Initial Criminal Code

[Gxeremio Dimsum]

[quote="Aliasi Stonebender":2mt4ntfb]Most other things really boil down to "see griefer, ban from land".[/quote:2mt4ntfb]

Let me get this straight, Aliasi. You're too libertarian to support fines agreed by the community, yet you want to invest ban power (the equivalent of deportation or exile) in one person with no due process?

[quote:2mt4ntfb]
This can't be meaningfuly legislated against, especially when we are sovereign only to the extent my town might be, compared to the state it is in, and the nation in which that state resides. Which is to say, not all that sovereign at all. We have to care about Linden Labs. We have to care about real-life law, on those few points it is applicable.[/quote:2mt4ntfb]

Let's be honest. We only have to care about LL to the extent that it is likely they will act. This works two ways. One is those things our community does that might conceivably be considered violations of TOS but which are almost certain not to be acted upon, and the other is for things which are clearly violations of TOS and we want to prevent but which LL will not act upon. Reliance upon LL to police our community is a really unsubstantiated position given LL's history to date.

I tend to agree with where Beathan is going with this thread, though I don't like all the specifics.

We certainly need to define ourselves better as a community. We are not "role-playing" government - we have actual money and actual property that are affected by decisions of a democratic government. The most comfortable analogy for me is not country, nor is it role play. It's a property owners' association, which doesn't have total sovereignty but which is in fact different from unregulated communities in many important ways. Defining a code of rules and punishments is well within the bounds of a POA, and it is within our bounds as well.

[Bromo Ivory]

[quote="Beathan":2ttu2psl]
2. attempting to influence internal CDS decisions by threatening to invoke an outside jurisdiction, either LL or a RL jurisdiction, to intervene (which is contrary to the sovereignty of our effort).
[/quote:2ttu2psl]

You mentioned this once before and called it 'treason' - CDS [i:2ttu2psl]is[/i:2ttu2psl] subject to LL TOS so I cannot see banning someone for that...

And threatening someone with it being this 'treason' is silly as well.

Perhaps inviting them to file said report would be more effective than pointing and saying 'treason' and 'you will be banned!'

[Aliasi Stonebender]

[quote="Gxeremio Dimsum":fal8ia1k][quote="Aliasi Stonebender":fal8ia1k]Most other things really boil down to "see griefer, ban from land".[/quote:fal8ia1k]

Let me get this straight, Aliasi. You're too libertarian to support fines agreed by the community, yet you want to invest ban power (the equivalent of deportation or exile) in one person with no due process?
[/quote:fal8ia1k]

For an initial ban? Yes. If someone IS trying to physics-crash the sim, there is no [i:fal8ia1k]time[/i:fal8ia1k] for lengthy debate; you can save that for a judicial review afterwards. This principle is well-established here, since way back when I banned Ulrika for deleting city objects. The first ban is an 'arrest', not 'imprisonment'. Having that in one person is fine. We're a small community, we don't need a huge 'police force'.

I am drawing, here, on my experience with moderating other Internet phenomena such as message boards. You make sure things can't get worse, first, THEN you see if a permanent measure is needed.

[quote:fal8ia1k]
We certainly need to define ourselves better as a community. We are not "role-playing" government - we have actual money and actual property that are affected by decisions of a democratic government. The most comfortable analogy for me is not country, nor is it role play. It's a property owners' association, which doesn't have total sovereignty but which is in fact different from unregulated communities in many important ways. Defining a code of rules and punishments is well within the bounds of a POA, and it is within our bounds as well.[/quote:fal8ia1k]

Certainly, although we still have to deal with the realities of our situation, as Desmond so astutely pointed out. For non-citizens, they likely don't care what 'punishment' we levy.

[Beathan]

Bromo --

Of course we are subject to the LL TOS. Of course we exist at the sufferance of other, larger, more powerful entities. The Lindens could shut us down at will. The U.S. government could shut down the Lindens an SL at will. If either of these things happened, we would cease to exist.

That said, the fact that we exist and maintain our sovereignty at the sufferance of these other, more powerful entities should, I think, make us more concerned with maintaining our self-regulation power, not less so. We whould make every effort to ensure that the Lindens never intervene in our little state -- or intervene as little as possible. This means that we should regulate ourselve -- even enforcing the LL TOS ourselves so that the Lindens never have to. The Lindens should like this. They don't like enforcing the TOS even on the Mainland. Too much work.

We exist only to the extent more powerful outside forces leave us alone. I think that inviting those forces to intervene in our affairs is a horrible attempt to harm our project -- and treason is to too strong a term, and loss of citizenship and banning is not too strong a penalty. If you are weak -- but want to be free -- keep your head down and go your own way, avoiding molestation by avoiding attention, as best you can.

Beathan

[Desmond Shang]

[quote="Beathan":2rvr1ii4]Bromo --

Of course we are subject to the LL TOS. Of course we exist at the sufferance of other, larger, more powerful entities. The Lindens could shut us down at will. The U.S. government could shut down the Lindens an SL at will. If either of these things happened, we would cease to exist.

That said, the fact that we exist and maintain our sovereignty at the sufferance of these other, more powerful entities should, I think, make us more concerned with maintaining our self-regulation power, not less so. We whould make every effort to ensure that the Lindens never intervene in our little state -- or intervene as little as possible. This means that we should regulate ourselve -- even enforcing the LL TOS ourselves so that the Lindens never have to. The Lindens should like this. They don't like enforcing the TOS even on the Mainland. Too much work.

We exist only to the extent more powerful outside forces leave us alone. I think that inviting those forces to intervene in our affairs is a horrible attempt to harm our project -- and treason is to too strong a term, and loss of citizenship and banning is not too strong a penalty. If you are weak -- but want to be free -- keep your head down and go your own way, avoiding molestation by avoiding attention, as best you can.

Beathan[/quote:2rvr1ii4]

Beathan, love ya buddy, but seriously - this thread is comedy gold.

I'm dealing with a micronation only about... hmm... roughly 10x bigger than the CDS with maybe 100x more traffic, and honestly we don't have any of these issues.

If someone's reeeeally being a jerk we'll eject or ban them and forget they existed in 5 minutes - the most we keep is a quick note reminding us why they got kicked out (it's only fair to be able to tell someone why they got banned if they bug ya about it). But then we regularly purge the ban lists.

If ejected or banned, 99% never ever ever ever come back after 30 seconds. But if determined, 100% could come back inside of 30 seconds as an alt.

Nothing you can do about it, save one thing: lock down the entire country to an approved group. Estate de Policia! Which is still subject to infiltration anyway, and *would* be if it ever got 'that bad'. Everyone loves a challenge!

If you ever dealt with any griefing, you'd know that treating it as 'serious business' is a red carpet invitation for more of the same, in overwhelming numbers.

I am still soooo droppin' a prim on the platz next time I come by a CDS sim... up to you guys how you want to deal with it. I'm just gonna do it for the lulz. Could I please post the CDS court summons on the wall in the Guvnah's Mansion in Caledon?

Hope I'm not steamin' ya, I'm actually trying to be *very* friendly here but I'm not sure it will be understood as such. I'd be far more mean if I didn't say a thing, and watched the CDS issue court summons to w-hat, /b/, *chan and PN visitors... then stood back and watched.

You'd single-handedly create a griefing wave of the like so far unknown on the grid.

[Beathan]

Desmond --

My primary focus is not so much griefing as more pernicious behavior by citizens -- including destroying public property (which has happened) and threatening to bring in outside forces to intervene in our local affairs (which is rumored to have happened). I think that a democratic virtual community is hard-pressed to survive with such internal behavior. An autocracy like Caledon has the luxury of not being limited in the means and methods of regulating its citizens. We need a process -- a process that both protects our state and protects the rights of our citizens.

I think that penal fines, which are added as surcharges to the rent payments citizens pay for land makes all the sense in the world as a means of regulating citizen behavior without infringing on citizen rights.

Then we get to noncitizens. We are an open sim -- and we want to be an open sim. Therefore, folks will come -- and many folks who do come litter, and some grief. So, what do we do. We can't fine them in any effective way. The only way we have to regulate noncitizens is to ban them -- even for trivial offenses. However, I think that outright banning, especially for petty offenses, is unduly harsh -- thus I expect that providing for a voluntary penal payment in lieu of banning would work. Rereading my proposal, this fine in lieu of banning is not what I wrote -- I should have provided that the payment of the fine is in lieu of banning and forfeiture of the fine is the only punishment a noncitizen would face on conviction for a noncapital offense.

However, I do find some things so fundamentally threatening to our community that I consider them capital offenses -- and inviting in a foreign power to intervene in our affairs is just such an offense.

Beathan

[Desmond Shang]

At 3620 USD/month, soon to be well over 4000, there's nooo way Caledon is an autocracy.

Characterising us as such belies a deep, deep, deep misunderstanding of how the grid, and people, work. Even your CDS isn't composed of a captive audience.

Like all regions, even yours, we are a true aristocracy. If either the top 10-15 'large estate' landed gentry, or the majority of the remaining landed had issues, Caledon policy would be forced to adjust *immediately*. So would the CDS, except that the CDS is so small it's possible that 2 or 3 individuals might be able to cough up the tier on their own.

But there's no way even a pretend democracy would survive the exodus of most of its people, and if you rile up enough of them, the polite sheen of democracy will slide right off.

* * * * *

Which brings us to about the only thing that even we consider treasonous - and that's stalking visitors and residents within the sims, baldly trying to promote everyone to leave. We've had issues with this before - success has 1000 followers.

I'm not talking about a few folks going back and forth from Caledon / Neufreistadt / Neualtenburg / Steelhead / whatever. That's normal, and not going to scratch any of us.

I'm talking about people actively hunting those on my waiting list, on my own soil, in a determined, concerted, drawn out manner. What's funny though, is that the worst offenders have utterly failed to have any success with their own plans (groups I doubt you have heard of). In fact, due to that, I never bothered to ban anybody. But yeah, in principle it could be pushed too far.

* * * * *

Regarding foreign powers intervening... this is a very interesting stance.

Obviously, if a 'foreign power' said something like: I'll buy all your sims, free rent for a year, low rent forever after, vote me into power! ... then, sure. That's pretty hostile. You'd have random noobs joining just to try to take advantage of the insurrection and the fruits of looting the treasury.

But here's an interesting question. Say I got hit by a truck, and Caledon shut down. Then say 5 sims worth of Caledon people then decided to move to Neufreistadt. And started voting... and voting for Caledon's historic system.

What would you have then - a foreign intervention, or an immigrant problem, or what?

- Would you ban the leaders of such political parties as treasonous? Would it matter if their 'home' sim still existed or not?

- How different a CDS from your ideal would you allow?

- How do you decide where someone is 'from'?

I'm very curious what the definition of intervention is, for the CDS.

Arguably, this very forum post is intervention of a sort.

I think you might want to VERY carefully define the difference between 'treason' and 'participatory, honest dissent.' Or 'treasonous' might too easily become: 'anyone that disagrees.'

[michelmanen]

It has already largely happened, Desmond. For an enlightening analysis of how the CDS oligarchy treats "outsiders" who dare to disagree and not play " the game" as established by those in power, see Gwynneth Llewelyn's brilliant [b:3vpjz1a5]Meditations on Ostracism[/b:3vpjz1a5] here: http://forums.neufreistadt.info/viewtop ... ght=athens

[Aliasi Stonebender]

[quote="Desmond Shang":2cda49ay]At 3620 USD/month, soon to be well over 4000, there's nooo way Caledon is an autocracy.

Characterising us as such belies a deep, deep, deep misunderstanding of how the grid, and people, work. Even your CDS isn't composed of a captive audience.

Like all regions, even yours, we are a true aristocracy. If either the top 10-15 'large estate' landed gentry, or the majority of the remaining landed had issues, Caledon policy would be forced to adjust *immediately*. So would the CDS, except that the CDS is so small it's possible that 2 or 3 individuals might be able to cough up the tier on their own.

But there's no way even a pretend democracy would survive the exodus of most of its people, and if you rile up enough of them, the polite sheen of democracy will slide right off.
[/quote:2cda49ay]

On the other hand, this is largely true in reality, as well. All governments rule by consent of the governed - but in meatspace, consent through coercion is a possibility.

Also, I might point out this isn't strictly true in the CDS. Kendra was one of (if not the) largest landowner in the CDS when she left, and our rules about ownership prevent one person from owning half a sim.

(Granted, you can have multiple people group up, but then... well,groups of citizens banding together to represent their interests is pretty damned democratic to ME.)

[Beathan]

Desmond --

I am not so much worried about the intervention, such as it would be, of private persons offering to buy the CDS. I am far more concerned about the "foreign" intervention of powers we have no means to prevent from intervening or from effectively placating after the fact. These include RL governments and law enforcement -- and the Lindens.

The more I deal with the Lindens -- the more I dislike them. May God bless and keep the Lindens -- far away from us.

Beathan

[Bromo Ivory]

As much as I didn't like the tone I detected in Desmond's post - the point he's making I find to have some validity.

Despite Desmond's speculation that an invasion force of griefers will come and attack CDS - even without that outcome - I think it is a bad policy to punish someone that chooses to report a TOS violation to Linden Labs - and especially punish someone by banning them! CDS policies and laws cannot and should not be crossways to LL TOS anyway!

Given how spotty LL has been in policing their SIMs, CDS offering a good dispute resolution system, and good griefer police (even with some sort of right of appeal) - would be a nice POSITIVE thing to come of this.

But banning "snitches" - just doesn't wash.

[michelmanen]

..which is exactly why we should try hard to get the Justice Commission on the road rather than looking for criminals and traitors and trying to ban them....

[Desmond Shang]

[quote="Bromo Ivory":2wmqj4g7]As much as I didn't like the tone I detected in Desmond's post - the point he's making I find to have some validity.[/quote:2wmqj4g7]

I'm human too, sadly.

And after spending hours and hours inworld serving people like a french waiter on rollerskates, only to wake up and do it again and again and again, then be called an [b:2wmqj4g7]autocrat [/b:2wmqj4g7]when everyone could bail tomorrow and stick me with a bill over triple my mortgage if I didn't please them enough... yeah, that ticked me.

Not that I was personally insulted for being called a dictator, but more for having the situation so completely, utterly, phenomenally misunderstood. Most sim owners realise they are in a service position. It's closer to running a deli than a police department.

Not a worry, I'm quite over it, and was poking gentle fun in a hope to be friendly to the CDS here. I've nothing against Beathan, I get sharper jabs from people I know 100x better. Necessary for good debate sometimes.

With regard to the griefing stories - if *anybody* takes the internet as Serious Business loudly, rudely enough, and in public, that's basically like shining the BatSignal to every griefer group on the net.

Might they overlook you? Yeah, until you get big enough. Caledon was big enough to get noticed at 4 sims, even without the Serious Business. The griefers loved our theme, though, and dressed up!

Oddly enough, the fallout was: I now have some of them as residents, and some I'd call friends and very decent people. (and no, I won't attempt to sic them on anybody, they don't work that way and it would be too cheap a shot in any case)

As for not being worried about anyone buying the CDS, Beathan... not that I'm askin', but... how much, lock, stock and barrel? Wild estimate? Even an overestimate?

grin

Not that I would, though I could, easily, if it was on the market. Just what, 3 sims, some content and the Treasury? I promised Sudane ages ago I wouldn't screw with the CDS, even though at one point I was *very* serious about buying it and expanding the theme.

[Beathan]

Desmond --

When I called you an autocrat, I didn't mean to suggest that you aren't a [i:kzkbgx07]benevolent[/i:kzkbgx07] autocrat. You certainly are. However, I think that it is undeniably true, given the ownership structure of SL sims, that you have sole and ultimate control (at least in principle) over your sims. You can ban people -- restrict builds -- modify the world. It is true that, for practical reasons, you have to use these powers with benevolence or else folks would go elsewhere -- but this practical restriction on your power does not mean that you don't have the power.

The CDS is trying something different -- something not easily fitted into LL's rules and structures. We are trying to be a democracy, not an autocracy. We are trying to reach that by having a form of corporate ownership of our sims -- by having them owned by an avatar which is itself corporately owned. This makes us different.

With regard to "banning snitches" -- I think that we should do our best to police ourselves, so that LL becomes irrelevant for policing behavior in the CDS. LL is incompetent at policing behavior on the mainland -- so I can't see how they could be a positive force here in the CDS.

However, the thing that scares me the most is someone threatening to report something we are doing here to LL -- especially something this is not a TOS violation -- thus inviting LL scrutiny of our project. Our project is great, in large part, because LL is not involved in it and because it is not the kind of thing that LL has set up SL to do.

We have had some discussion of how to make the CDES unique -- and revitalized in its uniqueness. I think that to the extend we can be a refuge from the Lindens, we will have found this project. The first step in creating such a refuge is to avoid inviting the Lindens in.

Beathan

[Desmond Shang]

By the same logic, Beathan, you are an executioner. Disregard the fact that if you went around killing gas station attendants with a lead pipe, it wouldn't last long because the cops would get you.

Just because there are practical restrictions doesn' t mean you don't have the power!

Thus, you are an executioner. But a benevolent one!

* * * * *

Incidentally, the Company isn't out to harm you. They *want* to provide your metaverse services for as long as possible, and actively seek ways to do it.

Sometimes they blow it, and in remarkably notable ways. But I think they would like nothing more than to leave you sail on your merry way, and grow.

I am curious, though - just what sort of thing are you worried about?

Are you going to have a 'no Linden allowed' rule? I always welcome them in Caledon, myself, and they are incredibly positive.

They also seem actively *interested* in supporting various forms of resident cooperative structures. The mainland looks gross to them, too, and I'm sure they would love *any* opportunity to help residents take care of themselves.