Erik Bethke’s LiveJournal has a recent post stating that he’s offering a $5000 bounty to those who can help him draft the legal form of an avatar rights document for GoPets. Among the clauses he intends the service to sign up to:
- Due process (including playe-run tribunals)
- Habeas corpus
- Free expression
- Free assembly
- Property rights
- Non-discrimination
- Account transfer rights
- Right to keep some amount of the value generated by service errors (e.g., if there’s a bug and the player benefits, they keep some of the benefit)
- Compensation to players for service outages exceeding the maximum standard downtime
- Advance notice in the event of policy changes
Maybe I’ve found my next prediction: over the next few years, more and more services will find themselves pushes towards adopting some form of the Avatar Rights document, in part because more and more platforms will be open, permit user businesses, and in general be treated as places and not games.
So, what would you change and update about the Declaration, given that 7 years have passed?