Request to investigate election & NL 5-6

[Delia Lake]

The SC has received a request to investigate, as follows:

Dear SC Members

I request that the SC investigate a breach of our law. Rose Springvale stood for election to the RA despite law NL 5-6 which prevents the EO from "holding any elected or appointed office in the sim government, unless a waiver might be granted, on a case by case basis, by the SC".

Rose has a clear conflict of interest as both the Al Andalus Estate Owner and founder of VDI in a term when the CDS will choose whether to continue with the merger with AA and where some have proposed that the whole CDS estate be owned by VDI (or similar non-profit).

I also respectfully request that our Dean Delia Lake recuse herself from this discussion. As an officer of VDI she clearly has a potential conflict of interest which means she should not rule on this matter.

Patroklus Murakami

In accordance with SC Procedures, this investigation is designated as Unstructured Discussion (UD),

5. For an "unstructured discussion" item the process described under D.3 will be preceded by a period of time during which any member of the SC may speak freely in relation to the agenda item under discussion. Cross-talk is allowed and any member may speak at any time.

The law in question, NL 5-6 Estate Owner Act, can be found at http://portal.slcds.info/index.php?id=182. Founding documents for VDI are on Google Docs for public view. http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AQERv ... RkMg&hl=en I cannot tell if this is my personal link to Google Docs or a general one. If the link does not work for you, let me know and I'll get you one that does.

[Claude Desmoulins]

Let me throw out a few questions.

1. Has a waiver been requested?

2. As Delia pointed out at the RA meeting, the law in question predates LL's recognition of non-profit sim ownership. Could someone clarify...

...who has access to the estate management tools in the AA sims, and
....which persons are empowered to act on behalf of VDI (paying tier, purchasing sims, and the like) and represent it to LL

[Danton Sideways]

The final paragraph of NL 5-6 states: "the EO will be prohibited from holding any elected or appointed office in the sim government, unless a waiver might be granted, on a case by case basis, by the SC." The first question here would seem to be whether the SC can grant such a waiver with retroactive effect, given that Rose stood for office and was elected before any waiver was granted. I would be in favor of allowing such retroactive grant of the waiver, taking it on good faith that Rose was ignorant of this requirement. As Cindy Ecksol has pointed out, it is currently difficult to keep up with the many rapid changes in CDS law, which could be archived in a more coherent format.

The second question would then be whether the majority of the SC members are in favor of granting a waiver to Rose. Delia has observed that Sudane has had the benefit of a waiver in order to fill the office of Treasurer. One could argue that the administrative role filled by Sudane gives her less political clout than a position on the RA, and moreover that Rose's situation presents a clearer risk of conflict of interest, which is apparently the reasoning advanced by Patroklus. I would nonetheless be in favor of granting the waiver, as the CDS legal system seems to set no manifest obstacle to doing so.

[Delia Lake]

SC Meeting of 9 June, Agenda Item C. It. Review of NL 5-6, Estate Owner Act of 2006, and request to investigate election & NL 5-6

The discussion of this item was in accord with SC unstructured discussion protocol. (SEE SC Meeting transcript http://forums.slcds.info/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2929. Four of the five SC members were present. The SC had a quorum

NL 5-6, Estate Owner Act (http://portal.slcds.info/index.php?id=182) as written, dated 14 September 2006 and modified 16 September 2006, is contrary to current Linden Lab policies regarding Second Life Estate Owners. It was apparent that this entire issue should have a thorough review and that it would likely take some time to do so. It was requested that the discussion of NL 5-6 and all related matters be moved to the SC Discussion on the Forum. Following this review, the SC will issue a report that will be published and also given to the RA.

While this SC review is being conducted, since neither current EO's have waivers from the original law and each have formally requested waivers, it was moved that

we today grant to both Rose and Sudane/Rudeen a waiver from NL 5-6 to be in effect retroactively and to expire on 15 August 2010 unless we the SC renews these waivers at that time

. The motion passed with 4 members voting Aye. Current EO's Sudane Erato and her registered alt Rudeen Edo, and Rose Springvale have been granted waivers.