Request for Comment: Estate Owners and the new SL ToS

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Aliasi Stonebender
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Request for Comment: Estate Owners and the new SL ToS

Post by Aliasi Stonebender »

As of the last revision of the SL ToS, you are no longer forbidden from sharing your password.

I would like to gather comment on the idea of making the Estate Owner alt accessible to multiple people. (And, as we expand, making future EOs similarly alts who multiple people hold the password to.)

This is not so much to combat the "evil estate owner" hypothetical (since, in a way, it doubles our risk) but does help forestall the "Sudane gets hit by a truck" problem. In addition, Sudane is forced to do a lot of work currently - this would allow her to share the load.

I'm still pondering how to make it a reasonably secure method, however, and would like to hear comments and ideas.

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Post by Sudane Erato »

Of course, this addresses the central dilemma of the basis of authority in the democratic sim. How can the "will of the people" be the fundamental authority of the realm if the ability to "Reclaim" land rests solely with the EO (not even Estate Managers can reclaim land). And, land of course is the basis of citizenship.

I might suggest that this fundamental impasse really arises from a issue which I believe has not been previously discussed, only rather taken for granted. That is the assumed fundamental right to the privacy of our RL identities. Could it be that without the existence of this basic assumption of SL existence, our right to shield our RL identities, this problem of ultimate authority might immediately fall away?

Let me hypothecize a situation where I and a "committee" of other appointed citizens, the "Board of Estate Managers", were to form and take advantage of the ToS alteration that Aliasi mentions. Let us propose that all members of that Board agree to share RL identities (which effectively means that those identities are shared with the entire community and SL at large.... committees of people do not keep secrets), and that the password of the "estate owner" avatar be shared among them. Should I misbehave, or disappear, the other managers could designate one of their own to provide a new credit card and email address to LL.

Subject to the technical problem of the name on that card matching the RL name on the account, we have effectively transfered the ultimate authority of the sim from the individual EO to the "Board of Estate Managers". At the sacrifice of the personal privacies of each member of that Board.

Absent the underlying VR ethic of personal RL privacy, we effectively solve the problem of authority in one swoop. (Not to mention the related problem of the singular RL existence of each voting member of the community... no more multiple citizenships held by a single RL person appearing as multiple alts).

I would suggest that privacy is the core issue here, and also perhaps our core burden. Much of RL authority and individual right rests on the unambiguous identification of the individual. This entire topic we have abandoned because of the VR ethic of personal RL privacy. It seems to me that so long as we adhere to this ethic, we are saddled with this irreconcilable issue.

Sudane.....

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Aliasi Stonebender
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Post by Aliasi Stonebender »

True. And, I think we can allow individual citizens to retain "first life privacy" while requiring Estate Owners to share RL info. It's a matter of "the community is placing extraordinary trust in you, you have to give something up in return". The question, then, is finding enough people willing to do this.

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Post by Sudane Erato »

[quote="Aliasi Stonebender":3ii5ogo8]True. And, I think we can allow individual citizens to retain "first life privacy" while requiring Estate Owners to share RL info. It's a matter of "the community is placing extraordinary trust in you, you have to give something up in return". The question, then, is finding enough people willing to do this.[/quote:3ii5ogo8]
Haha... I suspect most folks would consider a relentless $195 LL monthly charge on their credit card, in addition to a constant need for their services, as ".... giving up something in return." I would suspect that this "Board" would face the same dilemma as the newly proposed judiciary... a shortage of candidates.

I think the resolution of this dilemma will await further steps by LL. The change in ToS regarding the sharing of PW info is quite a surprise to me, at least. Perhaps we might devise a preferred scenario involving a few more small steps such as this on the part of LL (such as group-owned private sims), and then lobby them for those changes. Surely, as time goes on, the importance of experiments such as the CDS will become something that LL will recognize as well.

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Post by Aliasi Stonebender »

[quote="Sudane Erato":t23nhziv][quote="Aliasi Stonebender":t23nhziv]True. And, I think we can allow individual citizens to retain "first life privacy" while requiring Estate Owners to share RL info. It's a matter of "the community is placing extraordinary trust in you, you have to give something up in return". The question, then, is finding enough people willing to do this.[/quote:t23nhziv]

Haha... I suspect most folks would consider a relentless $195 LL monthly charge on their credit card, in addition to a constant need for their services, as ".... giving up something in return." [/quote:t23nhziv]

Anyone using their personal credit card, as opposed to setting up a bank account and debit card especially for the purpose, is in trouble regardless, really. (But then, I'm presuming that any possibile candidate would be a longtime resident, fairly trusted, and have an emotional investment in the place continuing to exist.)

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