$5000 to help me with the new GoPets EULA

*$5000 to help me with the new GoPets EULA

What is the Best TOS/EULA structure to develop the greatest volume of citizen transactional volume in GoPets?*

I am offering a bounty of $5,000 for help in creating a new EULA, TOS, Codes of Conduct, and Privacy Policies for GoPets.

I seeking everyone’s help in drafting a set of instruments (iconic, human bullet points, and legal code). Our mission is to continue to develop the virtual world of GoPets into a platform of living expression and friendship with global reach.

We have long recognized the importance private property in GoPets but so far we have not taken any formal steps to ensure property rights to our citizens and now believe that formal recognition and other tangible forms of human and property rights will accelerate our commercial goals.

The debate in our community of whether or not this or that clause of this or that EULA is of course fascinating to read in the blogs - but we are taking the stance that we will gladly charge ahead of what we are required by commercial law to perform - and instead we would like to reach as high as possible to achieve the natural rights as expressed in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

We believe that by doing so that we will attract the trust of more customers to invest more of their time, creativity and money into developing the world of GoPets to greater enjoyment of all.

While all that sounds wonderful at the high level – it is now time to drive this to a practical articulation.

First about that $5,000 – I will divvy that money up however I think most fairly recognizes individual contributions. In the end we will place the final product in a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Speaking of which the final format of the GoPets Declaration of Rights and Obligations of Citizens ( I just made that up) should be very similar to that of the Creative Commons folks with icons, human readable bullet points and finally legal code.

I would like to see this wrapped up if at all possible by November 1st, 2007 for something new I am able to release to the GoPets Citizens.

Why am I seeking to create these instruments in a public discussion? Bluntly if we are to succeed in this goal to be a platform with widespread participation then I think the ‘governing rules’ should not be developed in a private conversation with our excellent corporate lawyers but instead with the people who are active in both the research of the legal and economic issues of online worlds, other creators of worlds and most important to are the people who will actually use these governing rules to their own benfit.

Others such as the folks at the recent Ludium 2 conference have been actively working to develop these concepts: http://ludium2.studiocypher.com/index.php?title=Main_Page. There has been considerable criticism that this work is overly academic and lacks ‘buy-in’ from a legitimate commercial virtual world owner. I submit that we will be the first to step up as a commercial virtual world owner that is seeking this work. I would argue that this serves as a dual-use purpose to help GoPets achieve a direct commercial goal but at the same time helps propel the underlying issues to greater clarity for the industry as a whole for all stakeholders.

Another example is Raph Koster’s excellent treatment way back in 2000 on the inalienable rights of avatars: http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/playerrights.shtml. I was stunned to see that out of ignorance of Raph’s prior work – I traveled the same path through the US Constitution and the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights in my talk at Seattle last month where I first compared Second Life’s EULA to being worse than the rogue state of North Korea!

Now down to the rights and obligations – I will kick off the discussion:

(1) Due Process & Habeas Corpus – people naturally feel the right to an explanation of what they did wrong and an opportunity to defend themselves. We already perform a private audience with the state to explain your case. The problem with this method is that it is very expensive from our customer support resources and ultimately the result is not transparent and the citizens of GoPets still feel subject to arbitrary rule. We want some form of player-run tribunal that reviews the evidence and then makes a decision. We think we should review decisions and if GoPets disagrees with the tribunal rather than overturn the decision of the tribunal we think we should send it back to the tribunal for a re-trial. We think that these tribunals should be speedy (<30 days) and protect people’s privacy (e.g. scrubbed of real-world identification etc.). We also think that the tribunal should use some sort of rotating term-limited election system. How to actually create this for a commercially reasonable cost that the citizens at the end of the day will collectively pay for we do not have the answer in our hands.

(2) Right to free expression and assembly – people should enjoy this freedom up to the point where it sabotages the services or attempts sedition. This freedom should be restricted from taking the shape of harassment or annoyance of the users at large. Obviously no forms of hate speech. For example you should be able to say and make a great variety of expressions and items in the privacy of your own land and space, however in the public spaces and on other people’s lands you are naturally more restricted. How to codify this in a manner that someone understands up front I do not know. Something like when you are out and about you must use ‘E’ for everyone forms of expression and when in private between consenting players you must use non mature forms of expression. That is the closest I can think of.

(3) Right to your property and the security of that property in possession and in transaction – by the very nature of ‘Gold Shells’ and ‘Inventory’ and ‘Shopping’ we recognize that we are asking our citizens to develop the beliefs and expectations associated with owning these digital items. Once that is accepted then we take the next natural step of logic and feel that we must make every commercially reasonable effort to keep your property safe from service errors (‘bugs’) and to provide mechanisms and user interface for the safe exchange of items, land and shells.

(4) Non discrimination – all the usual suspects here we will not discriminate based on race, gender, age, orientation, religion, political views, and so on. We run into areas here on age where we must comply with a myriad of jurisdictional differences on the age of majority and the more subtle protections of teens and children.

(5) Right to exit and leave the GoPets service at will.

(6) Right to transfer your whole account to another individual.

(7) No bannings or terminations of service on related accounts without due process.

(8) In the case of service errors that result in the loss of property the recourse will be replacement of the lost property and NOT the fair market value in the secondary markets.

(9) In the case of service errors that result in the economic gain for the citizens we will generally allow the citizen to retain that gain within a limit of $50 of fair market value or 10% of the total prior direct purchases from GoPets of gold shells and premium services – whichever is greater of the two.

(10) Service outages – we are scheduled to be down for a total of 12 hours per month. Any outages longer than that will be compensated to premium users in a 200% 24 hours of extended premium service for every 12 hours of down time. Further more any in-game time mechanics will be reset at the beginning of any server restoration (e.g. all ‘cool-downs’ will be reset).

(11) We actively encourage private settlements between citizens that alleviate drain on the tribunal and customer support systems. I do not know how to materially encourage this… how about a non-refundable tribunal fee where if you win your case against another citizen (e.g. fraud) you keep 75% of the total fees and the tribal keeps 25%?

(12) Generally we will turn a blind eye to any form of derivative works known as mashups and fan art. We will leave the work of policing that to the individual copyright holders. However, in the event that we are issued a take-down notice or otherwise determine that we must take down some content we will issue the concerned citizen a warning 15 days in advance of that objects destruction. Replacement of the underlying costs of production of that item will be generally be awarded unless we (or tribunal?) determines the derivative work was created solely to grief the system and cost customer service resources.

(13) Changes to any policy, terms of service, code of conduct or other ‘governing rule’ we will provide 15 days notice summarized in an easy to read human bullet point ‘above the fold’ in the patch window with a click to accept and continue mechanic.

(14) In the case of emergency either of economic or otherwise causing damage to the world as whole we reserve the option to invoke the equivalent of martial law and take whatever action is required to restore order and ‘return to peace time’. Actions taken during times of emergency will be publicly posted sans personal information and made open for review and comment for the citizenry.

(15) We will of course necessarily comply with all laws local and state globally and above all recognize the natural rights of humans everywhere. If a particular jurisdiction compels us to comply with an unconscionable law we will make commercially feasible efforts to resist the compulsion but it is understood that GoPets is not a platform for political advocacy in the real world territories.

(16) We welcome all 3rd parties from the largest corporations to the individual citizens to invent novel ways to exploit the Gopets virtual world platform for their own private gain. We will not take any action against derivative or mashup work unless it directly threatens our essential trademark, patent and existential rights. For example, we do not allow a toy company to go run and make GoPets plush toys without a license from us, nor do we allow another company to setup a ‘rogue’ server that uses the GoPets client and assets to create a competitive service that would threaten our existence. How to define the lines – I do not know exactly. <div

Originally posted on LiveJournal