Full Screen
Law is a resource in signification that enables us to submit, rejoice, struggle, pervert, mock, disgrace, humiliate, or dignify. Robert Cover[1]
Thus, the problem . . . concerns both how we should imagine society and how we may recast it in the mold of the imagination. Roberto Unger.[2]
I. An Introduction to LambdaMOO
A dozen or so people are clustered in the kitchen of a sprawling house. New arrivals are greeted with a friendly wave or a nod; old friends bid farewell by hugging each other warmly. A samurai, a beady-eyed man in a dirty raincoat and a college kid in a ripped tee shirt are trying to solve a riddle. As a rainbow-colored dragon gives a disquisition to no one in particular on the advantages of foreign cars, a man with a stubbly beard whispers lascivious remarks to anyone who will listen. A chain-smoking, fast-talking woman in black and a little green elf argue over whether or not a ballot under consideration would help the community. One guest crawls into the microwave and laughs out loud.
This scene comes not from a surrealist film but from everyday life in LambdaMOO. LambdaMOO is one of more than 350 text-based virtual realities available via the internet. [3] These virtual spaces are generally known as MUDs, multi-user dungeons, or multi-user dimensions. MOOs (MOO stands for multi-user, object oriented) and MUDs are real-time, interactive conferencing programs, spaces in which many people can carry on conversations at the same time. Unlike some other conferencing spaces, however, MOOs and MUDs are based in physical, spatial metaphors; they are virtual worlds in which to wander. A visitor to LambdaMOO, for example, arrives inside the coat closet of a house; the visitor may walk around the house's rooms, head out to the hot tub, take a stroll over to the museum, or visit a bar and order a drink. In each space, the visitor's computer screen will show a textual description of the room (but no graphics), and will also display who else is visiting the room at that moment. The visitor can talk to everyone else in the room, or interact with objects in the room, or whisper a message to one person in the room in particular, or even send a page to anyone else logged onto the MOO.
At any given time, hundreds of characters are logged on at once, talking, programming, flirting and fighting; LambdaMOO is a virtual community.[4] Within its confines, participants explore the contours of the virtual world, ride helicopters and moonbeams, even teleport themselves from one place to another or take an elevator from California to China. Experienced players also build their own rooms and spaces within the MOO, or, using an object-oriented programming language, create objects that they and other players can manipulate or expand, or "verbs" that allow characters to interact in novel ways. Participants in the MOO are literally building their own universe room by room. At the same time, they are building their own social structure, as well as their own legal system.
This paper will focus on the legal system beginning to emerge within LambdaMOO. [5] At present, LambdaMOO has a system for enacting legislation, as well as mechanisms for dispute resolution. An examination of this nascent legal system is worthwhile for at least two reasons. First, the study of LambdaLaw is an exercise in legal anthropology, a chance to examine a legal order separate from our own that has received no previous scholarly attention. Looking at LambdaMOO's legal system provides the opportunity to see how participants are creating both social and legal order within a virtual sphere.[6]
Second, LambdaMOO offers the potential to be an imaginative space, an environment within which social structures and legal mechanisms may be creatively constructed and reconstructed. What do I mean by this? One of the most interesting features of LambdaMOO is that it is structurally unconstrained by the laws of nature. A LambdaMOO character need in no way correspond to a person's real life identity; people can make and remake themselves, choosing their gender[7] and the details of their online presentation;[8] they need not even present themselves as human. Of equal significance, LambdaMOO need not be bound by the institutional structures of real life (or, as it is often known within the MOO, RL.). Indeed, LambdaMOO takes to the hilt the notion of reality as a social construction. Within LambdaMOO, it is far more obvious than in real life that social structures are made rather than given, that they are constructed out of the actions and assumptions of the participants. In this virtual society, to change the code is to change the world; reality is bounded only by the imagination. There exists, then, the possibility that inside of virtual spaces such as LambdaMOO, law and politics as much as identity can be creatively reconfigured. The legal system of LambdaMOO can be, quite literally, whatever the players make of it. Perhaps, then, LambdaMOO and spaces like it will serve as both virtual laboratories and virtual looking-glasses. Law within LambdaMOO, then, might turn out to reveal something about law outside of LambdaMOO as well.
The next section of the paper will look closely at the emergence of law within LambdaMOO. This section will examine the rise of the legislative system, the nature of the mechanisms for resolving disputes, and the kinds of disputes that arise within the MOO. It will also look at a central debate over the nature of law within LambdaMOO: many players wish to make LambdaLaw better defined, more structured, and increasingly formalized, while a number of other participants want it to become less formal and legalistic, or even hope to abolish it altogether. Then, the third section of the paper will examine the appropriate relation between law within LambdaMOO and law outside of it.[9] How should law in the "real world" connect to law within virtual environments? This section sketches out a number of possible ways of modeling the relationship between "LambdaLaw" and real-world law, and argues that the best model is the one that gives LambdaMOO the greatest possible amount of legal autonomy and thus the greatest potential for becoming an imaginative space for legal experimentation.
II. Law and Politics in LambdaMOO[10]
LambdaMOO was born in October 1990, the child of Pavel Curtis, a researcher at Xerox Park.. Since that time, it has become one of the most popular of the MOOs and MUDS; it has many thousands of registered characters.[11] Some participants drop by infrequently;[12] others spend dozens of hours a week in LambdaMOO The LambdaMOO software and the LambdaMOO database are stored on a computer at Xerox Park in Palo Alto, California; to visit LambdaMOO one need only telnet to its site at lambda.parc.xerox.com, port 8888. Anyone who wants to can visit LambdaMOO as a guest;[13] to take up residence there in a more permanent fashion, one must request a character, provide a functioning electronic mail address, and take one's place on a waiting list.[14]
At its outset, LambdaMOO was an oligarchy without any formal system for resolving controversies or establishing rules. The oligarchs -- MOO-founder Pavel Curtis as well as several other players who had participated in LambdaMOO since its infancy Äwere known as "wizards"; they were responsible for both technical integrity and social control on the MOO. The wizards were benevolent dictators. They set the rules of conduct within the MOO; they decided when to increase a player's quota (the quantity of disk space reserved for objects and spaces of her creation); they attempted to resolve disputes among players. Occasionally the "wizocracy" meted out punishment, the most extreme form of which was to "recycle" (destroy) a player for incorrigibly antisocial behavior.
A. The Creation of a Legislative System
In early 1993, Pavel Curtis, the archwizard, wrote a memo to the MOO community telling them that the social structure was about to be transformed. As LambdaMOO expanded, the wizards
were fighting an increasingly losing battle to control and accommodate and soothe a larger and larger, more and more complex community. We were trying to take responsibility for, now, the behavior and mores of over 800 people a week, connecting from almost 30 countries of the world. We were frustrated, many of the players were frustrated; the center could not hold.
You can probably see where this is leading.
I realize now that the LambdaMOO community has attained a level of complexity and diversity that I've actually been waiting and hoping for since four hackers and I first set out to build this place: this society has left the nest.
I believe that there is no longer a place here for wizard mothers, guarding the nest and trying to discipline the chicks for their own good. It is time for the wizards to give up on the 'mother' role and to begin relating to this society as a group of adults with independent motivations and goals.
So, as the last social decision we make for you, and whether or not you independent adults wish it, the wizards are pulling out of the discipline/manners/arbitration business; we're handing the burden and freedom of that role to the society at large. . . .
My personal model is that the wizards should move into the role of systems programmers: our job is to keep the MOO running well and getting better in a purely technical sense. That implies, though, that we're responsible for keeping people from getting `unauthorized' access; in particular, we still have to try to keep others from getting wizard bits since the functional integrity of the entire MOO is clearly at risk otherwise. . . .
It's a brave new world outside the nest, and I am very much looking forward to exploring it with the rest of you. To those of you who have noted that I have the ability to shut down the MOO at any moment, that my finger is, after all, the one on the boot button: you have nothing to fear on that score for the foreseeable future; only an utter fool would put an end to such an exciting social experiment at so crucial a time in its evolution.[15]
In what Curtis hoped would be "the last socio-technical decision imposed on LambdaMOO by wizardly fiat," the oligarchs instituted a petition system, a process through which the players in LambdaMOO could enact legislation for themselves.
At the present time, any LambdaMOO resident who meets certain minimal criteria[16] can initiate a petition for making a socio-technical change in LambdaMOO. The scope of changes that can be made by petition is broad: any modification that requires technical action in order to reach a social goal. For example, a petition might request the creation of a truly escape-proof jail, or a modification in the character-creation process, or a transformation of the petitions mechanism itself.[17] When a player creates a petition, a mailing list is simultaneously created, to be used by all LambdaMOOers for debating the merits of the proposal.[18] Players who support the goals of the petition, or who at least believe that the petition presents an issue worthy of consideration Lambda populace as a whole, may choose to attach their signatures to the petition. When a petition gets at least ten signatures, its creator can submit it to the wizards for "vetting." A wizard's decision to vet is supposed to be based on five criteria: that the petition be (1) appropriate subject matter for petitions; (2) sufficiently precise that the wizard can understand how to implement it; (3) technically feasible; (4) not likely to jeopardize the functional integrity of the MOO; and (5) not likely to bring the wizards or Xerox into conflict with real-world laws or regulations. Wizards are supposed to base their decisions exclusively upon these five criteria, and they are explicitly prohibited from refusing to vet on the basis of their personal opinions regarding the soundness of the proposals. Once vetted, a petition needs a certain number of signatures (5 percent of the average total vote count on all ballots, or currently, 60 signatures) to be transformed into an open ballot, and if the signatures are not received within a given amount of time, the petition expires. Ballots are open for voting for two weeks, and must pass by a two to one margin in order to be implemented.
The inauguration of the petitions process transformed Lambda MOO from an aristocracy into a partly-democratic technocracy. Wizards continue to be appointed, not elected; only the Archwizard has the power to promote a player to wizard status. There are no mechanisms for holding wizards or their actions accountable to the population at large.[19] Officially, wizards have become mere implementers of the popular will. But implementation is far from self-executing. The power to implement, to transform the language of a petition into computer code is necessarily the power to interpret and shape whatever is being implemented.[20] Moreover, the wizards have technical powers and access to information denied to the rest of LambdaMOO.[21] Even if they pledge to use these abilities only for the public good and only when explicitly told to by mechanisms like the petitions process, their special abilities give them power over the MOO. Indeed, wizards are often-referred to only half-jokingly as gods.
The wizards' functions, with regard to the petitions process, might be analogized to a cross between an administrative agency and a higher court. Like an administrative agency, the wizards are responsible for the actual implementation of legislation. (However, unlike the rule-making process undertaken by an administrative agency after a piece of legislation has passed, the wizards write their implementation notes before the petition is voted upon, so voters can see in advance, at least to a certain extent, what actions will result if any given petition is passed.) When wizards decide whether or not to vet a petition, they are acting in a capacity similar to that of judges engaged in judicial review, except that vetting takes place before the voting rather than after the legislation has been passed. (If judges had the power to issue advisory opinions about constitutionality when legislation was still under consideration, this would be akin to the vetting process.) The vetting process frequently has multiple iterations: a wizard may refuse to vet, explaining the refusal in a letter to the mailing list; the petition's author can then revise the petition in light of the wizard's comments and resubmit it. This back-and-forth process will continue until a wizard vets or the author gives up and decides to pursue the petition no longer.
LambdaMOO's petitions process illustrates both the politics of technology and the technology of politics. Transforming the virtual world in any significant and enforceable way requires changes in the computer code.[22] Moreover, politics in LambdaMOO s cannot be seen as mere superstructure, nor understood as entirely distinct from technology. Rather, politics in LambdaMOO is implemented through technology and political conceptions can be embedded within the technological constructions of the virtual environment.[23] In other words, ideas about politics can be, to a certain extent, hard-wired into society via technology. For example, to prevent people from signing petitions without so much as glancing at them, a player may not sign without first scrolling through a petition beginning to end.[24] Currently, voters are allowed to change their votes as often as they like throughout the voting period, but the breakdown of yes and no votes is not available to voters until after the voting period has closed. Voting in LambdaMOO is not required.[25]
All of these aspects of the voting system reflect a certain conception of the relation between the individual and the political sphere, a conception of informed individuals who voluntarily participate within a system in which strategic voting is discouraged. We can easily imagine, however, the technologies of LambdaMOO being used to implement alternative conceptions of voting.. For example, it would not be difficult to implement a system in which players were obligated to vote, or one in which strategic alliances were encouraged because the names of voters on each side and the vote tallies were both revealed and revisable while the voting period was underway. [26] The range of what is possible is broad indeed when every petition is an "object" within object-oriented code and every political process is, in essence, created by a programming routine. The point is that in LambdaMOO it is far more apparent than in real life the extent to which choices about the design of the political process are just that: choices. As one LambdaMOO character put it, "LambdaMOO isn't a 'closed' or 'homeostatic' system, we're not stuck with anything. . . All legislation that exists at LambdaMOO has been created in a vacuum where no one could predict how it would actually function with living, breathing human beings 'living the law.' People make mistakes. Foolish people are those that don't recognize that mistakes can be corrected. In virtual reality they can be undone!"[27]
From descriptions of characters to political processes, all of LambdaMOO is constituted through words, based in language. Rooms, people, objects, technology and politics, all consist of nothing but words and signs. Within LambdaMOO, is not just communication that takes place in and through language, but the material substrate of LambdaMOO itself, its physical spaces and manipulable objects, its social institutions and political processes, as well. LambdaMOO operates as layers of embedded texts; indeed object-oriented programming lets one nest object within object, text within text. In LambdaMOO, there is no extralinguistic reality. In real life, action may be intelligible only through a linguistic filter; in LambdaMOO, reality is quite literally nothing but language.
LambdaLaw in Action
As of February 1, 1996, the voters of LambdaMOO have approved forty-four ballots. The ballots concern a number of LambdaMOO's important social issues: procedures for increasing or transferring quota;[28] mechanisms for attempting to limit LambdaMOO's population explosion;[29] the creation of a verb allowing experienced players to "boot" guests off the system for an hour if the visitors behave in inappropriate or annoying ways;[30] the creation of a way for players to ban players they dislike from using their objects or visiting their rooms;[31] the inclusion of a paragraph in the "help manners" text stating that sexual harassment is "not tolerated by the LambdaMOO community" and may result "in permanent expulsion."[32] Recently passed ballots include a referendum declaring that the petition and balloting system is legitimate;[33] a petition declaring that a homophobic petition would be burned in effigy[34]; and a declaration that no petition may "bribe" signatories by providing special or differential treatment to those who supported the measure by signing the petition.[35]
Dispute Resolution in LambdaMOO
The petitions process was also used to establish a system of dispute resolution. LambdaMOO's arbitration system is staffed by volunteers; participants who have been a member of the community for at least four months may offer their services. Every member of LambdaMOO is bound by the arbitration system, including wizards.[36] Any player can initiate a dispute against any other individual player. The person calling for the dispute must have experienced an actual injury, interpreted broadly; making this determination is within the arbitrator's discretion. The two disputants must agree on an arbitrator from among those who have volunteered for the case; if they cannot agree, an arbitrator will be assigned at random. Other interested players can join an ongoing dispute, but a party cannot initiate a dispute against more than one player, nor initiate two disputes simultaneously. A mailing list is established for each dispute; anyone who wishes to comment on the facts or the process or any other aspect may contribute to the mailing list.[37] Arbitrators hear both sides, collect information and post their decisions to the mailing list. They are "encouraged, but not required to solicit advice on the handling of the case from others."[38] Although the parties cannot appeal the decision, it is reviewed by the other arbitrators. If more arbitrators vote against the decision than uphold it, it is overturned,[39] and, depending on the circumstances, the same arbitrator tries again or a new one is appointed. Those with any conflict of interest with either disputant are prohibited both from serving as arbitrators and from voting to overturn the decision.[40] Trials in absentia are discouraged, but permissible.[41]
Arbitrators have a broad array of remedies. They may "call for almost any action within the MOO."[42] They may modify either player's quota, recycle any of their objects or reduce their powers. They may ban either party from the MOO for a period of time, or order a character to engage in community service. [43] They may even order the most extreme of punishments: "toading," LambdaMOO's name for the virtual death penalty.[44] Indeed, there are only two significant limits on the power of arbitrators: (1) they may only take action with respect to the two parties; they may neither propose a punishment that would infringe the rights of other players, nor call for a new law as the result of the arbitration ; and (2) their proposed actions must take place within LambdaMOO itself; the punishment cannot require any real-life activity. In practical terms, however, this first limitation on arbitrators' power is a serious issue. It means that except by providing potentially persuasive examples of community norms, disputes have no precedential value. Other than community enforcement through the "overturn" mechanism, there is no system for ensuring that similarly situated disputants are treated similarly. Moreover, even when a dispute illustrates a structural problem within the MOO, the arbitrator is limited to resolving the specific instance of the problem and prohibited from making any changes to resolve the underlying structural issue. Arbitrators cannot prohibit the population in general from taking any action, nor can an arbitrator use a dispute to change social policy or make institutional reforms.
So what do people fight about in LambdaMOO? Two of the most significant areas of contention and debate are: (1) the nature of property rights within the MOO; and (2) the extent to which free speech is a right within the MOO.
Property Rights
To what extent do Lambda residents own the objects they create within the MOO? To what extent should the creator of a room or object be able to control who uses it and how? Can especially useful objects be appropriated in the interest of the common good? Several ballots and disputes have revolved around these issues of property rights. For example, in Margeaux v. Yib, Yib refused to allow a helicopter pad created by Margeaux a place in her list of outdoor rooms. Yib claimed that this list was her own creation, and she should be allowed to use her own criteria for judging inclusions. She intended her criteria to be reasonable, and would include any outdoor room as long as it was "themely;" that is, she wanted it genuinely to have an outdoor look-and-feel. In Yib's view, Margeaux's helipad, made of swiss cheese and connected to the second floor of her house, was not sufficiently "outdoors"-like to warrant inclusion.
Margeaux argued that Yib's list was not a privately owned object but a public utility. (In essence, Yib's list provided the basis for the in-MOO aviation system; if one's spaces were not on the list, it would be quite difficult for anyone with a form of air transportation to fly over them or land there.) In Margeuax's words, "it's NOT Yib's system anymore. It's a public transportation system now."[45] The problem was, as one player put it,
" What is a public object? And if an object becomes `public' ([and it is ]still undefined as to what that means or when this occurs), who has control of the object? Does its author/creator? Does that author suddenly have to follow guidelines ( [that are] also undefined) ?"[46]
The dispute itself did not solve any of the thorny definitional issues (indeed, under the rules of Lambda Arbitration it could not). However, Margeaux and Yib compromised; Yib agreed to publish her standards for including landing pads and modified the code so that people could land on their own helipads regardless of whether they were listed in Yib's catalog.
Another property-related dispute concerned a player who created object after object and then immediately destroyed them, in order to get access to objects with particular numbers.[47] (He wanted what he saw as a "magic" number: 93939) Every object in LambdaMOO, from a player to a mailing list, is associated with a number; basically these numbers are distributed sequentially. In his efforts to get the particular number he wanted, the player wasted hundreds of object numbers. The argument against his behavior was essentially that these numbers are a shared resource, a Lambda-commons, and he was violating the norms necessary for their shared use and enjoyment by the community. The player was punished by having some of his programming powers temporarily removed.[48]
Issues related to property-rights have generated petitions as well as disputes. One character wrote a petition that would have granted him ownership of numerous objects that belonged to other people. He explained his reasoning:
"I'm not an anarchist, I'm a libertarian. I believe in property rights. In fact, I fight for them. However, while I realize that this is an actual society where people interact and have real relationships, it's still just a 'virtual' world. Why not toy with anarchy a bit? It's fun. It's also interesting that I'm using a democratic system for my anarchistic means."[49]
A number of players appreciated this character's effort to thumb his virtual nose at the system, while others roundly criticized the petition as "an idiotic waste of resources."[50] Even its supporters acknowledged that the ballot was "a joke" and had no chance of passing,[51] and indeed it did not pass. But part of the discomfit of its opponents stemmed from the way it would have transferred property via petition. As I am writing this, a petition is under consideration that would allow Moo characters to write wills to dispose of their property if they should be recycled for any reason or commit "Mooicide." (Under the current system, one of the wizards serves as the "grim reaper," and generally makes decisions about what happens to the property of characters who are reaped.) The central argument in favor of will creation is that it is a proper component of property rights: characters should have some control over the uses to which their property is put even if they have left the MOO. This petition would allow characters to designate items for destruction or preservation in case of their MOO-death, and to bequeath their property to specific individuals, or prohibit certain individuals from acquiring it. References to real-world intellectual property issues abound in the discussion of this petition: the nature of copyright protection; whether volatile computer memory counted as "fixed in a tangible medium" under the copyright code; whether it violated the spirit of intellectual property protection to expel someone from the MOO and nonetheless make use of the programming undertaken by the banished character.
Disputes about property in LambdaMOO are neither as frequent nor as acrimonious as disputes about speech. Nonetheless, serious issues have been raised about the nature of property ownership within the MOO. If someone writes code and makes it available to the public, is the author then accountable to the public in any way? To what extent should the creators of rooms and objects be allowed to control who uses them and how? Should stealing someone's code be considered a punishable offense? The residents of LambdaMOO have not yet resolved this set of questions about the nature of property within their sphere.
Speech Rights and Harassment
Disputes involving the issues of free speech and harassment are generally more emotionally charged than the disputes arising over property rights. In Abaxas vs. lucifuge2, for example, a player initiated a dispute against a character who was frequently insulting and using "violent" verbs against other players; repeatedly moving them without their permission to places within LambdaMOO such as "the cinder pile" and "Hell." In this case, nearly everyone agreed that lucifuge2's behavior was obnoxious; the question was one of appropriate punishment. The issue was further complicated when it became clear that the human being behind the character lucifuge2 had already been disciplined several times under other character names for nearly identical behavior. Despite his past offenses, a number of people felt strongly that the use of the most severe forms of punishment, like toading, or the revelation of real-life information about the character, was not an appropriate penalty for behavior, no matter how offensive, for which adequate defensive measures had been available to the victim.
What are these defensive measures? In LambdaMOO, any player can "gag" any other player (or object); issuing the "@gag" command prevents the gagged player's words from appearing on the issuer's screen. This command effects only the issuer; it has no effect on what the gagged player can say to anyone else. Another command allows a player to "refuse" the speech or commands of a character. For example, a player can refuse to receive paged messages from someone;[52] or refuse to be moved from one place to another by someone else. Anyone who gagged or refused moves from lucifuge2 would, in effect, become immune to his harassment.[53]
Some of the debate in this case, and in similar instances, centered on the appropriate response to "verb abuse," as it is called on LambdaMOO. Some believed that the responsibility clearly lay with whomever used the offending verbs. The arbitrator in Abraxas described an interview he had with a character who had been verb-abused by lucifuge2:
[This character] feels that this sort of constant, mindless use of violently emoting verbs that move players involuntarily has created an environment of harassment that directly imposes on her ability freely to enjoy public areas of the MOO. . . . [She] also wanted to state that no player should be forced to @gag offensive players . . . since that would have the effect of leaving them vulnerable to spoofing from that player which would result in one being demeaned in front of one's friends and guests.[54]
Others, however, emphasized that behavior like lucifuge2's, though irritating, should nonetheless be viewed as protected speech. As one player put it, "Don't like the way lucifuge talks? Got a filthy mouth? Tough shit, so do a lot of us. Gag him if you don't like it. I don't advocate toading the Jesus-preachers that show up from time to time, as personally offensive as I may find them. This place is supposed to protect free speech." [55] In another arbitration, a commentator tersely summarized the two positions: "Those who do not believe in dealing with MOO criminals directly would argue that these crimes could be solved by such commands as '@refuse all from A third position was that "abusive" verbs should be prohibited altogether, or their programmers should be responsible for their use. In one player's words, 'This kind of behavior' (i.e. using verbs to move characters) should be prevented by disabling the verbs in question. If the verbs are available for public consumption, who is to decide how much use is 'too much'? What legitimate use does the 'sewer' or 'fireball' verb have?"[57] As another wrote,
In the end, lucifuge2's was given a player status invented specifically for this dispute: his powers were sharply curtailed for a two-month period. The creator of this new status described it as follows: "This is the Time Out Player Class, named for the way my 4-yr-old's day care deals with unruly children. They are sent to 'time out' to contemplate their behavior."[59] While taking his "time out", lucifuge2 was allowed to participate in LambdaMOO, but his activities were restricted: he was denied access to all verbs other than those necessary for basic communication and he lacked the power to "gag" or "refuse" other players. He did, however, retain right to initiate a dispute if he were the victim of harassment.
This dispute, and the many other speech-related disputes that have come about on LambdaMOO, illustrates the difficulty of separating the categories of speech and action within the MOO. A player like lucifuge2 moves another player by typing words on his keyboard, and these words, this speech, results in another player being forcibly moved against his will, an action. Moreover, players in LambdaMOO may "spoof" each other.[60] As a general term, spoofing refers to unattributed speech within the MOO. But spoofing may also be used by one character to impersonate another. If a character makes offensive remarks in the LambdaMOO living room, he is, it would seem, speaking. But what if the character, by spoofing, makes it appear that somebody else is making those offensive remarks, somebody who is not actually typing the words onto the keyboard at all? Is this speech, or is it action? Should this distinction be important within LambdaMOO?
There continues to be substantial disagreement within LambdaMOO about the appropriate balance between freedom of speech and protection from unwanted speech Ballots at each extreme have been proposed. One proposal, for example, recognized freedom of speech as a "basic right," and prohibited any disputes that were based upon "solely the content of speech," such as, presumably, disputes based on charges of sexual harassment or hate speech.[61] Disagreement ensued over whether by the terms of the petition spoofing would, or should, be included within the category of protected speech; no consensus was reached regarding the status of spoofing should the ballot come to pass. As it turned out, the ballot was voted down, with 337 nays and 269 yeas.
An anti-rape measure, spurred in part by an incident, infamous in LambdaMOO, in which a character named Mr. Bungle spoofed several players in a public space, forcing them to engage in violent sex acts and making it appear that they were acting voluntarily,[62] represents the opposite extreme. This petition recommended that "toading," or permanent expulsion, become the recommended punishment for confirmed virtual rapists. The ballot tried to distinguish between speech and action within the MOO; this attempt led to a complex set of definitions:
The author of this petition was attempting, through these definitions, to make a distinction between the use of words that gives a "sense of quotation," and the use of words that gives a sense of action or activity. The debate over this ballot included extended discussion of whether this distinction between action and speech was coherent, and whether, even if coherent, it was the proper basis for determining the severity of punishment. In the end, the ballot had a high turnout and received support from a majority, but not from two-thirds of voters; the final tally was 541 in favor, 379 against, and 167 abstentions.
Arbitrators' Techniques:
Authority through Dialogue
Like many real-life trial judges, the arbitrators of LambdaMOO seem willing to go to great lengths to avoid getting overturned. Recall that commentary, on the accusation, on the process, on the arbitrator's competence, on the appropriate penalty, is not only allowed, but structurally encouraged through the existence of the dispute-related mailing list to which any member of the community may contribute. [64] One strategy that arbitrators use to minimize their chances of being overturned is to seek out a wide range of opinion before making a decision. Arbitrators frequently submit to the mailing list their proposed resolution, in unofficial form, asking for suggestions and comments regarding the intended sanction. This provides the arbitrator with a chance to see if the community backs the proposed approach to the dispute and an opportunity to argue with and perhaps persuade those unhappy with the strategy. Indeed, one of the most notable features of Lambda arbitrations is their dialogic nature; there is a great deal of give-and-take and animated discussion among the parties, the arbitrator, and other members of the community. Rarely do arbitrators maintain judicial distance during disputes; they participate, argue, explain their rationales, and even change their minds. Indeed, the ensuing discussion often prompts the arbitrator to modify the proposed penalty. (For example, in both of the cases involving lucifuge2, the arbitrator changed the punishment; in Abraxas the sanction changed from revealing the character's site information to enrolling him for two months in "time-out"; in Basshead, the punishment changed from temporary banishment to permanent expulsion.)
Formal Language
But the dialogic nature of the dispute resolution process can strain the system. Dispute mailing-lists can turn into shouting matches. Moreover, arbitrators sometimes feel frustrated by the influence the community wields over the sanction, even when only the arbitrator has been privy to all of the evidence on both sides. As one arbitrator explained, turning in his resignation, "Frankly, I don't want to go into a situation where I have to consider the opinions of masses over my better judgment having been the only one to hear both sides of the story."[65]
These concerns have led some arbitrators to pursue a second strategy, in addition to or in place of participatory dialogue: formalization: That is, some arbitrators attempt to gain legitimacy for their decisions by using lawyerly language and issuing official-sounding findings of fact and conclusions. For example, Hiroko, the arbitrator in Basshead issued a very precise, legalistic set of rulings regarding who would be allowed to join the dispute, explaining, "I realize these rulings may appear somewhat formalistic, but serious measures against lucifuge have been requested, and I intend this process to be beyond criticism to the extent I can possibly manage it."[66] Formal speech and an attention to process can give the adjudicatory process authority; it can illustrate, as Hiroko acknowledges, that the procedure was fair and beyond reproach. It is an attempt to be official by sounding official, not an outlandish strategy in a society consisting solely of text.[67]
Directions for LambdaLaw: Formalization and Resistance
This tendency toward formalization may occur institutionally as well as individually. It is not limited to specific arbitrators, or even to arbitrators as a group. Rather, the entire LambdaMOO legal system is at a crossroads. Many believe that the current regime has revealed itself to be unworkable. Disputes are frequent and acrimonious. Frustration-levels are high and charges of favoritism are commonplace. Moreover, because arbitration remedies cannot extend beyond the parties, many of the issues underlying disputes cannot be addressed by the arbitration system.. To be sure, the explanations for the current difficulties diverge: some blame the problems on corrupt and self-serving arbitrators; others believe the problems lie in the institutional structure; others view the very idea of LambdaLaw with suspicion. Two very different approaches have emerged for confronting the limitations of the current system: one approach favors increased formalization of LambdaLaw, while the other wants LambdaLaw eliminated. Those seeking formalization hope to establish more powerful legal and adjudicatory mechanisms along with better defined rights and responsibilities for players. The other camp, by contrast, advocates a turn away from law. For the past year, there has been a stalemate between the two camps: neither perspective has succeeded in mobilizing enough voters to change the system radically, but both approaches have enough advocates to keep their issues on the virtual table.
The Formalizers
Perhaps the most significant effort by the formalizers was their effort in the spring of 1995 to implement a Judicial Review Board (JRB), also known the LambdaMOO Supreme Court.[68] This Board would have been an elected body responsible for interpreting any question of LambdaLaw, and, under certain proscribed circumstances, would have acted as a court of appeals to review decisions made by wizards or LambdaMOO executive bodies. The JRB would have had jurisdiction over four kinds of cases: (1) inquires about the proper interpretation of a clause of a petition or an existing law; (2) challenges to a wizard's decision to vet based on the procedural guidelines wizards are obligated to follow; (3) challenges to the way a wizard implemented a petition; and (4) procedural challenges to the actions of LambdaMOO governmental and quasi-governmental bodies. To have brought a case before the court, players would have needed to show a direct and specific interest in the case, or to have collected 15 signatures on a petition. The petition also declared that all ballots passed within LambdaMOO were to have the status of constitutional law, and that other forms of lawmaking, should they come to exist, were not to be considered to be constitutional law unless they explicitly stated otherwise.
The JRB petition had three main goals. First, it aimed to provide some structural accountability for the action of wizards. Second, it hoped to provide procedural accountability for the actions taken by arbitrators or the quota-granting Architectural Review Board. Third, in the current system of law in LambdaMOO, interpretive disputes are often insoluble. Furious debates have arisen over such matters as whether the petition rewriting "help manners" was intended as a guideline for courteous MOOing or as enforceable law. An arbitration system whose resolutions have no precedential value, combined with the lack of an authoritative body for resolving interpretive differences, means that such disputes cannot attain closure. Each time a new dispute is initiated regarding, say, sexual harassment, the arguments erupt again, with as much force as ever.[69] The JRB would have provided a mechanism for achieving closure; a social structure with the authority to speak definitively.[70] Although more voters supported the measure than opposed it, the ballot on JRB failed to achieve the support of two-thirds of the voters, as required for passage. However, in January of this year, another player re-introduced the measure, and is seeking signatures to turn it into a ballot. There have been several other efforts to restructure Lambda Law as well, including a much-discussed proposal that would have replaced the petition system with a constitution, and a bill detailing Lambda-citizens' rights and responsibilities.[71]
The Resisters
While some members of the community expend their efforts attempting to formalize and extend LambdaLaw, another faction is trying to reduce or abolish its effect. In an effort to shrink LambdaLaw down to size, a number of petitions and ballots have been introduced which have an anti-formalist, anti-legalist bent. All of these ballots have intended to mock the formalist turn in LambdaLaw and add some humor to the adjudicative process. The subtext of all of these ballots is: "Remember, LambdaMOO is supposed to be fun. It's a game. Can't we all lighten up a bit?" For example, one ballot proposal, Choosing Justice, would have allowed individual Lambda-denizens to opt out of the system of arbitration, and to choose to solve their disputes through "wiffle" instead. Each participating player would have received a 'wiffle-ball'-style bat (in other words, a virtual plastic toy) with which they could have whipped other participating players whom they found offensive, annoying, or otherwise deserving of whapping.[72] Any character who received a certain number of whaps would have been automatically banished from Lambda-MOO for a period of twenty-four hours.
Wiffle's supporters argued that it provided people with an alternative to a stifling and arbitrary adjudicative mechanism by means of a relatively small penalty "available without all the legislative brouhaha," and that it might actually increase the level of courtesy within the MOO.[73] Wiffle was also quite explicitly intended as a statement about the Lambda-legal system: as one supporter wrote, "I protest the introduction of violence into LambdaMOO society through the use of lawyers, arbitration, and legal red tape. This is a MOO, not a court of law. Support wiffle!"[74] Wiffle's detractors claimed that players would abuse their wiffle-bats and gang up on people for no reason; that it was 'uncivilized,' offered lynch-mob-style-justice, and that encouraging violence and self-help on LambdaMOO would lead to chaos and the unraveling of Lambda-society.[75] When all was said and done, the LambdaMOO population as a whole voted down the Wiffle ballot. The tally was 345 in favor and 376 against, with 268 abstensions.
Another petition proposed allowing a game of scrabble to be an alternative dispute resolution mechanism.[76]. The proposal was enthusiastically received by some, who thought it was an appropriate mechanism for the MOO: "LambdaMOO is a society based almost entirely on words; [this measure provides] a form of settling disputes that takes this fact into account."[77] The scrabble petition, however, was denied vetting, because players could have concocted disputes and agreed that the winner would receive a quota increase, thus using the scrabble game to make an end run around the proper quota distribution channels.
One light-hearted measure proposed attaching a new description to any player who submitted a political petition that received vetting: "[Playername] is wearing a boring three piece suit and an ugly tie. [Player is] carrying a leather attach case. On one side of the attach case is a large sign which reads 'Moo-politician. Beware!'"[78] Any player to whom these words were attached could not remove them for a period of three weeks. Although some people found the ballot amusing and thought a little embarrassment for Lambda-politicians was entirely called for, others claimed that it was discriminatory and mean. The ballot failed to win passage; the tally was 304 in favor; 404 against; with 253 abstaining. The most extreme anti-formalist measure proposed the wholesale elimination of the arbitration system with no replacement for it at all.[79] Its author advocated a return to a virtual state of nature: a system of self-help, and the elimination of all enforceable, MOO-sanctioned law.[80] The debate regarding this proposal generated into name-calling; and the measure failed.
These disagreements between formalizers and resisters about LambdaLaw are, at their root, philosophic debates about the nature of LambdaMOO. For both the resisters and the formalizers, anxieties about the meaning of LambdaMOO are played out in the sphere of law. For those who view the MOO as a diversion, a virtual playground, LambdaLaw seems unnecessary and frustrating, an absurd bureaucratic impediment to enjoying the MOO. These participants think that the formalizers take themselves and LambdaMOO far more seriously than they ought to. The resisters believe that LambdaMOO is, in the end, a game, a virtual reality that ought not to be mistaken for a real one. For the second group, those who take LambdaMOO seriously as a society, law has a double function, both pragmatic and symbolic. On the one hand, a legal system is a practical necessity, because the society requires workable mechanisms for adjudicating disputes, enacting legislation and establishing its standards of conduct. However, law simultaneously serves a symbolic function as well: If LambdaMOO has a well-defined legal system, then it is a society. That is, the existence of LambdaLaw becomes itself proof that LambdaMOO is more than a game, that what happens there is not just recreation but the creation of a virtual community. Games have rules, but who ever heard of a game with a Supreme Court and a complex legislative system? In this sense, formalized law becomes a mechanism by which LambdaMOOers can prove that they are engaged in something grander than a role-playing game, that they are participants in a full-fledged virtual world. Law provides dispute-resolution mechanisms and legislative procedures, but it also provides something more: legitimacy.
What will be the outcome of this philosophic battle between the formalizers and the resisters? It seems that a greater proportion of MOO denizens, or at least a greater proportion of the voting population, support the formalizers than the resisters. Several of the formalizers' ballots, including the blueprint for the Judicial Review received majority support from the non-abstaining voters, though none has received the necessary super-majority. By contrast, not a single one of the various anti-formalist measures has been favored by a simple majority. The formalizers' support thus appears to be broader and deeper than that of the resisters. Moreover, the lack of face-to-face communication and the diversity of the Lambda-MOO community suggest that informal norm-enforcement mechanisms will be hard to sustain; indeed, they have already proved hard to sustain.[81] It therefore seems likely that if LambdaMOO lasts, so will LambdaLaw.
Real Law and Lambda Law: Defining the Boundaries
If LambdaLaw seems likely to be a permanent feature of LambdaMOO, determining the appropriate relationship between the legal system within the virtual world and the legal systems that exist outside of it becomes an issue. What should the relationship between LambdaMOO and the legal system in the Real World look like? Should United States courts, for example, recognize LambdaMOO as a separate jurisdiction? Or should they view LambdaLaw as irrelevant to "real" legal determinations involving activities within the MOO? In what circumstances should events that take place within virtual space be actionable in real space? There are at least four possible approaches to this issue; I will lay them out schematically.
Metaphors of MOOdom
LambdaMOO as a social club
If LambdaMOO is understood to be the equivalent of a social club, the existence of Lambda Law is largely irrelevant within the larger legal framework. In other words, the existence of dispute resolution mechanisms within the MOO would have no effect on LambdaMOOers ability to seek redress outside of the MOO for matters that took place within the MOO. LambdaLaw would be equivalent to the by-laws of a social club, or to a university's regulations. Just as a social club's regulations might prohibit members from engaging in certain otherwise legal behaviors within the club, LambdaLaw might prohibit activities that are permissible outside of its sphere. But, by this analogy, Lambda rules do not limit LambdaMOOers out-of-MOO legal options. If a university has rules prohibiting libel, and a student is libeled in the college newspaper, the student can file a lawsuit instead of, or in addition to, making use of the university's grievance procedures. The existence of those procedures has no effect on whether the student is allowed recourse to law, nor do they affect the legal standard that operates.[82] By this analogy, the laws of LambdaMOO have little relevance to proceedings that take place outside of the MOO, even if the events underlying the cause of action occurred within the MOO. If LambdaMOO is like a social club, there is no compelling reason to give its organizational forms and structures any special legal recognition.
LambdaMOO as a village
If LambdaLaw is understood to be a village, exhaustion of Lambda remedies before allowing access to state remedies might be appropriate. That is, if we see LambdaMOO as a place of its own, but one nested within larger geographic entities, just as a village is within a state within a country, we might want the legal system to require disputes to be addressed first at the local level before allowing them to be appealed to a higher authority. This conception would suggest a requirement of exhaustion of LambdaMOO remedies before allowing anyone to make an out-of-Lambda legal claim resulting from in-Lambda activities. Under this approach, courts would dismiss any case in which the plaintiff did not first make use of whatever remedies were available within LambdaMOO. In other words, a LambdaMOO player could not bring suit against someone for slander that took place within LambdaMOO without first using LambdaMOO's arbitration process against the slanderer. The Lambda arbitration system would be the functional equivalent of the court of original jurisdiction for disputes arising within LambdaMOO. Another way to illustrate this approach is to think of LambdaLaw as similar to an administrative remedy. Just as a government employee may sue for wrongful discharge only after all administrative remedies have been exhausted, a LambdaMOO denizen could take out-of-MOO action only after making use of LambdaMOO's available procedures.
The problem with this approach, however, is that unlike a county court or an administrative agency, Lambda's legal institutions have no formal legal authority. They are not an arm of the state, nor even recognized by it. Therefore, courts are unlikely to take this approach with LambdaMOO -- unless LambdaMOO itself requires it of its participants contractually. For example, LambdaMOO could pass a petition that would add to the text every player sees when logging in: "By connecting to this MOO, you agree to exhaust all legal remedies available within the MOO before making any activities, actions, or speech that takes place within the MOO the basis for a lawsuit anywhere outside of LambdaMOO." Although courts would be unlikely to impose an exhaustion requirement on their own, they would probably enforce such a requirement if it were made a condition of MOO-participation.[83] Alternatively, LambdaMOO could follow the model established by many corporate contracts and require binding arbitration for all disputes generated within the MOO and not resolved through MOO dispute resolution mechanisms.
LambdaMOO as a separate country
A third approach is for courts to recognize LambdaMOO as a separate jurisdiction. The analogy here would be to view LambdaMOO as a separate physical space, a place of its own. Legally speaking, LambdaMOO would be equivalent to, not a village within a state, but another country. Viewing LambdaMOO as its own jurisdiction has some conceptual advantages: after all, where exactly are activities on LambdaMOO taking place? The database server is in California, but the characters are logging in from computers all over the country, indeed all over the world. If LambdaMOO is a village, in what state or country is the village itself located? Or, to put it another way, if a player from Seattle spreads slanderous lies about a St. Louis-player to players from Sussex and Syracuse, where did the slander take place? California, Washington, Missouri, England, New York? Where exactly was the tort committed? Perhaps the most satisfying answer is that the tort was committed in LambdaMOO. That is, we could view LambdaMOO as a real place, indeed, the place where the slander occurred If LambdaMOO were understood to be a separate jurisdictional entity, courts would generally refuse to hear disputes arising from activities taking place entirely within LambdaMOO. Just as American courts lack jurisdiction over disputes among Germans taking place in Germany, they would lack jurisdiction over disputes among LambdaMOOers taking place in LambdaMOO.
In practice, of course, the possibility of courts in multiple sites, each with legitimate jurisdiction, means that the situation would be substantially more complex. If a MOOer from California injured another MOOer from California, even if California courts recognized LambdaMOO as a separate jurisdiction, the injured party might have jurisdiction in California courts as well as in LambdaMOO. If we spin out this scenario, we can even imagine courts making inquiries into the adequacy of LambdaMOO remedies and determining whether to apply the doctrine of forum non conveniens, or engaging in elaborate analysis regarding choice-of-law. These scenarios might appear farfetched; the point is that merely recognizing LambdaMOO's jurisdictional independence might not assure that disputes that arose in LambdaMOO would be resolved through LambdaMOO legal mechanisms. Now, if LambdaMOO had exclusive jurisdiction over all that took place in LambdaMOO, these jurisdictional issues would not arise. However, even if LambdaMOO is like another country, the players typing onto their computer screens are themselves located in specific, real-world, geographically-located placed. On what theory would a real-world court maintain that it lacked jurisdiction over the actions of a real person that took place within its boundaries? If a player located in California committed slander within LambdaMOO, a California court would seem clearly to have both personal jurisdiction and subject-matter jurisdiction over the defendant. Still, the metaphorical resonance of the recognition of LambdaMOO as a separate jurisdiction is strong; it corresponds to the instinct of many that cyberspace is Elsewhere.
LambdaMOO as a role-playing game
A fourth approach is to analogize LambdaMOO to a role-playing game, richer and more complex than Dungeons and Dragons, to be sure, but of the same ilk.[84] From a legal standpoint, this analogy suggests the need to make a distinction between characters and typists. If LambdaMOO is a role-playing game, its characters are more like fictional creations than juridical entities. Fictional characters, unlike legally recognized artificial persons (such as corporations), have no legal standing. In other words, if characters are not juridical entities, they can neither sue nor be sued. Damage to fictional characters is not legally cognizable, nor can the person who controls the character sue on the character's behalf . Therefore, in order to bring a civil suit based on action that took place in LambdaMOO, a plaintiff would have to show that the person, the typist behind the character, the human being, experienced damages. And reputational damage suffered within the MOO by the character alone would, one imagines, not count as damage experienced by the typist controlling the character.
However, the real people behind characters would be accountable for
any damage their characters caused non-characters. (The analogy here
would be to an actor who assaults someone during the shooting of the
film. If the assault was part of the script, and he was carrying out his
role, he has not committed a legally cognizable act of violence. If the
assault, however, had nothing to do with the script, the actor could not
escape accountability by claiming that it was his character who
committed the assault.) In other words, if we return to our slander
example, if one MOO character spread slanderous lies about another MOO
character, the slandered character would not have standing to sue in a
civil court. The victim of slander would therefore have no alternative
but to use whatever dispute resolution mechanisms were available to
characters within LambdaMOO. However, if a MOO character slandered a
real human being within the MOO, such as, perhaps, a person who had
never even visited the MOO, and the real human being suffered damages
outside of the MOO as a result of the slander, the victim would have a
cause of action against the typist who controlled the slandering
character.
The boundaries between character and typist are of course indistinct and imperfect. In LambdaMOO, some typists choose to use their real names for their characters. In some MOOs, all typists are required to use their real names as their character names; there is no distinction between the two. The real effect of positing a distinction between character and typist is to require out-of-MOO damages before allowing a MOOer access to out-of-MOO legal system. If the MOO is analogized to a role-playing game, when a dispute arises in which the harm is confined to the MOO, only MOO remedies are available. The harm must spread beyond the boundaries of the game before it will be recognized at law.
We have, then, four approaches to the relation between LambdaLaw and the system of law outside of it. Each approach is based on a metaphor, a conception of the nature of LambdaMOO. Is LambdaMOO a social club or is it a village? Is it more like a country or more like a role-playing game? The difficulty, of course, is that all four metaphors resonate: LambdaMOO is a hybrid. It is a fantasy space in a double sense, both a utopian space of possibility and an adolescent playground. It is a social club and a village and a country and a role-playing game. How, then, should we choose a reigning metaphor, and with it a framework for the relation between LambdaLaw and the state-sanctioned legal system?
Laboratories for Experimentation
As we have seen, LambdaMOO is a space in which reality is bounded only by the imagination. As Sherry Turkle has emphasized in her recent book, Life on the Screen, virtual environments such as LambdaMOO allow their participants to engage in creative self-fashioning. In the MOO, people can develop characters that emphasize usually-suppressed aspects of themselves.[85] In the MOO, they may be something or someone that they are unable to be in the physical world. People may even use the MOO to work through anxieties with origins in the real-world; on occasion, MOO's may have therapeutic potential. Turkle describe how virtual spaces encourage participants to play with aspects of themselves, to experiment with identity, and self-presentation. But it is not only individual identities that are shaped and reshaped within a MOO, but institutional identities as well. Just as players may construct themselves in novel and creative ways, they may also imaginatively construct political institutions and social forms. Turkle calls spaces such as LambdaMOO "laboratories for the construction of identity."[86] But they may equally be laboratories for the construction of society. In an often-quoted dissenting opinion, Justice Louis Brandeis wrote, "It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."[87] Sixty years later, it may be virtual spaces that can best serve as laboratories for experimentation, places in which participants can test creative social, political and legal arrangements.
As we have seen, many of the disputes within LambdaMOO have centered around issues relating to property and speech. It is worth noting that both of these topics are highly contested outside of LambdaMOO as well as within it. To what extent is information properly considered property? What should ownership look like in a society in which the most valuable resources are symbolic rather than material, words rather than things? To what extent should information be protected as private? All of these questions are as central outside of LambdaMOO as inside. With speech as well: how should the legal system protect people from unwanted speech and simultaneously allow free and open communication? Can speech alone cause injuries that should be legally recognized? Are there circumstances in which the content of speech should be regulated? These, too, are relevant questions in domains far outside of cyberspace.
Moreover, it is not as if the Lambda legal system has been constructed in a vacuum. It borrows from the legal systems outside of it, especially the American legal system, both explicitly and implicitly. Often, participants invoke notions of the law based on their (sometimes inaccurate) understanding of law in the real world. For example, nowhere in LambdaLaw is there any explicit codification of either a free speech right or a privacy right, and yet most participants presume that these rights exist within the MOO. (Ironically, it is often law-resisters who most vehemently argue that free speech is sacrosanct.[88]) At a procedural and institutional level, too, we can see the tremendous extent to which American legal culture influences LambdaMOOers' approaches to LambdaLaw. Both in the mechanisms used by arbitrators to shore up their authority and in the structure of the Judicial Review Board, we see a turn to a process-based system for determining the legitimacy of decisions. We see an individualistic conception of property rights applied to virtual objects created by computer code. And the language used by LambdaMOOers, such as the labeling of their proposals "the LambdaMOO Supreme Court" and the "LambdaMOO Bill of Rights", reflects the legal culture in which they exist off-line.
That people invent for themselves structures that resemble those that they know best is not surprising. The strong reliance upon existing models of law, both procedural and substantive, suggests the limits of any paradigm that views virtual reality as completely set apart from real life. The structure of LambdaMOO makes it possible to change the world by changing the code, limited only by the imagination. And yet in practice, while the characters and the places may look like nothing one's seen before, the real world is sorely lacking in characters shaped like fractal dragons and offers no possibility of taking an elevator from California to China, but the institutions look rather familiar. But we must be careful not to overstate the resemblance. LambdaLaw is at once tightly linked to the culture of the real world and a kaleidoscopic transformation of it. Its relation to real law is far from simply mimetic; it is a form of legal bricolage, blending elements of "real" law and elements of lay people's conception of "real" law, together with institutional variations and innovative conceptions.
Possibly, then, virtual spaces such as LambdaMOO could be laboratories for experimenting with various institutional creation and creative legal standards. With this potential in mind, let us return to the question of the reigning metaphor, the best way to conceive of the relation between reality and virtuality, Lambda Law and real law. Which approach, LambdaMOO as a social club, as a village, as a country, or as a role-playing game, offers the most promise for allowing virtual communities to be laboratories for social and institutional invention? Which approach would allow the greatest flexibility for institutional refashioning?
The best metaphor turns out to be conceiving of LambdaMOO as a role-playing game. Analogizing LambdaMOO to a role-playing game ends up granting LambdaMOO denizens the most freedom to experiment, and indeed, the greatest amount of legal autonomy. By emphasizing LambdaMOO's game-like aspects, we emphasize LambdaMOO's power to make rules for itself, unconstrained by the rules that operate outside its borders. In other words, recognizing LambdaMOO as a game, as a play-space, frees participants in LambdaMOO to play, to invent and reinvent both themselves and their institutional setting. For labeling LambdaMOO a "mere" game is the easiest way to free what happens within LambdaMOO from external legal oversight. If LambdaMOO were a social club, external legal institutions would have no reason to defer to the MOO's rules when they differed from those of society at large. If LambdaMOO were a village, when the village laws conflicted with the law of the state, state law would prevail when invoked. If LambdaMOO were a country, the principle of comity would suggest that real-world courts should respect LambdaLaw as legitimate; however, unless LambdaLaw had exclusive jurisdiction over anything that took place in LambdaMOO, complex jurisdictional questions would arise. If LambdaMOO is a game, however, players would generally find it difficult to invoke external law when it differed from the rules of the game. A football player cannot successfully sue for a civil assault when he is tackled during a game, even though the same action in another circumstance would be actionable. When he agrees to play football, he agrees to its rules, even when they conflict with those of the general society. Similarly, LambdaMOOers would find it difficult to bring suit for actions sanctioned by the rules of the MOO, even if the same action would be prohibited outside of the MOO Obviously, there are social limits to what society will allow in the guise of a game, "it was part of a consensual game" would hardly provide an adequate defense for murder. Nonetheless, it seems that analogizing the virtual community to a role-playing game ends up providing LambdaMOO with the greatest freedom from external legal control.
Moreover, the role-playing game metaphor suggests a useful guideline for determining when the external legal system should allow actions within Lambda to be the basis for a lawsuit, when "it was part of a consensual game" should not protect a player from liability. Viewing LambdaMOO as a role-playing game suggests a distinction between the role and the players, between the persona and the person. This distinction, to be sure, is not always a stable one; as Sherry Turkle writes, "MUDs blur the boundaries between self and game, self and role, self and simulation."[89]
Indeed, within the MOO, there are frequently conflicts that suggest the instability of a pair of related distinctions: the distinction between the persona and the person, and the distinction between Lambda life and real life. A useful framework for determining when a player ought to be able to invoke the real-world legal system is to allow access to external law in those circumstances when these distinctions, between role and player, between MOOlife and real life, have broken down. That is, when actions that take place within the MOO have consequences outside of the MOO, when the actions of a character damage not a persona but a person, than the person should be able to seek redress through the external legal system. Another way of articulating this principle is to emphasize that characters lack standing in court; in order for legal remedies to be available based on in-MOO activities, the player, not the character, must have actual damages, and these damages must be in the real world, not in the MOO -- before external legal remedies will be available.
These boundaries between person and persona and LambdaMOO and the world outside will indeed break down on occasion; indeed, within LambdaMOO there are numerous examples of this collapse. Officially, the relation between LambdaLaw and the outside world is rather straightforward. The arbitration help file states, "The only RL actions which have material bearing on any case brought before Arbitration shall be: the mental processes of that typist and the fact that the typist elected to type what they did."[90] As another player put it, "I think this should be a right of all users: 'The right to treat any and all communications occurring outside the MOO as irrelevant to the MOO.' . . . The MOO is the MOO. It is not the outside."[91] But in practice, this can be a hard distinction to put into effect. As one arbitrator wrote, struggling with this issue in a case where the real-life activities and on-Lambda activities of the disputants were deeply entangled,
The problem toward which the arbitrator gestures is that it is difficult to uphold a strict distinction between real life actions and LambdaMOO actions when the participants in a dispute are fighting on both battlegrounds. If the participants have a dispute with each other both in real life and LambdaMOO, for the players themselves it will be impossible to believe that the goings-on in one arena are irrelevant to the other. In other words, if the players in a dispute have "pierced the character veil," it is extremely difficult for the adjudicatory system to both reattach the veil and successfully resolve the dispute. In one highly charged dispute, the accusations against a player included the claim that he was threatening to use information he'd learned from characters on LambdaMOO to harass them in real life. Over the course of the dispute, the accused committed MOOicide; he voluntarily exiled himself from LambdaMOO. An observer commented to the victims on the irony of the outcome: "while you are victorious in a make-believe environment, you're still affected by him in real life!"[93]
On the one hand, there is widespread recognition within the MOO
that it is impractical and inappropriate for LambdaMOO to claim
jurisdiction over any aspect of real life. On the other hand, MOOers all
know that sometimes the two are far from distinct, and that both for
both amity and enmity the border separating real life and virtual can be
porous indeed. The belief in the need for the LambdaMOO legal system to
maintain a strict separation between reality and virtuality, alongside
the knowledge that this separation is often chimerical and leads to
exchanges like the following:
The insistence on a strict separation between real life and LambdaLife is, then, a legal fiction: though it does not conform to people's lived experience, it is viewed as necessary for the Lambda legal system to function at all.
Unlike the LambdaMOO legal system, the external legal systems need recognize no such separation. Indeed, it is in those occasions in which the separation ceases to exist, resulting in real damages to a real person, in which the legal system ought to recognize goings-on within Lambda MOO as raising legally cognizable claims. To give just a few examples: if a LambdaMOO character stole the computer code of another LambdaMOO character within the MOO. Then outside of the MOO copies were sold of the stolen code, even though the theft occurred within the MOO, the player from whom the MOO was stolen might have a legitimate copyright claim. Or, if a LambdaMOO character willfully slandered someone not on the MOO, (and it could be proven that this slander caused the victim actual damage,) the slandered person should have out-of-MOO redress available even though the speech occurred within the MOO. Clearly goings-on within the MOO could be used as evidence in cases grounded in actions committed outside of the MOO. By contrast, unless the actions caused out-of-MOO damage to a real person, slander within the MOO, or property theft within the MOO, or sexual harassment within the MOO or even virtual rape, would not be legally cognizable outside of the MOO. Note that in order for this system to work, psychological damage experienced by persons because of the experiences of their persona cannot be viewed as the kind of damage that allows someone access to outside-MOO legal redress.
The point here is not that persona cannot suffer real harm. Rather, the question is which organizational level is best suited to adjudicating different kinds of disputes. When the harm-causing activities occur within LambdaMOO and the harm is suffered by a Lambda MOO character, the adjudicatory mechanisms of LambdaMOO provide the best institutional setting in which to settle the issue. By contrast, when the damage seeps beyond the borders of LambdaMOO, the legal institutions beyond LambdaMOO's borders are better suited to resolve the matter.
We see, therefore, that understanding LambdaMOO as a role-playing game has two useful consequences. First, it opens up the greatest possible space for institutional experimentation within LambdaMOO, and thus enlarges LambdaMOO's sphere of legal autonomy. In addition, by implying a distinction between role and player, person and persona, the role-playing game analogy suggests a useful guideline for determining when disputes arising out of activities within LambdaMOO should be cognizable in out-of-MOO courts. The role-playing game analogy, then, both maximizes the possibility for LambdaMOO to operate as a laboratory for experimentation, and suggests a framework for determining the boundaries of this zone of experimentation.
The irony is that, in the disagreements between the resisters and the formalizers over the existence of LambdaLaw, it was the resisters who frequently emphasized that LambdaMOO was a game. For the resisters, calling LambdaLaw a game implied that LambdaLaw was overwrought and unnecessary. Recognizing it as a game would, the resisters thought, prevent players from taking it too seriously. Emphasizing the analogy between LambdaMOO and role-playing games need not, however, diminish LambdaMOO's seriousness. LambdaMOO can simultaneously be a virtual community and a game. In other words, LambdaMOO can be serious play. Indeed, all games have rules and could not function without them.
However, we must take heed of the resisters and their presumption that LambdaLaw is superfluous if LambdaMOO is merely a game. If nothing else, the resisters' viewpoint should remind us that analogizing LambdaMOO to a role-playing-game for the purpose of determining its relation to the external legal world is no panacea; it provides no guarantee that LambdaMOO and places like it will, in practice, become laboratories for social experimentation. Nonetheless, this analogy minimizes the intrusion of real-world law into LambdaMOO, and thereby maximizes the space for institutional invention. The extent to which such institutional invention will actually occur within MOO spaces is yet to be determined. Such a legal and institutional structure has already emerged within LambdaMOO. Whether it will continue to flourish and expand remains an open question. Even if we maximize LambdaMOO's freedom to innovate, there may be substantial obstacles in place that make creative reinvention difficult to achieve. To name just a few: virtual communities may find it difficult to create effective ways to enforce the laws they have created; participants may not choose to invest time and energy in institutional creation; irresolvable philosophical differences (such as that between the formalizers and the resisters) may lead to stagnation instead of innovation; it may be that the infinite expansibility of virtual spaces leads to fragmentation rather than creation. Finally, the collective imagination and generative capacity of participants may simply not be up to the task.
LambdaMOO, then, may be a test of our collective imaginative capacity, the ultimate thought-experiment. LambdaMOO is a world in which nearly anything is possible. It is a world where destroying an institution (or a character) requires no more than tossing out some programming code, a society in which institutional creation and innovation are made real through writing. It is a place where words have the potential to come to life. LambdaMOO, then, has the potential to be a utopian space of possibility. It could provide a space in which participants can remake themselves and their institutions; it could provide a standpoint from which to critique and rethink the institutional structures of the space outside the MOO.
The utopian possibility, the notion of a virgin place in which we can wash off the mistakes of the past and begin anew; these are recurrent and familiar myths. From the hopes of creating a new man in the New World to the conception of the frontier as a place of freedom from the stifling constraints of society, there have been those who have believed in the possibility of transforming humanity by moving to a new space, an untouched place. Cyberspace has clearly become the latest site within this lineage of utopian dream-spaces, and in this new world as surely as in the ones that have preceded it, utopian dreamers are destined to be disappointed. Nonetheless, virtual communities like LambdaMOO, odd hybrids between games and worlds, simulations and society, may prove to be spaces for institutional reimagining, for questioning and reshaping conceptions of self, politics, and law.
1. Robert Cover, The Supreme Court, 1982 Term, Foreword: Nomos and
Narrative, 97 Harv. L. Rev 4 (1983), reprinted in Robert Cover,
Narrative Violence and the Law 95, 100 (1993).
2. Roberto Unger, False Necessity, 44 (1987).
3. For links to many resources about MOOs and MUDs, see The MUD Resource Collection, http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~lwl/mudinfo.html. The first MUD began in 1979. It was a fantasy-style adventure game, similar to a computer-based version of Dungeons and Dragons. See Elizabeth Reid, Cultural Formations in Text-Based Virtual Realities, Master's Thesis, University of Melbourne, 1994, p.10 available at http://www.ee.mu.oz.au/papers/emr/index.html. For a history of MUDs, see Lauren P. Burka, A Hypertext History of Multi-User Dimensions, located in The MUD Archive, http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/lpb/muddex.html.
4. For an extensive discussion of the possibilities for virtual communities, see Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community (1993).
5. I selected LambdaMOO because it is one of the most popular and populated of the "social" MOOs. Also, Pavel Curtis, LambdaMOO's founder, explicitly believes that his creation is a social experiment.
6. This paper focuses on the formal aspects of this order, the emergence not of norms but of law. It is interesting that formal law has developed at all; many scholars have emphasized the important role provided by informal social controls, or as Robert Ellickson puts it, of "order without law." See Robert Ellickson, Order Without Law (1991). It would be worthwhile to ask explicitly why informal mechanisms have not been sufficient within LambdaLaw, but serious discussion of this issue is beyond the scope of this paper.
7. Indeed, gender within LambdaMOO is not limited to the binary choice of male and female. Characters can choose whether to be male, female, neuter, plural, or several other genders.
8. "A large portion of player descriptions contain a degree of wish fulfillment; I cannot count the number of 'mysterious but unmistakably powerful' figures I have seen wandering around in LambdaMOO." Pavel Curtis, Mudding: Social Phenomenon in Text-Based Virtual Realities, 1993, ftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/MOO/contrib/papers. For discussion of the psychological aspects of self-presentation on MOOs, see Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen (1995).
9. The focus in this section will be the LambdaLaw/U.S. law relationship. Although LambdaMOO is certainly an international space, the majority of participants log in from U.S. cites.
10. Note that in all of my quotations from text that originally appeared within LambdaMOO, I have taken the liberty of making minor grammatical and spelling corrections in order to increase clarity. There are certain unusual aspects of Lambda speech I have left unaltered. Verbs in LambdaMOO often begin with an 'at' sign (@). I have left intact certain abbreviations: 'RL' stands for real life; VL stands for virtual life; VR stands for virtual reality.
11. Many, perhaps a majority of players are college students. A study of 583 participants conducted in December, 1993, revealed that the average age of players was 23.66 years. In this same survey, 76 percent of players said that they were male in real life, and 23.4 percent said female. See Email correspondence between Pavel Curtis and Elizabeth Reid, Appendix Six in Reid, supra note ___ at 66. Note that there is no way of confirming that survey respondents answered honestly.
12. However, anyone who fails to log on for more than 90 days will be "reaped" or "recycled," the virtual equivalent of death.
13. There have, however, been proposals to limit guest access, so it is possible that guest accessibility might diminish or even be eliminated.
14. At present, it takes about eight weeks to make it to the top of the wait list and receive a LambdaMOO character.
15. Pavel Curtis' memo is memorialized in the history section of the LambdaMOO museum, as Exhibit 11: LambdaMOO Takes a New Direction. It is also available on the WWW at http://vesta.physics.ucla.edu/~smolin/lambda/laws_and_history/newdirection.
16. The main criteria are that character (1) not be a guest character, or visitor; and (2) be at least 30 days old, in Lambda-time. See Message 511 on *social issues (#7233), archived in ftp.parc.xerox.com/pub/MOO/contrib/Mail/social.930713.
17. These examples are based on several given in "help petitions" on LambdaMOO.
18. LambdaMOO has an internal email system, a form of cyberspace within cyberspace. The mailing lists within LambdaMOO are extremely numerous; currently they number more than 175, not counting those associated with petitions, ballots and disputes. Topics range from poetry to New-York-City-Mooers, from discussions of the world-wide-web to gripes and complaints. Interestingly, some lists, including *Group-Therapy and *Unfounded-Rumor allow anonymous contributions. Of course, in LambdaMOO nearly everyone is anonymous; that is, their character-identity in no way reveals their real-life identity. The existence of anonymity within LambdaMOO illustrates the extent to which participants take their character-identities seriously, and suggests that characters themselves develop social capital.
19. But see infra notes ___ and accompanying text, discussing a petition that would make the wizards accountable to a newly created Judicial Review Board.
20. For a discussion of this point within the moo, see messages 317-324 and 496-502 on *Petitions-Process (#28350).
21. The most extreme power is, of course, the power to annihilate the MOO completely. Other important powers include the ability to remove a character from the MOO, or to banish her for a period of time. Moreover, wizards can access information pertaining to users' real-life identities: their site information or their email address. They also can enter a player's code and modify it, although they are supposed to limit this invasion to those times when it is necessary, e.g., to fix a bug affecting other players.
22. The LambdaMOO population voted down a ballot called "Social Ballot System," which would have allowed ballots and petitions regarding purely social matters requiring no technical implementation by the wizards. However, this distinction seems to me to be an artificial one. Within LambdaMOO, even changing a text is a technical change; for example, if "Social Ballot System" had passed, it would have required a change in "help petitions" reflecting the modification, which is itself a technical modification, albeit a minor one. See *Petition:Social_Ballot_System, (#26877) and its associated mailing list for details on this proposal..
23. For the argument that real-world technological artifacts contain embedded political conceptions, see Langdon Winner, Do Artifacts have Politics, 109 Daedalus 121 (1980).
24. This example indicates both the possibilities and the limits of "hard-wiring" politics within technology. A person can be forced to scroll through the text of a petition, but cannot be forced actually to read it.
25. Indeed, on most ballots, only about 20 percent of the eligible population that has logged on during the voting period actually casts a vote.
26. To require participants to vote, for example, players could be forced to stay within a voting room whenever they logged on and there were new ballots available; the only way to leave the voting room and return to "society" would be by voting. Or, voting could be linked to some other aspect of MOO life; e.g., those who did not vote in at least three-fourths of the last dozen ballots could be summarily denied any increase in quota. Alternatively, the system could send players notes reminding them of the current ballots and their need to vote every five minutes; the sheer annoyance would probably lead most players to vote in order to free themselves from the reminders. I'm not advocating any of these systems; rather, I want to illustrate the broad range of technological possibilities and the way that politics and technology cannot be seen as separate.
27. Message 5 on *Petition:TGB (#73565).
28. See *Ballot:New-Arb; *Ballot:quota-restructuig; *Ballot:fix-ARB-elect.
29. See *Ballot:Minimal-Population-Growth; *Ballot:BirthControl.
30. See *Ballot:guest-booting; *Ballot:@Boot2; *Ballot:FixBoot.
36. Many MOOers are skeptical of this claim, though it is official policy.
37. Of course, while the mailing lists are the most public space for commentary they are far from exclusive. A limitation of my analysis of arbitrations is that I am limited to the public record Ä the mailing list.
38. This language comes from *Ballot:Arbitration.
39. However, at least five votes to overturn are required for a decision to be overturned.
40. Conflict of interest is basically defined as having had a dispute with either party or coming from the same site
41. E.g., if somebody refuses to participate or has not logged on within a reasonable period of time, a trial in absentia may be necessary.
43. Note that implementing most of these punishments can only be done by a wizard. But if an arbitration decision is not overturned, the wizards are bound (or at least claim to be bound) to carry it out.
44. The etymological origin of toading comes from the toad, as in the animal. On some MUD's, "toading" is an unpleasant but far from fatal form of punishment in which the character's description is changed into that of a warty toad; she may also be paraded around, or made to stay in some public place for the purpose of humiliation. In LambdaMOO, toading has come to mean permanent banishment.
45. Message 7 on *Dispute:Margeaux v. Yib(#35664)
47. *Dispute: Nosredna v. Kipp(#937865)
48. This case was brought by Nosredna, was a wizard. Much of the discussion on the cases' associated mailing list concerns the extent to which wizards can take action without going through official channels, and how to define the boundary between purely technical aspects of the MOO and social ones.
49. Message 92 on *Ballot:7a77 (#63854).
51. See, e.g., Messages 19, 26, 32 on id.
52. As in real life, on LambdaMOO a page is a message that can be heard even if you're not in the same room; unlike real life, on LambdaMOO only the recipient of the page hears the message.
53. This is something of an overstatement; there are apparently ways to program around an @gag or @refuse command. But the commands certainly provide some degree of protection.
54. Message 16 on *Dispute:Abraxas vs.lucifuge2 (#38613).
55. Message 79 on *Dispute:Basshead vs. lucifuge (#87718).
56. Message 27 on *Dispute:Mickey vs. Sunny (#71969)
57. Message 38 on *Dispute:Abraxas vs.lucifuge2 (#38613).
58. Message 23 on *Dispute:Basshead vs. lucifuge (#87718).
59. Message 50 on *Dispute:Abraxas vs.lucifuge2 (#38613).
60. For an extensive discussion of spoofing , see Lee-Ellen Marvin, Spoof, Spam, Lurk and Lag: the Aesthetics of Text-based Virtual Realities, 1 J. Computer-Mediated Communication, Issue 2, at http://www.usc.edu/dept/annenberg/vol1/issue2/index.html.
61. *Ballot:MooRights (#12797)
62. See Julian Dibbell, A Rape in Cyberspace, The Village Voice, Dec. 21, 1993, 36, available at http://vesta.physics.ucla.edu/~smolin/lambda/laws_and_history/VillageVoice.txt.
63. *Ballot:AntiRape (#60535).
64. This ability to comment is much used; dispute-associated mailing lists often have hundreds of message on them by the time the conflict is closed.
65. Message 115 on *Dispute:Mickey v. Sunny (#71969)
66. Message 20 on *Dispute:Basshead vs. lucifuge (#87718).
67. In Hiroko's case, her careful, formal rulings did not prevent her initial decision from being overturned. Note that this strategy is not limited to the arbitrators. In a slander dispute, one player invokes definitions from Black's Law Dictionary in his explanation of why her behavior ought to be legally cognizable. See Message 36 on *Dispute:Micky v. Sunny (#71969).
69. The paragraph of "help manners" that arises in every harassment dispute is "Sexual harassment (particularly involving unsolicited acts which simulate rape against unwilling participants) . . . is not tolerated by the LambdaMOO community. A single incidence of such an act may, as a consequence of due process, result in permanent expulsion from LambdaMOO." Does this paragraph mean that sexual harassment is a toadable offense? Necessarily? What process is due? These and other questions arise with regularity.
70. Note that there are no provisions in the JRB ballot that prohibit people from resubmitting queries that have previously been decided. Thus determined players could continuously try to reopen issues of law that the JRB had already settled. However, the JRB has the authority to dismiss summarily any case in which the issue of law has already been resolved.
71. This restructuring proposal, though under consideration for more than a year, never received vetting by the wizards because a number of implementation details were not deemed sufficiently clear. The petition, *Petition:Bill-of-Rights (#62261), would have created a "bill of rights" to protect the right to privacy; the right to control access to one's property; the right to a harassment-free environment; the right to free expression; the right to raise grievances within the judicial system; the right to propose social policy changes, and the right to due process (interpreted primarily as the right to not have any LambdaMOO downtime counted for any process with a time limit, such as the petition process). This proposal would also have constitutionalized citizens' responsibilities, ranging from the responsibility to report (and not to abuse) any breaches in security to the responsibility to respect other citizen's constitutional rights and intellectual property rights (e.g., not to copy their code without permission). In addition, this petition would have created a legislative body -- not an elected body, but a forum open to anyone who wished to participate -- for addressing social concerns (as opposed to technical matters). Changes to the Constitution would have required a public referendum.; the legislative body could not effect such changes itself; in this sense, the bill recognized a distinction between normal and higher lawmaking. (For a discussion of normal and higher lawmaking, see generally, Bruce Ackerman, We The People (1991).) The ballot also specified certain minimum requirements for an adjudicative system. Another restructuring proposal also would have established a bill of rights, ranging from the right to free expression to the right to conceive of LambdaMOO as a bounded universe. This petition became a ballot, and won support from a majority of voters, but not the two-thirds required for passage. See generally *Ballot:LambdaMOO_Bill_of_Rights (#95555).
72. See *Petition:Choosing-Justice (#12309).
76. See *Petition:Solve-your-differences-peacefully (#8426) and accompanying mailing list.
77. Message 7 on Id. (written by petition's creator, but see also, e.g., message 6 and message 3).
79. See *Ballot:Repeal-Arbitration (#78996).
81. One might argue that norms have emerged on usenet despite the lack of face-to-face communication and the diversity of the community. However, (1) most (though not all) of the participants on usenet have their words attached to their real-life name; (2) many of the norms are about ways of speaking (e.g., the use of smileys to express nuances; the appropriate length of posts, etc.) rather than substantive matters like the proper balance between free speech and freedom from harassment; and (3) many usenet groups actually have an extremely small number of regular posters, fewer than the number of LambdaMOO players who log on in an average week.
82. In some cases, however, private norms might affect the standard applied by the courts; if, for example, the community's standard of care or an interpretive question were at issue.
83. I am not advocating that LambdaMOO denizens create such a contract; however, it provides an illustration of how organizations can themselves generate what Robert Ellickson calls "controller-selecting rules," the rules that determine who will resolve disputes that arise, and whether the disputes enter the legal system at all. See Ellickson, supra note ___ at 131-34 (1991). For an extensive discussion of the operation of "controller-selecting" rules in cyberspace, see David G. Post, Anarchy, State, and the Internet: An Essay on Law-Making in Cyberspace, 1995 J. Online L. art. 3. http://www.law.cornell.edu/jol/jol.table.html.
84. MOOs indeed have their origins in role-playing games like dungeons and dragons; hence the original name of "multi-user dungeon."
85. See Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen 177-209 (1995).
87. New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262, 311 (1932)
88. The notion that the protection of free speech is a protection against infringement by the state is entirely absent from every discussion of free speech within the MOO that I have seen; many within the MOO view free speech rights as something that inhere to individuals.
89. Turkle, supra note __ at 192.
90. "help dispute-process" on LambdaMOO.
91. Message 95 on *Petition:Bill-of-Rights (#62261)
In an instance such as this, I do believe the responsibility lies with [the character who built the verbs in question]. His [verb] serves no purpose that I can tell other than to harass players. This isn't an instance where we have a kid who has written his own harassment verbs. [He] gave tacit permission (and we, the community, in turn, give [him] permission when we don't hold him accountable for creating objects that only function to annoy others, and leave ourselves in the role of having to educate his 'customers') to this player by allowing him access to his [creations]. And because this community is so transient, [with] players of varying ages continually joining, I foresee this as being a constant problem for the dispute [resolution] process.[58]
A virtual "rape", also known as "MOOrape", is defined within LambdaMOO as a sexually-related act of a violent or acutely debasing or profoundly humiliating nature against a character who has not explicitly consented to the interaction. Any act which explicitly references the non-consensual, involuntary exposure, manipulation, or touching of sexual organs of or by a character is considered an act of this nature.
An "act" is considered, for the purposes of this petition, to be a use of "emote" (locally or remotely), a spoof, or a use of another verb performing the equivalent presentation, whether by a character or by an object controlled by a character.
The use of "say", "page", and "whisper" . . . and other functionality creating an equivalent sense of quotation generally are not considered "acts" under this petition; they are considered "speech". Notes, mail messages, descriptions, and other public media of communication within LambdaMOO that provide a sense of quotation or written expression rather than conveying action are also forms of "speech". This petition should not be interpreted to abridge freedom of speech within LambdaMOO community standards. Communications in the form of speech might still be considered offensive and harassing, but generally are not considered virtual rape unless they explicitly and provokingly reference a character performing the actions associated with rape.[63]
I stressed, and stress now, that I cannot act on incidents outside the db[database]. However, I can consider threats made in LM [LambdaMOO] of RL [Real Life] action. [I believe in ] the necessity of limiting ourselves as much as possible to the concerns on the MUD. [But] it is my feeling that we cannot simply ignore the existence of a problem merely because someone has decided to engage in out-of-MOO escalation. To do so, I'm afraid, would only encourage such escalation.[92]
I don't think there would be much argument about this particular
issue. That if you're having a real life problem with another
player in real life, you cannot get redress in a virtual reality
Arbitration program. The place to seek redress for real life
offenses is in real life. In MOO life, if you're having "virtual
nature" problems with another player, you may bring the problem to
Arbitration and attempt to get some peace WHERE the offense
occurs, where Arbitration has "jurisdiction." But, there is no
crossover.
How many examples of tangible crossover do you require, before recognizing
that they exist?[94]
Footnotes