This is probably going to end up being a lot longer than I'd prefer, but it's a lot of stuff to cover. And I'm guessing we're all cool with having political discussion in this thread, since it's not specifically geared towards a certain SaveCoH project, and I don't know how politics CAN'T come up when rights are being discussed. If not, or if everyone eventually ends up biting each other's heads off, then I'll just shut up about it.
Generally speaking, there ARE no constitutions without the consent of the governed.
More precisely, in the case of these virtual worlds maintained through IP belonging to corporate bodies, they're not civilizations nor communities that fall under the rights-based jurisdiction of any one nation. Or, to hold to your analogy, they're dictatorships and oligarchies.
I understand the grief and anger and irritation and frustration of having your community meeting site destroyed. It's awful. But it's nothing that dictators - modern and historical - couldn't or didn't do in the real world. It's far less atrocious in our case with our virtual world and its associated community: no sentient beings are being slain nor having their real-world lives uprooted in highly destructive ways. It still sucks, it still hurts, but it's not the end of their RL world.
I wouldn't suggest that something like this would be enforced on any current project, but that it be something that gradually needs to be worked towards.
International agreements are happening all the time though, particularly where business is concerned. Though usually when it happens, it's being done to push either consumers, or small businesses, further back into a corner. Even some nations that have wildly different opinions on human rights, have sometimes agreed to business-related laws in the past. I'm not suggesting that one could pass a law that governs the entire Earth on such matters, since it's certainly never happened with any other issue.
For what you said about consent, I'm not sure if you're referring to the fact that corporations would have to let such a bill go through, or the fact that our "constitution" is consented to by clicking the "I agree to the terms and conditions" checkbox, or both.
If one wishes to forge a virtual world with a constitutional rule of law wherein the "governing body" is answerable to the players in the way the US government is theoretically answerable to the people, one must establish that world under that premise. "revolution" to take over virtual worlds run by dictatorships won't work, and wouldn't be ethical. Convincing them to turn it over, to sell it, to change their policies is fine...if you can. It's what we're trying to do with NCSoft. But let's not empower any real-world governments more than they already are by trying to give the GOVERNMENT say in how our virtual worlds will run.
I know we've talked over this in PM (and sorry for taking so long to respond last time, been pretty burned out the past few days and haven't felt capable of deep convo till today), here's my viewpoint on why I fear that governments are needed to enforce rules more often than not. Though I don't think it's the same kind of regulation that you're probably thinking of. I'm mostly concerned about the relationships between business and customer. We've come a very long way from how trade used to work. Haggling was the common practice, and we've gone from that to, "Take it or leave it", which to me is a great power imbalance. While one can argue, "That's not true, because other businesses try different strategies in order to be competitive", how often does that happen? How many food chains will haggle a price with a customer? How many hotdog bun companies are selling packs of 8? How many businesses aren't profiting from your personal info (after requiring you to give it to them for free as part of a contract)? We very rarely have the freedom to say, "Well if you're going to run your business that way, then I'll go to one that doesn't", because they're all run the same way, circumstantially forcing us into unsatisfactory dealings. It's like having one big megacorporation, but since there's no partnerships and no money actually changing hands, there's no legal reason for ringing the anti-trust alarm. It simply "is."
It all seems to boil down to this. if we leave everything to, "Which way is more profitable?" then nothing will ever change. Alternatively, the apathetic portion of the population would have to become the minority, which I don't realistically see ever happening. That leaves the smarter mutant sheep to try and accomplish things entirely on their own. The amount of shaking we we've been able to accomplish with SaveCoH is almost an anomaly, but it also makes too much sense, given that we have the hero mentality. In the classic sense, that's exactly what Heroes are, the ones who rise above the masses to do what others are either unable or unwilling to do. But when it comes to affecting legal change, it rarely matters, because the masses are always too busy running the other way, chasing whatever carrot that is being dangled in front of them; demonstrated quite effectively by this video that is poking fun at EA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-LE0ycgkBQBased on all we've been over, the options for improving the business/customer relationship are:
1. Find a non-forceful way to get businesses to think more ethically (there is no incentive for them to think more ethnically because the entire foundation of modern business is to maximize profit by any means necessary)
2. Better educate people to be smarter so they can think more critically and collectively (this is sort of a paradox to me, because if people were good enough to handle things like this on their own, we probably wouldn't need governments at all - and when it comes to society in general, I don't have as much faith in humans as Jor-El)
3. Impose government restrictions against ****ing the consumer (apparently that always translates into socialism, which is somehow evil red commie of the modern age. but how many people out there would say price gouging is bad? If they say yes, then whether they like it or not, they're thinking like a socialist)
If needs be, we can and should build our own - or at least try. Then we can establish whatever governing rules we deem wise.
It would be a very interesting business experiment, to run an MMO more like a government than a business, giving the players real power over what directions the game takes, maybe even to the point of budget decisions (or suggestions anyway). Such as "What do you want to see most? Worlds? Power sets? Costumes? Community tools?" and let the voting process dictate how it goes. And not limited to forums either so that only the minority of players ever discuss it. Bring the experience into the game, notify the players via the interface. Invite them to talk and let them know their input is desired. Heck, you could have some real fun with it and use the in-game city hall for actual meetings.
While I think virtual world rights will come into play one day but it's a can of worms and a game company shutting down a game is merely a tip of the iceberg that must be considered to as far as comparing real world rights with virtual world rights. For example, in the public forum community (public place in real world) a person goes off and insults people, ranting and raving and lot of times nothing happens. Shouldnt a person have rights to protect them from that type of behavior if the virtual world rights were to mimic real world rights? Sure mods, sometimes do their job and remove the person but lot of times, especially on COH forum, the behavior continues and get worse and worse. In the real world that is called harassment and can land someone in jail and or with a fine. And if the police do not do their job, there are steps that can ber taken that can land the police in trouble and or be sued. That is just a mnor example of how deep virtual world rights would have to go to be implemented effectively and not to mention enforcement, who would enforce them, what would happen if these things are not enforced, or rules are broken and ect when it comes to human rights. As is, the enforcement have hard enough time keeping up with virtual world stuff that cause harm in real world situation like child molestation people.
You just brought up an example of how business is already too powerful. Take a look at how Facebook is not only ignoring, but admittedly harboring bullying. They allow bullies and even bully groups to run rampant, and it's next to impossible for authorities to step in and accomplish something no matter how bad it gets. (it's also an example of the choicelessness I mentioned above, because teens are stuck with the choice of either using Facebook or having no social life, which means they have to open themselves up to constant bullying). But in some parts of Europe, trolling and E-bullying is now punishable by law.
Whether or not it is the responsibility of businesses to crack down on this themselves is anyone's guess. But in those cases, it's not the business that's doing the bullying, so I don't think it really implies to the kind of control I was suggesting. Though there are some cases where businesses ARE doing the bullying. The hiring of professional trolls is becoming a part of marketing. They go to random forums and solicit products, and/or derail negative discussions about those products until they get locked or removed by admins. That's pretty frigging sick. Yet one more thing that is out of control. There is no limit to how much lying a business can do to make their product look better than it is, even to the point of creating fake people to praise it or bully those who don't.