$5,000 Reward For GoPets Avatar Bill of Rights
GoPets CEO Erik Bethke is set to break new ground in the area of virtual worlds by proposing to turn his service’s end-user licensing agreement and terms of service document into a plainly written bill of rights. [Via GamePolitics.com, pointed out by Nate Combs.] In a recent LiveJournal post, he offers $5,000 for help in drafting the document, but sets out 16 points for discussion, starting off, rather remarkably, with a right of due procedss and habeas corpus. If Bethke can get all this in place, it will represent a great step forward for virtual worlds and massively multiplayer online games. In his post, he mentions Raph Koster’s Declaration of the Right of Avatars, which <pimp alert>Peter and I reference in our book.</pimp alert> There isn’t a terms of service doc out there that comes anywhere close to this. But if virtual spaces are to have a real, robust future, they’re going to need much better governance structures than they enjoy at present. Bethke’s new style of ToS, if it can be implemented, would be a big first step down that road.
Feeds
Personally I think this heading down the wrong path.
Residents of virtual worlds already think they have the same types of rights as citizens of real governments, yet I think this is an illusion, as all these companies are doing are providing a service, and a normal TOS covers what type of service they are willing to provide. If you don’t like it, you can go elsewhere. It’s not like real life where you are stuck with the government you’ve got.
I think people are feeling frustrated by their treatment in Second Life and other virtual worlds because they have invested so much time and energy and money in there that it’s not easy to uproot and change providers.
But this will change as we get two things - one is portability of avatar identities, and the other is moving away from the current scenario where we are in the ‘walled garden’ phase of virtual worlds.
Once we can host our own virtual world servers, whether it’s LL’s servers or not, we will return to the same model we have on the web today, where we rent space off hosting services and all we have to do is comply with their TOS. We get to decide what the rules are in our own worlds in the same way we currently get to decide what goes on our websites. If we don’t like their service, we just find a better one. There just isn’t enough competition yet.
sean,
Agreed.
all this “metanonsence” about “governance” in a corporate run sandboz is silly. If consumer rights are the issue, there are numerous real world solutions to change private or public companies biz practices.
Its this type of “metanonsence” that brought on the blog induced psychosis surrounding web3d today. And why the bubble is already (as i warned;)) stretched to “SL Corporate island” as “the skip intro” movie joke of the year.
God save us from Wired Editors and the new “journalism”.:) of just Press Release doublespeak be it from the US Government or Two 28 year olds in a garage trying to get their uncles VC capital for a new “groundbreaking social network website with animal avatars:)
-Real Story—- ESC employees BANNED
(temporary account hold ive read) from SL for doing RL proper business…LOL now that is funny, sad, and shouldnt be tolerated without real world business to business responses….
but hey, im sure the trips to asia and europe were/are fun….what did they serve on the plane guys?
Do we have another decade in us to wait?–I think 6 months from now will tell:)
cube3;)
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