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Freedom of Expression in Virtual Worlds
PDHoss writes "NYTimes.com has a story on freedom of expression as it applies to virtual communities, specifically 'The Sims Online.' How should issues of free speech, community standards, and censorship be addressed in the virtual world (given that we can barely agree on those issues in meatspace)?" There's also a story in the Independent, and we've mentioned this guy before.
the bottom line is that people are still going to say whatever they please, regardless of how little jimmy will interpret it.
The answer, or rather, question, may be simpler than expected. Should these be issues at all? The Internet has the potential to be the ultimate even ground for peoples of all race, color, and mentality to communicate and be heard just as loud as the proverbial next guy. The more regulation there is, the harder it becomes for such a vision to become reality. Yes, there are such things as t3h pr0n and abominations like goatse, but ideally a system would eventually arise that permits people to filter for themselves what they would see-this is to say that it would be automated somehow, as obviously anyone can filter what their own eyes see simply by choosing whether or not to hit Enter after typing a URL.
Censorship is something to be treated very, very carefully. And we're living in a world right now where all too many people are overeager to jump on the censorship train and start filtering everything under the sun. Be careful, or else you might wind up filtering the sun as well, and where would the light come from then?
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Consider slashdot itself. Most users browse at +1 or higher, so anything moderated below that is effectively censored (ACs have a default score of 0, but they choose to post at that level).
There's a lot of crap at the 0/-1 level, but there are also a lot of valid criticisms and opinions that the moderating community doesn't agree with.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Not quite.
It's a freedom thing. The First Ammendment does not give you freedom of speech, but recognizes it in a limited fashion. Likewise, a corporation poses many of the same threats now that a government did when the 1A was drafted, leading me to believe that perhaps the government ought to recognize the freedom of speech in a broader fashion- that is, one which recognizes private relationships as well.
#define DRM chmod 000
Likewise, a corporation poses many of the same threats now that a government did when the 1A was drafted, leading me to believe that perhaps the government ought to recognize the freedom of speech in a broader fashion- that is, one which recognizes private relationships as well.
Well, the American government DOES recognize private relationships as far as freedom of speech goes. It lays solidly behind the one who owns the press, so to speak. The one who owns the presses has ALL the rights. He can print whatever he wants in his forum, or choose to NOT print whatever he wants. Likewise with the Sims. It's their presses (their servers... same thing). If they don't want to print something (read: if they don't want you to use their forum to spout off in any way they don't like)... well, it's their hardware... their presses, and it is THEIR right... THEIR freedom of speech... that is protected.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
The Sims Online, as a subscription service, has the rights to prevent anyone from using their service. It's kind of like private property in real life: not everyone has to be let in.
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Indeed, I see censorship in virtual communities existing on privately-owned hardware as being not much different than 'we reserve the right to refuse service' signs in physical business establishments, or perhaps even Augusta National being able to exclude women from playing golf on their course. Censorship is never appealing, but what's even worse is having someone else impose limitations on what you can and cannot do with your own private property.
You do not have a right to free speech on games like "The Sims Online".
These games are a privledge, and if the communities are outraged about censorship, or anything else, well they should fight with their money.
Sidenote: This may not be the case with TSO, but i've noticed in many MMORPGS (think EQ), people are so addicted to it, despite the fact they hate the company that owns it, they continue to play it.
They still piss and moan about it but they never actally cancel the game.
Maybe thats what happened here.
Browse at -1, because trolls are often the most creative part of
Precisely. People bring up "freedom of speech" all the time without realizing freedom of speech means the government can't limit your speech. It's not a right you have on private grounds.
As for this, though, it exposes EA's failure with The Sims Online--they wanted it to be a big, mass-market, hugely successful, friendly game. Ludlow was writing about how horribly sick and twisted the game had become, which is bad marketing for a company wanting to portray the game in the other light to ensnare subscribers.
Hence, he's booted.
A group of people gets together under the premise of starting a virtual community. They let it grow, and eventually a fully fledged society emerges. Lo and behold, that society has evolved to the point where a breed of prostitution exists. It causes no harm unlike in meatspace, where STDs, rape and other types of violence are common. Since those of us in meatspace have linked all of these together under one disreputable roof, it stands to reason that prostitution online must fit in the same category. Let's censor it.
Let's censor it in desperate hope that nobody notices that the evil notion of selling sex really has turned out to be quite a human trait, not something derived from the devil as some religions would have us believe. Let's censor it so that nobody notices that true human nature just might not be mirrored by our current society's value system.
That's censorship. It's a layor of makeup to hide our "flaws."Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
This might seem like a minor distinction to many, but it's the difference between saying "Nothing in the Constution gives you the right to do X" and "Nothing in the Constitution grants the federal government the power to restrict X". Those are really, really major differences. Living under one model is vastly different than the other.
If we see government as the grantor of our rights, we have to go begging to the federal government every time we want to do something new and hope they'll take pity on us. If we see the Constitution as a contract between government and citizens where citizens grant a specific number of powers to government, no begging is required when something new comes up that government hasn't already restricted.
Specific to the /. crowd, it might be relevant that the federal government has no legal power to control personal communications, and that would apply to the internet, regardless of MIME type. The feds may think they have the power to impose restrictions, which they probably can exercize, but they have no legal authority to exercize a power like that. And they can't prevent you from becoming an ISP with a more reasonable (to you) TOS and running ISP's with silly TOS requirements out of business.
We are the collective of the people, or "We, the People", who have the rights (government only has powers), who can make this internet anything we want it to be, by becoming a part of it's infrastructure or paying to be members of this virtual community. Who's stopping you, unless you're a "subject" or citizen of a country where you've been fooled into believing that the source of your rights is some government?
Your making one mistake: these virtual worlds are supposed to be escapes from reality, not substitutes. If I want reality, I'll go outdoors or to work and get the real thing. I want an escape when I go online, a place were I can escape my normal responisbilities. A place were I can act as who I am and not who I am at work. If they make these virtual worlds mirrors of this one with all the restrictions and censorship as this one, how will it be an escape? It won't be. If these games becomes political where all that has to happen is one person out of 1,000,000 complains and we get instant censorship, then were will we escape too? A video game inside one of these virtual communities? And if these virtual worlds become too restrictive, they won't be fun anymore and who will be paying to play them then?
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
The First Ammendment does not give you freedom of speech. . .
This is absolutely correct, although I find it distressing that so few Americans these understand why it so.
A clue can be found in the Ninth Ammendment. A fuller explanation can be found in Hamilton's arguement about why the Bill of Rights is a bad idea, since it may give the impression that rights are a priviledge granted by the government and opens the danger of interpreting away rights that have no legitimate framework for being questioned.
The Bill of Rights is not a grant to the people. It is a straightjacket placed upon the government by the people, who are the only source of legimate power in the United States of America.
I quote:
"Congress shall make no law. . . "
KFG
Your[sic] making one mistake: these virtual worlds are supposed to be escapes from reality, not substitutes. If I want reality, I'll go outdoors or to work and get the real thing. I want an escape when I go online, a place were I can escape my normal responisbilities. A place were I can act as who I am and not who I am at work. If they make these virtual worlds mirrors of this one with all the restrictions and censorship as this one, how will it be an escape? It won't be. If these games becomes political where all that has to happen is one person out of 1,000,000 complains and we get instant censorship, then were will we escape too? A video game inside one of these virtual communities? And if these virtual worlds become too restrictive, they won't be fun anymore and who will be paying to play them then?
/..
Interesting perspective. I'd long held views similar to yours, until I ran across systems that had an immense amount of freedom for the users. Inevitably, flamebait and spammers pollute the virtual atmosphere enough to warrant, and in fact *demand* some form of censorship. If you don't think that's the case, simply look at
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Well let's see. Freedom of expression can only lead to two things, it can either display the author's acumen or expose his stupidity. If it results in the former, then we must congratulate the author for his brilliance. But if it results in the latter then we can either rebuke him or simply ignore him. And hopefully he'll learn from his mistake(s).
I say that both outcomes can only benefit the author and his audience. So I must conclude that freedom of expression is good, not whacked.
Well, for those that understand the law, and rights, it's simple. When you are on someone elses property, wether it be their house, or their server.. you have no right to free anything. I can't walk into a store and start marching around with abortion protest signs. I will first be asked to leave, and then arrested for trespass. That's the way America works, for better or for worse. A lot of people think they should be given rights to so many things, but don't realize they forfeited those rights when they failed to read the small print on the "TOS."
You have to realize that every provider of goods, either real or electronic has rights of their own. In this case one really stands out: the right to refuse service.
The censorship in The Sims, however, reminds me of malls. Laws vary from state to state regarding whether malls (almost always private property) have the right to censor speech by preventing public demonstrations, speeches, leafletting, etc... I think the point to remember is that as public spaces become enclosed and property rights are extended to more areas the public gathers, it is important that free speech rights allow democratic dialogue to continue.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Yeah yeah yeah. Courts come out with a lot of asenine decisions, don't they? Does not make it right. Those decisions fly right in the face of hundreds of years of jurisprudence and are from the so-called 'activist' courts which are results oriented rather than letter of the law and precedent oriented.
In a world where public gathering places like shopping malls aren't recognized as public gathering places, then whoever controls the public gathering places controls speech. Do you *really* want a collection of corporations whose sole purpose in life is to increase stock value to be the ones who decide what is spoken, and where?
Generally speaking, I'm on the side of the private owner of something. Individual shops in the mall, for example. To the extent that someone is speaking in a fashion that disrupts their business. For example, someone standing just inside the door telling everyone who comes in all about how evil abortions are. That's what is referred to as "public nuisance". :) In the shop owner's case, that's someone getting political and possibly scaring away potential business. Worse, by doing nothing about it, the shop will be determined to be anti-abortion, and the pro-lifers will scream boycott! So whether he wants to take a stand or not, he's got a serious problem on his hands. All he has to say is "you're disrupting my business. I'm not going to take a stand as a business on this issue because it's beyond the scope of my business. But you're disrupting my business." Sure, the same could be said about the mall itself, and I'll bet that the courts would ultimately decide that as long as someone's not disrupting business, they can spout their political agenda in the mall. Just like protesting with signs and crap outside the mall.
Anyway, point is, it does revolve somewhat on how strictly you interpret the constitution. The actual words are (quoted from memory :) ) :
Hm, I might have gotten them a little wrong. It's been awhile. Anyway, the sentence essentially means "Congress won't pass any laws banning speech". Says nothing of freedom of expression and so forth. Only talks about speech, and the intent was likely to have been not to prevent political speech, but to encourage it. Remember, the colonists had trouble with the King whenever they criticized him (say what you want, James II was a suck-ass King). The amendment doesn't even address corporations trying to control speech.
It's a fine line. I didn't RTFA, so I'm not trying to take a stand in relation to the article, just discuss the issue. :)
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Now, I could sue my employer for unfair termination, particularly if they had not detailed or educated me on their sexual harrassment policy.
But legislation has provided that operators of online forums have extensive safe harbor protections. For a while there, this was sketchy (see Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy , where an investment firm successfully sued Prodigy over a defamatory post and Prodigy lost because it was ruled they took such an active hand in controlling board content that they became lost Safe Harbor protection), but later legislation broadened safe harbor provisions to such an extent that EA/Maxis can boot anyone, clean things up as they see fit, or leave them messy, and they have little or no legal liability to the people who got booted or the people harmed/offended by content that stays. IANAL, but AFAIK, they've got a pretty free hand and the only thing to govern their actions is the free market.
Of course, it's quite possible they were just getting in over their heads when they created the online world they did.
A friend of mine was talking at work Friday about a friend of hers who would create new Sims Online characters just to bring them back to his primary character's residence, kill them, and bury them in the living room.
When the world devolves to a place where a man can find a willing victim for cannibalization online, it's hard for weirdness not to filter into online worlds. When a search for "grief players" on Google turns up 1,800 results, you know that this is no limited phenomenon.
Perhaps the question is not whether there should be freedom within alternate worlds (or as absolute as you can get within the bounds of the program), but how you have to balance freedom against other needs and wants.
How much freedom is necessary to not only complete the objectives of the game, but make the game a fun place to hang out? Should you limit interaction between avatars to only that which is needed to complete game objectives and otherwise phase out community aspects? Can you take out the elements that grief players exploit and yet leave the game with enough oomph to make it popular with a big enough mass of people for it to be profitable?
It's too easy to just lash out at EA and Maxis for booting this guy. Given, it may be a knee-jerk reaction and probably wrong on a moral or ethical level, but virtual worlds are pretty new and the optimal construction and management of them for maximum player enjoyment with minimum grief player exploitation is not a set formula by any stretch of the imagination.
Honestly, a smart move would be to create a virtual world based on that "Manhunt" game they've been advertising on TV or based on GTA. Make a world of pimps, whores, seedy strip joints, dominatrixes, S&M clubs... Make a world where giving grief to others without getting grief is the challenge, and throw in a bunch of sex and sleaze to boot.
I'm not saying this is necessarily a big commercial draw (though it probably would be), but it would probably be a great way to siphon away grief players from other games.
No city ever completely cleans up its red light district or skid row necause they need them. People are going to sell and buy drugs. People are going to sell and buy sex. People are going to fall into the gutter and be more interested in staying there than getting out. These districts serve a purpose... keeping that stuff out of the suburbs and better urban neighborhoods.
That's the sociology of the games. If you conside
Start a happiness pandemic
When I was beta testing TSO, I started to get a few ideas about what might be possible with this sort of game. Obviously, the sexual deviance mentioned in the article occured to me (not in any vivid detail, I assure you). I thought the more interesting possibilities lied in more normal, healthy human relationships, however. For example, I was then (and am still now) involved in a long-distance romantic relationship. I began to contemplate the idea of a virtual date with my girlfriend. We could eat out, go see a show, take a romantic walk in the park. Of course, it doesn't compare to any of these activities in real life, but a virtual date, or "proxy intimacy", as I'll call it, is light-years beyond AIM as a communication medium for lovers. Of course, for single sims, nothing says you can't meet someone actractive at the club and begin a whole online relationship (once again, much more interesting than the lurid creepiness of singles chatrooms).
Unfortunately, my dreams for this sort of interaction never panned out. TSO, while trumpeted as being freeform and open-ended in the extreme, wound up digging itself into a rut pretty quickly. Some of its problems lie in the fact that it ranks users on ladders, and introduces systems of competition which are entirely artificial to a game which attempts to emulate "real life". Case in point: statistics on the richest and most popular sims. In the former case, you have a bunch of hyper-capitalists trying to outpace eachother in the generation of a hyperinflating virtual currency (more on the economic problems in TSO later). In the latter, you see an even more bizarre and surreal sort of competition, wherein online characters do whatever they can to get a "friend" designation from other players and then, for the most part, ignore those characters (what an odd definition of friendship).
Another difficulty is introduced in the zoning system used for property. On a basic level, there is none. This sounds good enough, as it should theoretically enable the construction of any sort of enterprise. The unfortunate result of this, however, is that most places just look more or less like houses. There's no concept of shared or leased property, either, as every property has a distinct owner or owners (thus, there are no apartment buildings, no malls, no office parks, nothing). And, although the game lays out properties with physical locations on a map of your chosen city, these locations have no real meaning whatsoever. Properties are not connected to adjacent properties in any special way, and thus the concept of a neighborhood is utterly nonexistent (the lack of anything approximating geography in-game is a very significant barrier to the formation of actual communities). Travelling anywhere in the game is a point-and-click affair, so there's nothing like walking down the street to the drugstore, or taking the subway cross-town to the nightclub. Similarly, you can't walk over to Bob's for the barbeque.
To be sure, people do hold many social events in the game world, but conducting them with friends (in the traditional sense, no the wierd in-game definition) can be difficult. There is very little consistency to online relationships, as the only people you're likely to run into with any frequency in a particular establishment (without having made prior plans) are the owners. Locations are no help, due to the fact that each is a node unto itself (I actually never met any of my neighbors in Alphaville. I doubt many people have). The chance of repeatedly encountering someone by chance then becomes exceedingly small. This, I think, contributes to some of the romantic and sexual wierdness of the game. In TSO, you can't see that cute girl at the Deli a few times during lunch and then work up the nerve to strike up a conversation with her. Better ask if she wants to do the make out action now while you can! Now, if TSO behaved like a more realistic analogue of life, there wouldn't be such a market for prostitution in the gameworld, as people would probably be dating and even
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
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