[MUD-Dev] Declaration of the Rights of Avatars

Christopher Allen ChristopherA at skotos.net
Sun Apr 16 10:19:01 CEST 2000


From: "Raph Koster" <rkoster at austin.rr.com>
> 18. Avatars have the right to be secure in their persons, communications,
> designated private spaces, and effects, against unreasonable snooping,
> eavesdropping, searching and seizures, no activity pertaining thereto
shall
> be undertaken by administrators save with probable cause supported by
> affirmation, particularly describing the goal of said investigations.

I don't know if it belongs here, but there needs to be some commentary on
privacy issues, and seperately, on anonomousy.

The privacy issues are that the administrator may have to collect
information about the real people behind the avatars, and such information
should be kept private between the admin and the real people and not be
revealed to any one else with the explicit permission of the real person,
which by default is assumed to be not be given.

The issues of anonomousy are harder -- in some cases, for certain
communities, maybe it should not be allowed. When it is allowed, is there a
limit on how many avatars someone can have in a community? If there is no
limit, is it allowed for other avatars to know that there is an association
between the multiple avatars of one person?

I'll have to read the document again and dig into details -- my prior
company, Consensus Development, did a lot of thinking about this type of
stuff before we got sidetracked into cryptography and security.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
.. Christopher Allen                                 Skotos Tech Inc. ..
..                           1512 Walnut St., Berkeley, CA 94709-1513 ..
.. <http://www.Skotos.net>               o510/649-4030  f510/649-4034 ..




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