Global Kids' Online Leadership Program

Yes, avatars dream of civil rights.

Robin Harper, VP, must be asked to justify Linden Lab's continuing ban of me from the official blog and official forums, even under the TOS, let alone the First Amendment, which Linden Lab as a private company is not obliged to enforce on its private property.

And yet, with Philip Rosedale calling Second Life "a public utility," and with Lindens now all aspiring to have SL be "a common carrier," what obligations does LL have to ensure freedom of speech?

Nations haven't even agreed to what the rights of people are on the internet yet (WSIS), even when Civil Society - of which I am a part - did not even acknowledge using the UN Declaration of Human Rights (http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html ) as a guideline for rights of the individual on the Internet.

So - avatar rights. The key question here is how can avatar rights be discussed when human rights have not been appropriately acknowledged as a precedent?

Perhaps avatar rights will be an easier thing to sort out, compared to human rights.

For what it's worth, there is a rights declaration attached to the micronation of Caledon on the grid.

It's in the covenant, has been in force for a long time now, and was also adopted in large part by another group (that I sadly do not know well), nearly word for word, here:

http://core.extropiacore.net/?q=node/19

Just because human rights aren't acknowledged as a basis for the ill-conceived WSIS effort doesn't mean that universal human rights don't exist. Those same nations invovled in WSIS have signed the human rights treaties and are bound by them.

Violations of rights, or failure to invoke them aren't a reason for ceasing to reference them in any context, and avatar rights need not be sequenced after some vague global acknowledgement of human rights, or wait for WSIS, to be relevant now in this urgent discussion.

If the Extroprians were actually to implement all the civil rights and political liberties of real-life treaties or even of Desmond's notecard in Second Life, it would likely run counter to some of their undemocratic beliefs.

BTW, I have been meaning to note that Desmond leaves out of his Caledonian avatar rights under "discrimination" the same thing that got left out of the Geneva accords due to the Soviets -- and which often get left out:

Caledon says, "- No discrimination will be based upon an avatar’s (or operator’s) ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation, either real or apparent."

What should be added is:
*or political beliefs*.

Not sure why race is left out, unless ethnicity was thought to cover it.

Anything left out is oversight - I'm no expert on the matter.

I did think ethnicity covered race - doesn't it? If not, then let's add race, and political beliefs too for that matter.

I don't have your RL background in such matters, but I figured having at least something in the way of avatar rights, then sticking to it, was a good start.

Desmond, the gold standard for current human rights thinking is probably Sections 9 and 10 of the South African Bill of Rights, especially Section 9(3):

(3) The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.

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