Desmond --
Fascinating article. Thanks for posting it.
However, part of this reminds me of the ancient era of MUDs and MOOs. (Here I am, dating myself as someone approaching middle age.) Julian Dibbell's article "A Rape in Cyberspace" gets to these issues.
[url:3pz84o6d]http://www.ludd.luth.se/mud/aber/articl ... voice.html[/url:3pz84o6d]
I think that there are two things, in addition to the lack of meta-control or anarchy allowed by open-sourcing the games, holding back online government. These problems are not limited to online democracy -- they are challenges to online government in general.
The underlying problem is a two-fold lack of rights and lack of responsibilities. In other words, there is a lack of law and law enforcement. Without such legal mechanisms, government has no form and can function only in the most minimal sense. This was the Ashcroftian insight -- and it was a good one. (Ashcroft's problem was not with theory -- but with application. In that way he was just like Karl Marx.)
However, there are two serious impediments for developing online, autonomous legal structures.
The first, and probably the most systemic, is that the companies that create these online environments are motivated by RL economic goals and are subject to RL legal concerns. This means that they do not want to unnecessarily (from their perspective) increase their potential RL liability. If they give players rights (such as true ownership rights in property), then they are exposing themselves to potential liability for virtual property loss. This liability can be limited by EULAs -- but the effect of those limitations is to undermine the very concept that players have ownership rights in virtual property.
The other way to avoid this kind of liability is to unfetter the game from any corporate creator. If the game is truly open source -- operating on a world-wide network of personal computers (following the model of the guerrilla heirs of Napster) -- then there is no entity to be liable for the loss of online property. Ironically, this would increase the right of ownership because there would be no need for a EULA declaring that players don't own property (or redefining ownership in a contingent, toothless way so that it ceases to have the value or legal force it has iRL). However, this would require that the corporate creators cede control -- which would cause great problems for revenue generation -- which would undermine the very motivation for creating a quality game in the first place.
The second problem is from the player, rather than the corporate, perspective. Many people come to virtual worlds to escape the weight of RL responsibilities -- including legal responsibilities. One of the principal attractions of the online experience is that it is escapist and allows for the pursuit of otherwise-forbidden fantasies. In other words -- it is liberating. The imposition of responsibilities on players would undermine the very liberty that draws many players into the world. The more a virtual world becomes like RL, the less reason there is to visit it.
These observations are far more true of traditional MMRPGs than of SL. SL is making some daring choices -- both in terms of the rights of players and in terms of ceding control of the game. These are the elements of the issue that are within corporate control. However, the creating corporation has no power over the second problem. It's one thing for the Lindens to say that they want SL players to step up and take responsibility for their world and their actions by policing it. It is quite another for the players to actually want to do that policing or bear the weight of that responsibility.
The other, and final, wrinkle that I can see here is a matter of application. Police power is a form of power. It requires that there be some force behind the police. However, if you just look at actions -- the exercise of governmental powers is legitimate only because a legitimate government is acting. When a government puts a criminal in jail, it is a proper act of justice; when one private person imprisons another, it is a crime. When a government takes a regular portion of a citizen's income, it is a a tax; when a private person does, it is extortion. The act is the same in each of these cases.
This problem causes a rub for giving players the power to create an enforceable social structure ingame. If all players are given such powers -- we have mob war and anarchy. The powers are there -- and will be used -- but there is no legitimacy.
The question then is how to create legitimacy. The easiest way to create a legitimate government is to create a government and declare that it is legitimate. This is legitimacy by fiat. It is simple. It is also dictatorship. It is the current model for almost all MMRPGs.
Democracy is a much harder way to govern. Is it a possible way to govern online games? I hope so -- but the jury is out.
I suspect that democracy is not really possible as a government for online games -- but that democratic government is possible within online games. I think that the same is true of world government -- democracy might be be a possible model for world government, but it is far more possible to create democratic governments (democratic nations) in the world. This is what the CDS is doing -- and I think that we, for all our faults and stutters and starts, are proving the possibility of online democracy -- at least in small scale.
In small proportion, we just beauties see
And in short measure, life may perfect be.
Beathan
Let's keep things simple enough to be fair, substantive enough to be effective, and insightful enough to be good.
