Preamble
Estate owners in Second Life have tools available to them to defend their property against those who would do them harm. In the CDS we allocate those powers to Government officials and responsible citizens to protect the Estate and our citizens. We specify oversight of these powers to prevent abuse.
Definition
Griefing is defined here as behaviour intended to harass others or to damage the estate. According to Linden Lab, “… harassment can take many forms. Communicating or behaving in a manner which is offensively coarse, intimidating or threatening, constitutes unwelcome sexual advances or requests for sexual favors, or is otherwise likely to cause annoyance or alarm is Harassment.” Griefing includes but is not limited to harassing avatars for innate discriminable characteristics, including but not limited to: race, gender or sex, religion, ethnicity or nationality, sexual orientation, age, and class; bullying or threatening behaviour; deleting or defacing public or private property in the CDS; disrupting events; combat with unwilling parties; and attempts to crash the estate.
Powers
Members of the Representative Assembly, the Scientific Council and the Chancellor, Estate Managers and other citizens temporarily empowered by these bodies may eject and ban avatars from the CDS if they are actively griefing the estate or communicate a credible threat to grief the estate by any other means (ie Social Media posts, etc).
Banning Offenses, Definition and Processes
Any of the following actions will result in an avatar being banned from the CDS estate and it’s web-based extensions:
* Violating Linden Lab’s Terms of Service;
* Harassing avatars with aggressive or hateful language via main text chat or open voice chat, in CDS group or on the Forums;
* Caging, or otherwise trapping, avatars;
* Dropping excessive numbers of objects, large objects, and/or self replicating objects with the purpose of crashing the region or estate;
* Running scripts to either crash the sim or to harass avatars;
* “Physically” attacking avatars, e.g. pushing them, freezing them, moving them or orbiting them;
* Engaging in non consensual roleplay or combat with avatars;
* Engaging in any pattern of activity that the Chancellor, or any citizen authorized by the Powers section of this act, deems — and can document — to be an attack on CDS or its citizens.
Any avatar banned from the Estate shall have posting privileges on the CDS Forums removed for as long as the ban is in effect. Likewise, any banned avatar shall be removed from any virtual world CDS group of which they are a member. This ban shall extend to all offices, lands, outposts, franchulates and embassies of the CDS. If on review the citizenship of a banned citizen is restored, then all other privileges and access will be restored.
People reprimanded on the forum, or even removed from the forum, are not as a consequence banned from the Estate.
Process
1. An event triggers ejection, temporary banning (to prevent continuation), or documented request for banning to the SC.
2. Documentation consists of a no-modify notecard containing the banned avatar’s account name, the time, date and location of the offense, the nature of the offense (which may include images), the name of the person submitting the complaint and names of avatars witnessing or on the receiving end of these offenses. The Chancellor shall recommend the duration of the ban.
3. The Scientific Council will review Estate bans within 28 days of the ban taking effect.
4. Length of time for non-citizen bans are at the discretion of the Chancellor.
5. Banning of citizens. Citizenship is tied to parcel ownership and parcels include inventory.
A citizen against whom action is being taken, shall be contacted by the Chancellor (IM and notecard, email if available.)
The Chancellor shall provide the citizen with a copy of the no-modify notecard provided to the Scientific Council.
Until the Scientific Council acts on the recommendation to ban, the citizen’s inventory and parcel will be undisturbed.
Once the Scientific Council acts, and if they uphold the ban, then the Chancellor (or a representative) shall offer — by IM and notecard, email where available — to escort the citizen to their parcel to take a refund on outstanding tier and collect their inventory.
The banned citizen can request an escort to collect tier refund and inventory retrieval.
6. Any avatar banned from the Estate shall have the right of appeal to the Scientific Council. Responding within 28 days, the Scientific Council can support, rescind or amend the ban and may set a time-limit for review at a future Scientific Council meeting.
7. When petitioned, the Scientific Council is empowered to ban and thereby deny citizenship to a non-citizen if by past documented behavior, they have demonstrated that they — the non-citizen — will not abide by the Constitution or laws of the Estate.
Oversight
Bans can be overturned either by the Scientific Council or by a 2/3 majority vote in the Representative Assembly.