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$5000 to help me with the new GoPets EULA
What is the Best TOS/EULA structure to develop the greatest volume of citizen transactional volume in GoPets?
What is the Best TOS/EULA structure to develop the greatest volume of citizen transactional volume in GoPets?
I am offering a bounty of $5,000 for help in creating a new EULA, TOS, Codes of Conduct, and Privacy Policies for GoPets.
I seeking everyone’s help in drafting a set of instruments (iconic, human bullet points, and legal code). Our mission is to continue to develop the virtual world of GoPets into a platform of living expression and friendship with global reach.
We have long recognized the importance private property in GoPets but so far we have not taken any formal steps to ensure property rights to our citizens and now believe that formal recognition and other tangible forms of human and property rights will accelerate our commercial goals.
The debate in our community of whether or not this or that clause of this or that EULA is of course fascinating to read in the blogs - but we are taking the stance that we will gladly charge ahead of what we are required by commercial law to perform - and instead we would like to reach as high as possible to achieve the natural rights as expressed in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
We believe that by doing so that we will attract the trust of more customers to invest more of their time, creativity and money into developing the world of GoPets to greater enjoyment of all.
While all that sounds wonderful at the high level – it is now time to drive this to a practical articulation.
First about that $5,000 – I will divvy that money up however I think most fairly recognizes individual contributions. In the end we will place the final product in a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
I would like to see this wrapped up if at all possible by November 1st, 2007 for something new I am able to release to the GoPets Citizens.
Why am I seeking to create these instruments in a public discussion? Bluntly if we are to succeed in this goal to be a platform with widespread participation then I think the ‘governing rules’ should not be developed in a private conversation with our excellent corporate lawyers but instead with the people who are active in both the research of the legal and economic issues of online worlds, other creators of worlds and most important to are the people who will actually use these governing rules to their own benfit.
Others such as the folks at the recent Ludium 2 conference have been actively working to develop these concepts: http://ludium2.studiocypher.com/index.ph
Another example is Raph Koster’s excellent treatment way back in 2000 on the inalienable rights of avatars: http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/playerr
I was stunned to see that out of ignorance of Raph’s prior work – I traveled the same path through the US Constitution and the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights in my talk at Seattle last month where I first compared Second Life’s EULA to being worse than the rogue state of North Korea!
Now down to the rights and obligations – I will kick off the discussion:
(1) Due Process & Habeas Corpus – people naturally feel the right to an explanation of what they did wrong and an opportunity to defend themselves. We already perform a private audience with the state to explain your case. The problem with this method is that it is very expensive from our customer support resources and ultimately the result is not transparent and the citizens of GoPets still feel subject to arbitrary rule. We want some form of player-run tribunal that reviews the evidence and then makes a decision. We think we should review decisions and if GoPets disagrees with the tribunal rather than overturn the decision of the tribunal we think we should send it back to the tribunal for a re-trial. We think that these tribunals should be speedy (<30 days) and protect people’s privacy (e.g. scrubbed of real-world identification etc.). We also think that the tribunal should use some sort of rotating term-limited election system. How to actually create this for a commercially reasonable cost that the citizens at the end of the day will collectively pay for we do not have the answer in our hands.
(2) Right to free expression and assembly – people should enjoy this freedom up to the point where it sabotages the services or attempts sedition. This freedom should be restricted from taking the shape of harassment or annoyance of the users at large. Obviously no forms of hate speech. For example you should be able to say and make a great variety of expressions and items in the privacy of your own land and space, however in the public spaces and on other people’s lands you are naturally more restricted. How to codify this in a manner that someone understands up front I do not know. Something like when you are out and about you must use ‘E’ for everyone forms of expression and when in private between consenting players you must use non mature forms of expression. That is the closest I can think of.
(3) Right to your property and the security of that property in possession and in transaction – by the very nature of ‘Gold Shells’ and ‘Inventory’ and ‘Shopping’ we recognize that we are asking our citizens to develop the beliefs and expectations associated with owning these digital items. Once that is accepted then we take the next natural step of logic and feel that we must make every commercially reasonable effort to keep your property safe from service errors (‘bugs’) and to provide mechanisms and user interface for the safe exchange of items, land and shells.
(4) Non discrimination – all the usual suspects here we will not discriminate based on race, gender, age, orientation, religion, political views, and so on. We run into areas here on age where we must comply with a myriad of jurisdictional differences on the age of majority and the more subtle protections of teens and children.
(5) Right to exit and leave the GoPets service at will.
(6) Right to transfer your whole account to another individual.
(7) No bannings or terminations of service on related accounts without due process.
(8) In the case of service errors that result in the loss of property the recourse will be replacement of the lost property and NOT the fair market value in the secondary markets.
(9) In the case of service errors that result in the economic gain for the citizens we will generally allow the citizen to retain that gain within a limit of $50 of fair market value or 10% of the total prior direct purchases from GoPets of gold shells and premium services – whichever is greater of the two.
(10) Service outages – we are scheduled to be down for a total of 12 hours per month. Any outages longer than that will be compensated to premium users in a 200% 24 hours of extended premium service for every 12 hours of down time. Further more any in-game time mechanics will be reset at the beginning of any server restoration (e.g. all ‘cool-downs’ will be reset).
(11) We actively encourage private settlements between citizens that alleviate drain on the tribunal and customer support systems. I do not know how to materially encourage this… how about a non-refundable tribunal fee where if you win your case against another citizen (e.g. fraud) you keep 75% of the total fees and the tribal keeps 25%?
(12) Generally we will turn a blind eye to any form of derivative works known as mashups and fan art. We will leave the work of policing that to the individual copyright holders. However, in the event that we are issued a take-down notice or otherwise determine that we must take down some content we will issue the concerned citizen a warning 15 days in advance of that objects destruction. Replacement of the underlying costs of production of that item will be generally be awarded unless we (or tribunal?) determines the derivative work was created solely to grief the system and cost customer service resources.
(13) Changes to any policy, terms of service, code of conduct or other ‘governing rule’ we will provide 15 days notice summarized in an easy to read human bullet point ‘above the fold’ in the patch window with a click to accept and continue mechanic.
(14) In the case of emergency either of economic or otherwise causing damage to the world as whole we reserve the option to invoke the equivalent of martial law and take whatever action is required to restore order and ‘return to peace time’. Actions taken during times of emergency will be publicly posted sans personal information and made open for review and comment for the citizenry.
(15) We will of course necessarily comply with all laws local and state globally and above all recognize the natural rights of humans everywhere. If a particular jurisdiction compels us to comply with an unconscionable law we will make commercially feasible efforts to resist the compulsion but it is understood that GoPets is not a platform for political advocacy in the real world territories.
(16) We welcome all 3rd parties from the largest corporations to the individual citizens to invent novel ways to exploit the Gopets virtual world platform for their own private gain. We will not take any action against derivative or mashup work unless it directly threatens our essential trademark, patent and existential rights. For example, we do not allow a toy company to go run and make GoPets plush toys without a license from us, nor do we allow another company to setup a ‘rogue’ server that uses the GoPets client and assets to create a competitive service that would threaten our existence. How to define the lines – I do not know exactly.
- Location:Seoul
- Mood:
thankful
Comments
Are you going to charge a filing fee?
Who will be responsible for providing evidence?
I realize the parties to the complaint will have some (but likely will just be he said, she said) evidence. I guess my question is: will GoPets provide pertinent evidence of the transactions to the tribunal or is it solely on the parties?
Take this point for example:
"(12) Generally we will turn a blind eye to any form of derivative works known as mashups and fan art. We will leave the work of policing that to the individual copyright holders. However, in the event that we are issued a take-down notice or otherwise determine that we must take down some content we will issue the concerned citizen a warning 15 days in advance of that objects destruction. Replacement of the underlying costs of production of that item will be generally be awarded unless we (or tribunal?) determines the derivative work was created solely to grief the system and cost customer service resources."
I know it would take lots of resources (including money) not to mention be an impossible job to completely prevent people from using images on the forum and in their custom items that are not their own. I do feel however that you should be encouraging them to be mindful of people's intellectual properly instead of ignoring the problem completely. Would you not expect places like cafepress.com to warn their 'users' to be sure they own the copyright to the images they use in their products?
There's a reason why Western liberal thought -- which in fact was always supported by Eastern liberal thought in the framing of UDHR -- chose *not* to make up lists of "obligations and duties". That's because once people have the freedom to assemble and express views, and due process to deal with criminals, they make up the restraints necessary to deter and punish crime. They allow the society to make up the space of the moral code, whether it is "thou shalt not kill" or "thou shalt not engage in prostitution" -- and then the criminal code created by free parliaments (or not so free) makes the punishment for the crime of killing, rather than prescribing a duty to the citizen not to kill. Hope that distinction is clear; it's an important one, or otherwise oppressive states and game-god companies tend to lard up these documents with awful stuff like "you must be positive in your comments on the forums" blah blah which is horribly discretionary and easily abused.
1) Due Process & Habeas Corpus –
All discliplinary actions that lead to company action must contain the name of the perpetrator, the name of the petitioner or abuse reporter, and the name of the prosecuting company representative -- just like real life. This helps contain abusiveness and false reporting; it helps deter crime; it helps the company be accountable as to its individual staff members, and prevents bias as they are transparent. If the rationale for NOT publishing *all three names* is "but then the abuse-reporter will face reprisals" -- then you have to ask yourself: what kind of game is it that you're running, that a person who reports lawfully and a violation of the TOS and another person is justly punished, that he must quake in fear as if living in a mafia-controlled neighbourhood and hope his name is never published? Either run the game so that can't happen, or don't, but don't hide behind that excuse. Publish all names, as in a real-life court case.
The idea of player-run tribunals sounds interesting, but justice, as in real life, is horribly expensive in time and money, especially appeals systems. It can't scale.
The idea that you prevent bias or you prevent retaliation by "scrubbing identifying data" is fundamentally flawed. It's one that SL tried, and it really rots, and significant numbers of us simply refuse to serve on these kangaroo courts when summoned because they are horridly biased.
When you strip away identifying information, you a) remove responsibility of the state (game company) to make its case rationally b) you remove responsibility of the abuse-reporter to justify and document and back up his claims -- it's a serious matter to take away another player's game/freedom; c) you remove the deterrent power for people making frivolous reports to harass others and game-gods to just attack their enemies; d) you often make the cases senseless and unintelligible; e) you remove the possibility of adversarial defense -- vital to a free and just society -- which comes with showing the reputation, inworld deeds, etc.
I've had to continue the rest on my blog for space reasons:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/secon
Prokofy Neva
My point about Bobbs Merrill is that it also established that you can resell a good at a price less than what you bought it for in bulk, to make the volume make the profit, and the original seller cannot complain. That's all.
Your reading of Ford v. Dodge really seems overblown and tendentious, and frankly, it seems like one of those Internet memes lifted right off of Wikipedia -- which it appears it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._F
I'd really like to get a good legal opinion on the ramifications of Dodge v. Ford for corporate responsibility today -- since that should be the tethered, concrete purpose of revisiting it, rather than spouting about what it says about America.
I've worked a lot on corporate responsibility over the years, and I've never found either a corporation or a human rights group feeling the slightest bit hobbled or mandated to hold back by this relatively obscure court case.
The case is not about capitalism and markets; it's about one company's duty to its shareholders. It's not about vulnerability to civil complain forever and anon by everyone; it's about sticking to your bylaws. Want to give away profits? Make a different organization and bylaws.
Courts in the United States aren't in the business of forcing the capitalist profit motive down the throats of socially-responsible corporations. That's absurd. If it were, you'd never have things like Ben & Jerry's and Fair Trade coffee. Please.
Furthermore, even Wikipedia tells you that this court case isn't about forcing rapacious capitalism and slash-and-burn market practices by fiat, as you seem to imply; it's about the rights of shareholders. It's not a grand project of the entire society, which courts don't control anyway, as there are many autonomous companies. It's about the right of even a minority of shareholders to dictate to a majority by invoking the mission or purpose of the company in the first place.
The minority shareholders were right; they were investing to get a return and there were responsibilities to them or there wouldn't even BE a company. And frankly, given that Ford went on to fund among the largest of the post-war philanthropic foundations, it seems preposterous to go on fussing about Ford v. Dodge as some sort of indictment of capitalism, when it's the Ford Foundation that brings you programs to alleviate poverty at home and abroad.
It's not fiscally sound to conduct a company's business such as to lose money for the shareholders when that isn't the mission. Shareholders have rights, too. They don't spend their own venture capital on you so that you can play philanthropist to the world; they can do that by donating to a charity and getting a tax write-off. No, they pay you money in order to get a return. If you don't get that for them and go off wandering on do-gooding expeditions that in fact lose the company money, it could run into the ground and then not be any good for anybody. There's such a thing as doing good by keeping stable jobs for people and communities, not just helping starving children in Africa in an abstract way with charity.
Ultimately, if someone wants to run a break-even company that merely makes philanthrophy pay for itself, who could stop them?!
The Lindens decided to go the route of not getting involved in players' claims of fraud or theft of IP. And many people get furious at them for that, because they wish they'd do more, and do some basic things like get a watermark datestamp on textures uploaded.
They imply they will do more by even creating a permissions system, whereby a creator can decide whether a thing can even be copied -- or not. With the bugs and exploits in the software, stuff gets hacked, and LL doesn't feel responsible and absolves itself in the TOS. This makes people mad, but in the end, only deep-pocketed Kevin Alderman with a top selling produce and a lawyer really vested in working the case to make precedent could start the ball rolling. And as I've commented on my blog, I'm not certain that this realifism isn't a grave disservice to SL, in that it puts a chill on creativity and anybody lesser than Kevin Alderman who might now stand accused of copying his design or even merely reselling his item at a yardsale. I'm concerned about the impact.
If you have the resources to fool around with people claiming clipart theft, it will be appreciated by the customers, but since many of them downloaded stuff from right-clicking other non-game people's stuff anyway, it truly does get bizarre.
Art. 29 doesn't bother me as long as you take the UN project itself to be one made in good faith. That's hard to believe when you get things like Libya chairing the Commission on Human Rights or now the World Conference on Racism follow-up conference, ye it's as good as it gets.
I don't know why you call this a "loophole". It's actually a measure to restrain griefers and those acting in bad faith, terrorists, say, who think the right to freedom of religion should give them the right to blow up buildings of infidels.
You're right, that if like AOL, a service simply won't let you go, and you can't get them to undo the subscription easily, simply by non-payment or pressing "I quit," that's wrong, and some are like that and you have a hard time getting rid of them.
I'm not sure what you're saying about politics. You're saying it's ok if people protest causes you like (like opposing Bush wiretaps or opposing Chinese censorship, which all right-thinking Internet geek liberals should oppose, but some don't). But what if the politics is something you don't like? For example, look at how Le Pen opened up a sim in Second Life, and was immediately firebombed by radicals and protested by socialists. His party is legal, though many could demonstrate it is racist and therefore while allowed in RL, may be bannable in SL with its TOS about hate speech. But firebombing is also wrong.
Re: "f it is senseless repeated taunting of the GoPets staff that has no informational value but is instead hurtful and meant to distract the team from working - I consider that an electronic scream of fire. So how do I express what we agree to better?"
This is one of those discretionary rulings that game gods always find as a way to protect abusive staff and their sycophantic pets, so I can't possibly endorse it.
What if there is some really awful game mod, who gives favours to friends and screws over other customers? And people keep repetitively protesting it because you're blind to it, because she's been with you since beta? That's the kind of situation that most often crops up. You simply have to ignore screaming protest if you want to be an enlightened game god. If you don't want to ignore it and feel it needs to be published, then don't dine out on calling yourself enlightened; you're not.
This idea that the team is involved in this sacred work from which they must never be distracted from protest sounds elitist and indefensible. Working on what? For whom? Whose game is it, anyway?!
There are times when the communities in these games just rise as one and protest the hell out of something that really makes people furious, like the prim tax or the pulling of telehubs in Second Life, and the company then has to revise its policies and relent. If customers pay your revenue, they have a right to be involved and protest. Indeed, I advocate having tier-payer seats on the Linden board as a way to provide democratic participation, as collectively, our fees are greater than most venture capitalists. You could consider having resident representation on your board or at least some kind of panel.
Rather than invoking these corporate notions like "our company's interest" and "our beloved hard-working staff" as the higher aspirations to which you wish to make players adhere (these always get you in trouble as people get out of sync in their valuation of those things the way you do), it's better to create codes for forums and the world -- if you must (I'm not for doing it) that are simple and speak to generic values, like "Do not use obscenity": "do not spam" or "do not make direct, hateful personal attacks designed to incite flame wars" or "do not start a thread just about one person to incite hatred".
"Refrain from inciting hatred in speech and conduct" is a good way to describe what you are trying to achieve.
However, don't ask me to help you with this one, it's not my area : )
Switching it around makes it worse!
Covenant is something that people use for real estate, and it is used now on all Second Life islands for residents to place their rules for their land and those who will live on it -- it's not just Biblical connotations. When I first heard it, I thought "Bible" too, because "covenant" seems like more of a California type word where there are suburban communities where people buy large tracts of land, I guess, and agree not to paint their houses purple or something. In any event, it's a word that suits the purpose -- a contract with obligations on each side.
The "social contract" a la Locke and Rousseau might not be the worst thing.
Or "social compact"?
I don't see if you give them 25 percent of the value, say, that they will grief out to capture that value. After all, they'd get more value by staying inworld and behaving in a civilized manner.
I don't understand why this micromanaging of players' attitude towards devs has to be in the *avatar rights document*. Go make a developers' rights like Richard Bartles wants, I guess.
This seems more like an issue to manage rather than prescribe by law. Lindens solved this drastically by closing the resident forums and retreating behind a corporate blog that allows only 100 comments, or no comments on some of the most controversial posts. Bad example for the Metaverse! Forums moderation and inworld moderation are different things. I suppose a forums with a rule about persistent trolling could have mods lock a threat harrying staff. Staff could also just not respond?
In world, this is a management issue where sometimes, the staff has to essentially put a persistent complainer on ignore, I guess. I wouldn't advise it, but the Lindens have perfected the art of just not answering when someone annoys them or asks them those imponderables they hate to answer.
As I know from heavy customer contact in my own inworld business, there is always a percentage of malcontents that can't understand, and for them you push premade cards and offer refunds.
Um, I have kept up with the "crap". I'm not for Yahoo or Google helping to put Chinese political prisoners in torture chambers. You have no idea who I am or why that's meaningless to say that. I just want you to be clear what you mean by allowing political speech, but not allowing other things you view as "political". I want you to avoid prescribing political correctness in code, if you are holding yourself out to be a model-maker for the Metaverse, not just your own game.
One part that particularly interests me is the "due process" section. I am interested largely because I am working on something broadly similar for SecondLife (although with the difference that the system on which I am working is independent of the people who make and run SecondLife, and is rather a ground-up approach): see here (http//www.metaverserepublic.org) for details.
As to the substantive points, firstly, a clarification: what do you mean by "habeas corpus" here? Habeas corups is the name of a court order commanding a person to be freed from imprisonment or other confinement. How would that apply in virtual world focussed on virtual pets?
Secondly, the tribunals: that is an extremely difficult thing to get right. It does not mean that it is not worth trying, but one should know what one is up against. First of all, law is hard to get right. The only way of having "due process" is to have law determining precisely what process is due, and the process itself enforcing substantive law. Creating an entire system of law from scratch requires a tremendous amount of intellectual effort. There are, broadly, two ways of doing it: write everything down in advance (civil law), or let it be worked out in individual cases, with each tribunal bound by the precedents created by previous tribunal hearings (common law). Either way, the people involved have to have a serious and thorough understanding of legal theory to make it work: making a cohesive system of law is far harder than it looks, and it looks hard.
The composition of the tribunals is also a difficult issue. You suggest some sort of election, but there are two problems with that: (1) there is no way of knowing whether the people elected will have the requisite skills; and (2) popular election dangerously undermines judicial independence. The principle of judicial independence is that judges (tribunal members, etc.) decide the case based only on what they genuinely believe to be the correct outcome, since they are the ones who, having heard all the evidence and arguments, are in the best position to make that decision. What should never be allowed to happen is that judges/tribunal members are influenced in their decisions by either the people who put them into office in the first place, or those who have the power to remove them from office, either by dismissing them or not re-electing them. Judicial independence of that sort is the only thing capable of delivering the right (rather than just merely the most popular) result, and avoiding what is often called the "tyranny of the majority", which can have disastrous results for a community. For example, if a person or group becomes undeservedly unpopular with a sizable majority of GoPets users, those people would strongly tend to elect tribunal members who would be biased against that person or group. People might even stand for election on a "ban person X" platform. That would be mob rule, not justice. The only sustainable system is one in which legally-skilled, appointed judges preside over proceedings. There may well be, as there are in real life, randomly selected juries (and not necessarily as many as twelve: perhaps eight or six or even four), but untrained and unskilled juries cannot work without a skilled and trained judge.
(Continued in next post due to character limit)
As you can see, you have, perhaps unwittingly, embarked on a truly enormous task. It is not necessarily a task that is not worthwhile, but, it is one that, in order to be done successfully, requires a huge investment of time and skill. If it is done unsuccessfully, then the results could be disastrous (and, if you have a right of "due process" in the contract between user and provider, make yourself vulnerable to litigation if the process applied has not, indeed, been that "due" by whatever law that you choose to govern your world, which you will inevitably have to invent, either by civil codes or common law precedent).
(Apologies, incidentally, for confusing the title in the previous post with a space to put my name).
Ashcroft Burnham
I really don't think people should have to pay anything in order to get their case heard. 50 Gold Shells is a lot of money for some people and hence you could be creating a 'legal' system that is biassed in favour of richer citizens. Also, as a paying player I feel it is your duty and responsibility to keep the peace and sort out any disputes in a fair manner, whatever that might mean. The tribunal system sounds good in theory but in my experience I think you will have a lot of trouble managing your volunteers. People usually start off well but real life (not to mention lethargy and boredom) gets in the way and you will end up with either a lack of volunteers or such a huge turnover that you will have trouble keeping up with it all. Does GoPets really have to imitate real life in such a fundamental way? I trust in the decisions you guys make and I imagine the same is true for most of your players.
(2) Right to free expression and assembly – people should enjoy this freedom up to the point where it sabotages the services or attempts sedition. This freedom should be restricted from taking the shape of harassment or annoyance of the users at large. Obviously no forms of hate speech. For example you should be able to say and make a great variety of expressions and items in the privacy of your own land and space, however in the public spaces and on other people’s lands you are naturally more restricted. How to codify this in a manner that someone understands up front I do not know. Something like when you are out and about you must use ‘E’ for everyone forms of expression and when in private between consenting players you must use non mature forms of expression. That is the closest I can think of.
This will be a difficult one to clearly define however I love the fact that you are acknowledging that one should be able to act freely within the privacy of their own ‘home’. One would have to consider what is outright banned regardless of situation and make this clear (you said hate speech is not allowed which is of course a fantastic thing however is this only within public spaces or in private areas as well? I would hope the latter however that sortof contradicts with the ideal of being completely free, there are those out there that would choose to use hate speech, swearing etc etc as part of their ‘rights’.)
With everything else I guess the idea is kinda like this?
(2) Right to free expression and assembly – members of the community are required to act accordingly when present within a public space. This includes but is not limited to refraining from using curse words, hateful slander or discriminatory remarks aimed towards other players and/or social groups. When within your own private social space these limits may be pushed if in the presence of consenting players.
However in this instance its almost like the use of derogatory and hateful words is being encouraged but that is definitely not the case X.x Perhaps a note somewhere that though this behaviour within a private space will not result in GP staff interjection (unless used against a player within the private space who has not given consent) it is not encouraged?
(15) We will of course necessarily comply with all laws local and state globally and above all recognize the natural rights of humans everywhere. If a particular jurisdiction compels us to comply with an unconscionable law we will make commercially feasible efforts to resist the compulsion but it is understood that GoPets is not a platform for political advocacy in the real world territories.
I understand that there is a legal obligation for GoPets to follow rules and law of other countries however one in particular is truly causing harm to the game and that is Child Lock. All it does is isolate players entirely and considering that age gap is the easiest to tap into when it comes to these sorts of games, having such a major deterrent is dangerous. I assume there is no way to get around this otherwise it would be done but is it possible to state within this document (and implement) that Child Lock only applies to those countries which require this sort of requirement by law? Or at least allow it to be a little more ‘friendly’ to players? I know that if I had joined and been bound to child lock (I was 17 when I joined so I would have been bound) I would have left almost straight away after discovering I had no way to truly interact with other players rather than on the forums.
Don't just wave around the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, aspire to it, get its luster, and then not do the things in it, like Art. 19 on free speech, which isn't as robust as the U.S. First Amendment, but is still far more comprehensive in its jurisprudence than what you're implying by speech that will be restricted by notions like "when the staff is tired of being criticized too often" or "what's in the company's interest.
It's also important to be clear on the title so that you can avoid comments like Benjamin Duranske's -- he's claiming that you aren't saying that you are making a Bill of Avatar's Rights -- and yet you said you were -- and even wished to add the term "And Responsibilities" (http://virtuallyblind.com/2007/08/13/g
I think getting the title right for what you are doing is extremely important so that it is not misleading. And it's important for the overall discussion, so that people like Duranske can't say, "Oh, he never really claimed to be making an Avatar Bill of Rights so what are you on about." You are claiming it; so understand its awesome responsibility.
Yes, it was your original post title, but you yourself invoked not only Raph Koster and the UDHR, later you floated the title of "Avatar Rights and Obligations". So I think it's important not to call it something it isn't. You said, "we would like to reach as high as possible to achieve the natural rights as expressed in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights."
Re "lets find out what is truly incompatible" -- it's already been pointed out that there are a number of things -- like a fair trial, freedom of speech, etc. that you are not going to be reaching high on, so it should not be misleading.