PCA - Defining the CDS

[Tanoujin Milestone]

@ Michel:
I notice you prefer a presidental system - i tend to support parliamentarism - within all notions of checks and balances and separation of power. We both have a chance to widen our horizons here.
@ Jon: interesting! I hope you continue to press this issue

[michelmanen]

Tan,

I don't, actually; but neither do I support a system where the parliament can, unchecked, do what it wants.

Michel

[Beathan]

Bromo --

To waste further space in this discussion, I need to note that I have never said that Desmond is a traitor. He is not a citizen -- so he could not be. My comment was directed towards Michel -- and it was as tongue-in-cheek as his proposal to make Desmond "Queen."

I think that the IP right issus can and should be solved with a RL nonprofit entity which holds all IP rights. The nonprofit could be run by a revolving board of directors -- perhaps of 3 persons, made up of the LRA, the Chancellor, and the Dean.

Also, to bridge the gap between "community" and "citizens" I would suggest "community of citizens".

Beathan

[Bromo Ivory]

[quote="Beathan":2s1doohq]
I think that the IP right issus can and should be solved with a RL nonprofit entity which holds all IP rights. The nonprofit could be run by a revolving board of directors -- perhaps of 3 persons, made up of the LRA, the Chancellor, and the Dean.

Also, to bridge the gap between "community" and "citizens" I would suggest "community of citizens".

Beathan[/quote:2s1doohq]

Np Beathan - I dind't figure you would declare Desmond a traitor. I do get a little worried about that kind of language - but in relaity we want the same things - a peaceful and orderly CDS.

I agree that is true - the community of citizens - is good verbiage

[Pelanor Eldrich]

I think I'm good with the general idea of Dnate's Article II. I'm not sure we need a vice-chancellor given the number of political roles we current ly have already. We do need a quick and airtight way to replace a Chancellor who goes missing in action or who must resign quickly due to RL or other obligations.

Nikki: I apologize for my misrepresentation of the Swiss system. It was off the cuff by memory and obviously not very accurate. Thanks for the clarification. I look forward to asking you more about it (coupled with a re-read of wikipedia).

To rehash: I think if we opted for a single head of state I would be in favor of the Chancellor acting as foreign/external representative with guidance from the RA. I would like to see all heads of gov't present at any serious "CDS sit down" for long periods of time with LL or Desmond, for example.

What is the CDS? We're making progress on that. I think key points are:
a) It's a democratic community of citizen avatars in SL controlled by RL people living in many different countries.
b) The CDS follows the UDHR, the LL EULA & TOS and CDS Constitution and Codes (in that order, but that's perhaps debatable).
c) It leases server space from Linden Lab in the form of virtual land.
d) It has license to IP created both by CDS citizens and non-citizens.

What is the legal entity? Outside of the individual people controlling avatars and their respective jurisdictions (and LL itself), there are no legal entities. The CDS currently doesn't exist outside of LL and the website/blogs which mention it. That doesn't mean we shouldn't register it as a legal person somewhere, per Jon. However, how to do it? Should it be a California Non-Profit? Should we use something like the fsf.org software conservancy http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/overview/)? (They won't touch us because we are not devoted to an open source software project).

Could we keep the legal entity entirely within SL and use DMCA with real persons for cases of IP dispute when our in-world legal system fails?

Land: Currently owned by our fantastic EO who controls the automaton Rudeen Edo. Sudane is the "person of ultimate trust" in this arrangement. She points out the flaws in this as we go larger. There's a single point of failure. I proposed 1 EO/sim with an escrowed $1200USD split between the heads of gov't in case an EO is suddenly incapacitated. An alternative would be for the Chancellor to back up every EO and ultimately be responsible. I prefer the former choice.

IP: In my unsophisticated view, IP is permanently owned by the builder, be they citizen or no. I would personally like a non-copy, transferable version copy of every public property object in the hands of:

a)An automaton controlled by the head of the guild
b)An automaton controlled by the LRA
c)An automaton controlled by the Dean
d)An automaton controlled by the Chancellor

If we did this, we'd need all 3 heads of state to fail in order to lose CDS public property. After an Ulrika type incident we might ask the guild for guidance and to perhaps install their safe copy while they re-engineer a permanent replacement. It would be nice if the guild had copy rights to public IP, in case say, Joe avatar, who is no longer in SL, has his public property CDS bridge deleted 4 times in separate griefing attacks.

These are complicated systems, but I think they reduce overall risk while ensuring our continuance in case of disaster. It also means spreading the trust (which can be scary). I'd be happy to hear of ways to do this using simpler techniques.

BTW: I have nothing but the utmost respect for Sudane and our Chancellors. This was not meant to insult nor denigrate anyone in any way. I wrote this from the perspective of a system in which we don't take into account personalities nor individual reliability. Presumably the electorate will take care of choosing the right people.
If not, this system could handle a catastrophe as long as one of 4 persons of trust remained reliable. On the land side, it would be 1 of 3.

The IP solution would require getting a license agreement (and copies) of the objects in question from each artisan. Where that's impossible, we'd want guild members to reverse or re-engineer the builds.

These are just some ideas I've been batting around since the days of the Defense of the Republic Act and the Infrastructure Protection Act.

Jon: Forgive me for not fully reading the Guild transcripts. Many of these issues (for the interested reader) have likely been better addressed there. -Pel

[Dnate Mars]

Wow Pel, wow.

I really don't think there is a single thing I can add to this. What others take pages and pages to say, you sum up in a single post.

[Fernando Book]

[quote="Beathan":2hs706dj]I think that the IP right issus can and should be solved with a RL nonprofit entity which holds all IP rights. The nonprofit could be run by a revolving board of directors -- perhaps of 3 persons, made up of the LRA, the Chancellor, and the Dean.[/quote:2hs706dj]

Each time I read about creating a RL entity to fulfill some role for us, I feel curious about:

a) Beside the problem of disclosing some RL identities, how to manage a multinational Board of Directors (in your example, from UK, Portugal and -well, I don't know where's Dnate from).

b) How to reflect in the bylaws that the Board of Directors, in fact, must follow the orders of some avatars meeting in a virtual world. Are real life regulators prepared to allow this? If the bylaws don't state that we will have our EO problems in another level.

[Patroklus Murakami]

Thanks to Pel for reposting and revisiting his positive suggestions for tackling the 'Head of State' issue and dealing with the issue of trust and the EO role. I think there's a lot here we can work with.

1. Head of State. This is really answering the question 'Who represents the CDS?' to the outside world. Answers seem to be converging on a triumvirate of the Dean, LRA and Chancellor with either rotating responsibilities or a decision between them that one will be the primary point of contact. Alternatively, the Chancellor is looking like the potential candidate. Another alternative would be to have a ceremonial Head of State (an elected Monarch perhaps?) with very limited powers answering to the legislature; a bit like Queen Elizabeth II but with better dress sense!

2. Legal personality. This could very well be a function exercised by the Head of State. Inworld contracts could be drawn up between the builder/content maker and this individual 'on behalf of the CDS'. There's been some discussion of taking this into RL by, for example, seeking non-profit status according to a RL jurisdiction. I'd prefer to avoid this if we could and keep it in our world. While I have no great problem revealing my RL identity in order to serve as part of the government, I don't think we should, in effect, restrict office-holding to people prepared to divulge such information.

3. EO. Pel's proposal for 1 EO/sim would spread our risk better. And it answers Sudane's point that we need to set up systems which work whoever is EO and not rely on there always being trusty Rudeen to perform this function. One problem is with the escrow though. If you split US$1200 per sim three ways between the LRA, Dean and Chancellor you need to have sufficient parties willing to entrust that amount of money to these three people (and their unknown successsors). Of course, you get collatoral in return as the 'owner' of the sim from LLs point of view but, even so, it involves tying up capital with no real prospect of any return. Also, each incoming LRA, Dean or Chancellor gets US$400 X no. of sims to 'look after'. That could become quite a bit of money as we expand. I'm not saying the idea is out of the question, we just need to be prepared to risk that someone will 'run off with the money' or that somebody might be prepared to run for office in order to get their hands on that money.

4. IP. From a legal standpoint I'd feel more comfortable if the IP rights to all our public buildings, textures, RAW files, road layout etc. were owned by somebody/ies 'on behalf of the CDS'. I think Pel's idea, that the LRA, Dean and Chancellor should have an automaton (like Rudeen) to store the objects, textures etc. is a good one. It would make us much more secure. But we have to consider the content provider as well, would such terms be acceptable to them? I'm not sure about the head of the Guild holding such property as well though. Potentially, it muddies the waters and risks making the Guild into a quasi-governmental organisation. On the other hand, it would make recovery after an 'incident' much quicker.

Great contribution Pel, thanks!

[Beathan]

Fernando --

Both these issues can be solved technically. Many RL Boards of Directors meet through teleconference these days -- so our board could meet in SL without any problem.

With regard to responsibility to the CDS, we could draft the articles such that the Board of Directors includes only CDS officials -- perhaps the RA, SC and Executive (if we want a large board) or the LRA, Dean and Chancellor (if we want a small one), or some combination thereof. With the Board so composed, I see no difference in responsbility and accountability than we have now.

It is a matter of legal drafting -- and not even a difficult drafting problem.

Beathan

[Patroklus Murakami]

We need to separate out the three components of this idea. Here are some good contributions from the middle of last year on the 'mission statement' aspect:

[url=http://forums.neufreistadt.info/viewtop ... 8:26a670y9]http://forums.neufreistadt.info/viewtopic.php?t=208[/url:26a670y9]

[michelmanen]

[quote:23o97g0r]I'm not sure about the head of the Guild holding such property as well though. Potentially, it muddies the waters and risks making the Guild into a quasi-governmental organisation. On the other hand, it would make recovery after an 'incident' much quicker. [/quote:23o97g0r]

Thus the only difference this would make (since the Guild IS a quasi-governmental organisation already even if not recognised as such - if it walks like a duck....) is to help us function more efficiently and safely. But when have we ever let practical considerations affect our theoretical disputes...

A five-member Board chaired by the Chancellor, and including the Dean, LRA, Chief Justice (if ever we have one..) and Guild Secretary is the best way to go -and we know it. Whether we actually do it is an entirely different question....