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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.
...in the real world, you have your government's charter/constitution which allows you rights, and hopefully, a good amount of legal interpretation to further define your rights. Your government (one hopes) doesn't revoke them.
In an online world, you have the TOS of the company that makes the game, and they are the ones that define your rights, and you have to agree, or they revoke your account, as happened in this case.
It would seem that unless a collective of people started an online world like the SIMS, that it will be the game company that decides what is acceptable speech and what is not.
libertarianswag.com
Simple -- censorship [shouldn't] exist in *either* world. Filtering for young people and such, fine, but not censorship. Virtual reality should be just that -- a representation of reality.
This is a very difficult thing to make general statements about. If virtual reality ever gets to the point(and I think it will) that it actually begins to mimic reality itself, and it is used as a replacement for normal reality, THEN the philosophies for censorship, whatever they are in the majority view, should carry over.
Until then, these online games do not constitute enough of a viable replacement for the real world to be considered in the same way in terms of censorship. The content providers who run these worlds should have complete control over their own content. For them not to have control over it would sort of be a strange form of censorship itself, would it not?
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Users should be able to form groups and communities within those worlds and those groups and communities should put into place their own cencorship policies. Or atleast rate their groups and other groups on self cencorship.
with every group or person with a rating on their cencorship and individuals with their self set (or parent enforced) tolarance levels the world would be self cencored.
Yes things would slip past, but when it does, that person (or group) would be censored by the users
either that or use slashcode and implement moderator and meta-moderator type cencorship level
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
Well, since the "virtual world" is privately owned, requires money to participate in, isn't tied to government in any way, etc...I'd say it's pretty clear cut; freedom of speech doesn't apply on private property.
Let's get real here folks- what's next, arrest for murder if I cut your Massively-Multiplayer-whatever-the-hell-it-is character's throat? Jeeeeeeezus...
Please help metamoderate.
Pat Cadigan wrote some stories where a major plot premise is that anything that happens in a virtual online world has no legal bearing in the outside world. No censorship, no legally binding contracts, nada. Then she explores the idea. Check out 'Tea from an Empty Cup' and 'Dervish is Digital' - both are worth a read.
The owners/company running the online Sims game can and should filter out anything they don't like.
The users forfeited their 'freedom of speech' first admendment 'rights' inside the game when they agreed to the terms of service.
The Sims owners should not be forced to tolerate anything they don't want to.
Grow up. The first admendment is not a tool to force your words to be heard in private places (e.g., the online game, a private club of dues paying members).
Unfortunately, drug deals are solicited and arranged in chat rooms. Prostitution is solicitied (in both directions) and arranged in chatrooms. Sex is solicited in chat rooms and often is of a less-than-legal variety (read: paedophilia). Stolen property from the real world is sold on Ebay with no way of tracing it.
Unfortunately, the negative effects of allowing a virtual no-man's land of legal scrutiny in online social systems are far too vast to ignore. I've seen both sides of all of the above for as long as the personal computer and modem have existed. Make no mistake, there is PLENTY of reality going on online and it has been going on for more than twenty years.
True, but if the thread is flagged by the editors as a troll, you will lose your mod points and never be able to moderate again. It's called $rtbl, or "Real Time BlackList". Flamebaits and crapfloods may be blatantly obvious targets, but there are some crafty trolls that generate a lot of comments where you won't know what's troll and what's not.
My point is this: it up to the editors and fanboys what is insightful, and what is crapflood. Joe_User has very little control over what they see here. Sure, setting your preference to -1 will let you see everything, but try finding the rare gem among the crapfloods and goatse links. Yes, they do occur, because moderation abuse is rampant, particularly among anti Debian and Gentoo posts. Browse the next Debian or Gentoo story at -1 and observe every post critical of those two distros wind up in the shitter, no matter how interesting they may be.
I'll probably get modded down for this, but WTF, I'm $rtbled anyway.