode"). But it's soon to know for sure what LL is planning there... |
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| mondrianlykin | Thanks! | 0 | May 3 2007, 1:23 PM EDT by mondrianlykin | ||
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Thread started: May 3 2007, 1:23 PM EDT
Watch
I got back from a week "out of the world" (or in another world, depending on the point of you) and as I got home I was looking for a good source to getting to know more about this new Linden Labs idea. Enligthening :)
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| Benjamin_Duranske | Great Post | 2 | Apr 25 2007, 5:54 PM EDT by ashcroftburnham | ||
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Thread started: Apr 25 2007, 5:24 PM EDT
Watch
This nicely breaks down the impact of the change on local government, and -- I think correctly -- hints at the tools that a group like this might be able to package as a "government" franchise and sell, give away, or whatever. The change in the nature of abuse reporting is significant, and I'm surprised how many people are overlooking it. As is traditional, I take a less academic view of the change <a href="http://virtuallyblind.com/2007/04/25/linden-lab-takes-big-step-toward-private-legal-systems-and-governments-in-second-life/">over at Virtually Blind</a>, but if you're reading this you may want to read the post there as well, if for no other reason than to see what I expect will ultimately reflect the widespread response from attorney participants in SL.
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