Virtual(ly) Law: The Emergence of Law in LambdaMOO: Mnookin

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] 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. 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. 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; not to the functional integrity of the MOO; and not to the wizards or Xerox into with real-world laws or are supposed to their five and they are from to vet on the of their personal the of the a petition a certain number of signatures of the on all or to be into an and the signatures are not received within a given amount of time, the petition are for for two and must by a two to one in order to be The of the petitions process Lambda MOO from an into a to be not only the has the to a player to wizard There are no mechanisms for wizards or their actions to the at wizards have become of the popular is far from The to to the of a petition into computer code is the to and whatever is the wizards have technical and to to the rest of they to only for the and only when to by mechanisms like the petitions process, their give them over the MOO. Indeed, wizards are to only as The with to the petitions process, might be to a between an and a an the wizards are responsible for the of the process by an after a of legislation has the wizards their the petition is so can see in at least to a certain what actions will any given petition is When wizards whether or not to vet a petition, they are in a to that of in that takes place the rather than after the legislation has been had the to issue about when legislation was still under this would be to the The process has a wizard may to the in a to the mailing the can the petition in of the wizard's and it. This process will a wizard or the gives up and to the petition no LambdaMOO's petitions process both the politics of and the of the virtual world in any and way requires changes in the computer politics in LambdaMOO be as as from politics in LambdaMOO is through and can be within the of the virtual In other about politics can be, to a certain into society via For example, to people from petitions without so much as at a player may not without first through a petition beginning to are to change their as often as they like the but the of and no is not available to after the has in LambdaMOO is not of of the system a certain of the relation between the and the a of who within a system in which is We can however, the of LambdaMOO used to implement of For example, it would not be to implement a system in which players were to or one in which were the of on each and the were both and while the was The of what is possible is when petition is an within object-oriented code and process is, in by a programming The is that in LambdaMOO it is far more than in real life the to which about the of the process are As one LambdaMOO character put it, a or system, we're not with legislation that at LambdaMOO has been in a where no one could how it would actually with the make people are those that that can be In virtual reality they can be of characters to all of LambdaMOO is through based in and all of nothing but and Within LambdaMOO, is not that takes place in and through language, but the of LambdaMOO its spaces and its social and as well. LambdaMOO as of object-oriented programming one nest object within within In LambdaMOO, there is no In real action may be only through a in LambdaMOO, reality is quite literally nothing but As of the of LambdaMOO have The a number of LambdaMOO's social for or mechanisms for to LambdaMOO's the creation of a players to the system for an the in or the creation of a way for players to players they from using their objects or visiting their the of a in the that is by the LambdaMOO and may permanent a that the petition and system is a petition that a petition would be in and a that no petition may by or to those who the by the The petitions process was also used to a system of dispute resolution. LambdaMOO's system is by participants who have been a of the community for at least four may their of LambdaMOO is bound by the system, player can initiate a dispute any other The person for the dispute must have an making this is within the The two must on an from among those who have for the they an will be at players can an but a initiate a dispute more than one initiate two disputes A mailing list is for each anyone who to on the or the process or any other may to the mailing both and their to the mailing They are but not to on the of the from the the it is by the other more the decision than it, it is on the the same or a new one is with any of with are both from as and from to the in are but have a of They may for almost any action within the They may player's any of their objects or their They may from the MOO for a of time, or order a character to in community They may even order the most extreme of LambdaMOO's for the virtual Indeed, there are only two on the of (1) they may only take action with to the two they may a that would the of other for a new law as the of the and (2) their actions must take place within LambdaMOO the any In however, this first on is a It that by of community disputes have no than community through the there is no system for that are even when a dispute a problem within the MOO, the is to resolving the of the problem and from making any changes to resolve the the in from any can an a dispute to change social or make institutional what do people about in of the most of and debate (1) the nature of within the MOO; and (2) the to which is a within the MOO. To what do Lambda own the objects they create within the To what should the creator of a room or object be to control who it and objects be in the of the and disputes have around of For example, in to allow a by a place in her list of that this list was her own and should be to her own for her to be and would any room as as it was that is, it to have an In made of and to the of her was not sufficiently to that list was not a object but a list the for the one's spaces were not on the it would be quite for anyone with a form of to over them or In system It's a system The problem as one player put it, is a an object it as to what that or when this who has control of the its that have to also The dispute not solve any of the under the rules of Lambda it could and to her for and the code so that people could on their own of whether they were in dispute a player who object after object and in order to to objects with particular what as a object in LambdaMOO, from a player to a mailing is with a are In to the particular number the player hundreds of object The behavior was that are a a and was the for their and by the community. The player was by some of programming to have petitions as well as One character wrote a petition that would have of objects that to other not an a I believe in In I for while I realize that this is an society where people interact and have real still a world. not with a It's It's also interesting that using a system for my A number of players this to virtual at the system, while others the petition as of its that the ballot was and had no chance of and it not of the of its from the way it would have via petition. As I am a petition is under consideration that would allow characters to to of their they should be for any or the system, one of the wizards as the and generally about what to the of characters who are The central in of will creation is that it is a of characters should have some control over the to which their is put even they have left the MOO. This petition would allow characters to for or in of their and to their to or certain from it. to real-world in the of this the nature of whether computer as in a under the whether it the of to from the MOO and make of the programming by the about in LambdaMOO are as as as disputes about have been about the nature of within the MOO. code and it available to the is the to the in any To what should the of rooms and objects be to control who them and code be a The of LambdaMOO have not this set of about the nature of within their the of and are generally more than the disputes over In for example, a player a dispute a character who was and using other them without their to within LambdaMOO such as “the and In this everyone that behavior was the was one of appropriate The issue was when it that the the character had been several under other character for behavior. a number of people that the of the most of punishment, like or the of about the character, was not an appropriate for no matter how for which had been available to the What are In LambdaMOO, any player can any other player the the player's from on the This only the it has no on what the player can to anyone a player to the or of a For example, a player can to from or to be from one place to another by Anyone who or from in become to Some of the debate in this and in on the appropriate to as it is on LambdaMOO. Some that the responsibility clearly with used the The in an had with a character who had been by that this of of that move players has an environment of that on her ability to of the also to that no player should be to players … since that would have the of them to from that player which would in one in of one's friends and however, that behavior like should be as As one player put it, like the way a so do a of you like it. I the that show up from time to time, as as I may This place is supposed to In another a the two who do not believe in with MOO would argue that could be by such as all from