The Rights of Avatars William Sims Bainbridge, Ph.D.

Extrapolations

The primitive online worlds of today hint of the real challenges that will face future humans, avatars, and cyclones.

Multiplex Avatars

The future of cyclones will not be just a matter of making one, permanent copy of a person. Rather, we will make multiple copies, some identical to each other but existing in different environments or for different purposes, others representing different aspects of the person or alternate identities. Some will be combinations of multiple people, as a child is a genetic mixture of two parents.

Alberich the hunter, Stephie the warlock, avatars of W.S. Bainbridge cooperating!

Avatar vs. Character

The 10 Avatars of Vishnu Mario Mario Lunette, Priestess of Elune Is the CREATOR... Owner? Supporter? Originator?

Is the AVATAR... Second Self? Aspect? Child? Friend? Employee? Tool? Toy?

Independence from the Creator?

The rights of an avatar are not the same as the rights of the associated person. (When people erase avatars of themselves is that suicide, homicide, or infocide?) The rights of a computer-generated avatar depend not only upon law and ethics, but also upon technical and economic factors, and the interplay among all of these.

Laws related to avatars are often established by corporations and users rather than governments.

Today, most avatars are puppets, operated in realtime by a person. Increasingly, they can be operated by artificial intelligence systems that mimic the person – autonomous cybernetic clones or “cyclones.”

An Avatar... is a Manifestation of Self

...but Belongs to a Social System

Rights Are Obligations

Rights are Relative

Rights are social constructions, so they are relative to the social system and the status of the individual in that system.

Today, the rights of avatars (and the people behind them) vary across different virtual worlds.

The laws and customs of the host societies shape these differences. For example, recently the US government closed down the gambling houses in Second Life, and many virtual worlds have rules regarding young users.

MMORPGs

Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games have distinctive RULES Ultima Online Ever Quest 2 Star Wars Gal axies Lord of the Rings Online

Coming of Age - IMVU

“Be honest about your age.

If you are under 13 and pretend to be older, IMVU will delete your account. If you are over 18 and pretend to be younger to contact underage users, IMVU will delete your account. If you are under 18 and pretend to be older to contact older users, IMVU will delete your account.”

Coming of Age - There

“How old does my child have to be to participate in There?”

“There is for ages 13 and up. Teens age 13 to 18 should obtain permission from their parents before registering for an account.” “Our Behavior Guidelines prohibit explicit sexual language and interactions in There. Members who violate these guidelines will be subject to moderation actions, including their immediate removal from the service for repeated or severe infractions. When a member has been banned, the account is disabled and steps are taken to prevent future log-ins from that machine.”

Coming of Age - Whyville

Prohibited from chat: “private or personal information which might identify a user...; profanity or obscenities; personal attacks on other individuals; slanderous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, threatening and harassing comments; bigoted, hateful or racially offensive statements; vulgar, obscene, discourteous or indecent language or images; advertisements or solicitations; material or statements that do not generally pertain to the designated topic or theme of any chatroom or message board...”

Coming of Age - Habbo

You must not:

“Tell anyone personal information which could be used to locate you or other people in real life. “Abuse, harass or bully other Habbos. “Use hate speech or make rude comments about a Habbo's race, religion, gender or sexuality. “Use any programs to hack, script or edit Habbo in any way. “Discuss or take part in sexual acts with other Habbos. “Act out or roleplay violent acts, even as a joke.”

Migration Rights

“Virtual worlds may be freewheeling environments where cyber-behavior is unconstrained by many terrestrial mores. But they are also gated communities, and the gates keep the digital denizens locked inside. I.B.M. and Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life, think it’s time to free the avatars... [T]he two companies are announcing plans to develop open standards that will allow avatars to roam from one virtual community to the next. The goal is let a person create a digital alter-ego that can travel to many virtual worlds, keeping the same name, look and even digital currency. The companies speak of “a truly interoperable 3D Internet.” Think of it as passports for avatars. So that pink-headed cutie you made for Second Life can also take up residence in There.com, The Lounge, Virtual Laguna Beach and Entropia, for example.” “Free the Avatars” by Steve Lohr, October 10, 2007,

New York Times

online

Active Worlds & Entropia Universe

Both are constructed on the principle of a network of separate virtual environments that share technology but may vary greatly in style and content.

Multiverse

“Multiverse's unique technology platform will change the economics of virtual world development by empowering independent game developers to create high-quality, Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) and non-game virtual worlds for less money and in less time than ever before... The Multiverse Network will give video game players a single program--the Multiverse Client--that lets them play all of the MMOGs and visit all of the non-game virtual worlds built on the Multiverse platform... This is the start of a revolution.”

Croquet

Croquet Virtual Learning Environment “Croquet is coming— prepare to rethink online learning.”

University of Minnesota Digital Media Center

“Imagine you are an undergraduate student of the future. Your first class takes place in a lush wooded landscape with rolling green hills and a waterfall. Then you go through a portal to your next class in an underwater world full of fish that undulate around you —some of them are your fellow students. Your last class takes place in outer space, where Earth and a satellite are revolving around the moon and you can see the gravitational effects of two bodies on a third. If you get in the way of the moon it will toss you out of the way.”

World of Warcraft Migration

For a fee, a character can be moved from one realm (server) or account to another.

However, a character cannot be moved to a PvP (player versus player) server.

Property Rights in Second Life

You can buy and sell virtual objects, using Linden dollars which you can buy for around L$270 per US$. Many MMORPGs prohibit buying their currency for $$.

Right to Virtual Life = Data Security?

Data Corruption – A Constant Danger

Memory loss is an issue for avatars, too!

When WoW did a major upgrade on November 13, 2007, the “talent” choices of Minotaurus were accidentally erased.. He lost some of his personality, but gained the chance to start anew!

Public Archiving

Broad access to avatars’ data could ensure survivability, but invades privacy.

The World of Warcraft

has an “Armory” that presents summary data for all the millions of characters that have reached level 10 of 70!

Private Archiving

World of Warcraft

generates vast amounts of data about the individual, but only a tiny fraction of it can currently be downloaded, saved, and used by subscribers.

Virtual Worlds: EverQuest 2 Research

A $1million Project that Could Indirectly Lead to New Methods of Personality Capture in Action!

Immediate goal:

Understand the dynamics of economic markets and social networks in EverQuest2, based on detailed data from servers and a questionnaire completed by 10,000 players.

NSF grant 0729505 and related awards to Dmitri Williams, Noshir Contractor, U. Illinois, Urbana Fundamental research with cooperation of:

Technical challenges:

Developing tools to assemble and analyze diverse, complex, fragmentary data from multiple sources in a meaningful and efficient manner.

Wider implications:

New methods and concepts for managing online economic systems and communities; creating the computer science tools to carry out social and economic research with unprecedented scale and granularity.

Challenges of Downloading

Technical Challenges:

Historically unstable data formats How to capture meaningful data Current research, like the EverQuest 2 project, is NOT designed to develop personality capture and archiving technology, although it may indirectly contribute to our ability to accomplish those goals.

Thus, a new research project is needed to capitalize on other advances and design systems to capture personalities from virtual worlds, and emulate those personalities in many contexts, including other virtual worlds.

We need a set of fundamental scientific principles to guide the development of technologies to accomplish avatar salvation

Programming in Second Life

Second Life Scripting Language

Lua Scripting/Programming Language

Census Plus WoW Add-On

Open source software program in Lua for World of Warcraft.

Right to Joy

Whether you spell it in classical Morse or ASCII, we and our avatars have a Right to JOY!

“Transcendence is a problem of translation: First we must learn the language.”

William Sims Bainbridge December 10, 2007 Photograph by WSB The last launch to the Moon: Apollo 17, December 7, 1972.