1:1 vs. *:* ||| One to One vs. Many to Many ||| Contract vs. Constitutional Law

Moving an email discussion to the blog:

Thanks for the email... actually what you think is an error is a common mistake - but I am actually correct in the label "Republican". You are assuming that there was not an earlier party with the name Republican - an easy to make mistake, but in fact they were two distinctly different parties. See below:

As for contract law vs. constitutional law - the problem with contract law is that it does not solve the problem of many to many agreement. With millions of 1:1 negotiations it is untenable to make broad agreement efficiently - this is where codes of conduct, covenants and constitutions come from. I disagree that a many to many form of contract cannot be applied to VWs and online games, I think breaking it down to a 1:1 vs. : problem makes it so clear why we are having problems with the EULAs.

The answer is BOTH constitutional and contract forms of legal code I think are required to make it work.

As for Korean companies it is hard to express how little litigation is done in Korea.. but I just got hit by a car while walking with only minor pain in my knee due to my Spiderman leap to the top of his car - I dragged the guy to the local police station and he had to pay a whopping $60. Other countries just do not sue like the US.

I disagree with players online are not citizens of their worlds. We are making every possible effort for them to suspend disbelief to make them believe that they have a life, that they have liberty and above all a right find happiness inside these entertaining worlds. By retaining the word 'user' it reinforces the bad EULA practices, I agree that the word 'citizen' is a bit lofty, but we really are on the cusp of time where thousands if not millions of people will be spending the majority of their more quality time of thinking, working, playing, socializing, and creating in a digital/synthetic/virtual world as oppose to their ordinary life of selling beer at the QuikiMart. It is all about the people's investment and expectations...

Thank you again for the comments - all really good discussion and proves how confusing this all really is...

I am going to post this in my blog, but strip out your name in case you do not want your comment publicly linked to you...? But post a comment if you do...

-Erik

From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republicanism_in_the_United_States

"Republican" as party name

In 1792-93 Jefferson and Madison created a new party they called the "republican party" in order to promote their version of the doctrine and to indicate that Hamilton's version was illegitimate. According to Federalist Noah Webster, an opposing Federalist political activist bitter at the defeat of the Federalist party in the White House and Congress, the choice of the name "Republican" was "a powerful instrument in the process of making proselytes to the party.... The influence of names on the mass of mankind, was never more distinctly exhibited, than in the increase of the democratic party in the United States. The popularity of the denomination of the Republican Party, was more than a match for the popularity of Washington's character and services, and contributed to overthrow his administration."^[17] It broke apart in the 1820's (by which time it was known as the Democratic-Republican Party); and one of its factions became the Democratic Party. The Democrats (or American Democracy) were opposed by a party that chose a name, derived from the Patriots of the 1770s who started the American Revolution, the Whigs. Both of these parties proclaimed their devotion to republicanism.

As late as 1800 the word "democracy" was in ill repute and was mostly used to attack an opponent. Thus George Washington in 1798 complained, "that you could as soon scrub the blackamoor white, as to change the principles of a profest Democrat; and that he will leave nothing unattempted to overturn the Government of this Country."^[18] The Federalist Papers are pervaded by the idea that pure democracy is actually quite dangerous, because it allows a majority to infringe upon the rights of a minority. Thus Madison argued in Federalist #10, a special interest may take control of a small area, but it could not easily take over a large nation. Thus, the larger the nation, the safer is republicanism.

Erik -

The typo:

The Federalists were of course the group in favor of created a strong centralized government and weak states, and the Republicans at this time were in favor of strong states and a weak centralized government.

should read

The Federalists were of course the group in favor of created a strong centralized government and weak states, and the Democrats at this time were in favor of strong states and a weak centralized government.

(no Republicans for a number of years. The Democrats may have been called the Democrat-Republicans at this time, but they are the ancestors of the modern Democratic party. As I am sure you remember, the Republican party was formed just prior to the Civil War after the Federalist party collapsed which came after the Whigs collapsed, if I recall correctly)

The error is continued as you write.

You probably should also read up on contract law. It is the most relevant portion of the debate as an operational online game, at the end of the day, is a business arrangement, not a political one.

I am also not a lawyer, but I have spent an awful lot of my career dealing with contracts.

As I noted over on Raph's blog, I think the thing that needs to be done is to create a "best practices" document that lays out reasonable terms for online game operations. Companies need to be the final arbitrar of what happens - they are the one's whose money is a risk in building and operating the service. By creating industry standard best practices, companies will be at less risk if taken to court. It does become a convenient place to debate player involvement, but players core rights in this matter draw from contract law and common law.

Please avoid the whole "player-citizen" thing. This is the Second Life BS and the notion of online games / virtual worlds as having some sort of special jurisdiction. They don't. I believe that the ownership and other issues you address for game assets, game accounts, etc. all actually draw from contract and common law. Also, I think contract law has more standing internationally than constitutional law.

If we build a good EULA - which I fully endorse, as businesses, we would like to have it honored in as many places as possible. Your notion here was part of my motivation for trying to pull all of the relevant regulations and laws together. If we, as an industry, can harmonize the rules that we have to operate under, it will be less expensive for all of us to operate and we will be able to better serve the global market.

This is why I also argue we need an Global Online Game Industry Association. To get your EULA, and other associated laws and regulations, standardized as much as possible and to provide model laws and regulations for governments. Another example, if we do this right, we could create a GOGIA Privacy Certification or Child Safety Certification or Content Rating which would be honored as legally acceptable in all jurisdictions (preferrably with a single fee structure, a single certification structure, etc.).

Then we are cooking with gas!

The large Korean companies are probably the only folks with the funding in place to do this (NHN, Nexon, etc.). They would also be the primary big beneficiaries today.

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Originally posted on LiveJournal