Subject: Ethics in the Vitrual: InterOp(erability) forum standards
From: Bart Overkamp <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked], Meta Inc., [email-masked], Microsoft
Cc: "Gilbert Thera re:connect" <[email-masked]>, Jorine ten Wolde, Merwin, [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 21 Oct 2023 18:22:06 +0200

To see all the previous e-mals as a preamble to what I've actually been up to.
*Tim: Could you forward this mail to involved parties? Meta Inc. and Microsoft' reps?

*Tim: Drive link to be shared for collaboration with all participants

https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0b4EqENXRQyIz03TAMklDTxYQ#InterOp

To: Implementors of Virtual worlds for customer/consumer use.

Dear InterOp ops!

Questions like: In a world without decay, what is ownership going to be like?

Need answers that are openly discussed before any of us is called to appear at a hearing or Court.

Since those are what coming legal arguments are going to be focused on, based on terminology that is accurately implemented in the actual tech - we produce. Rather (and better) than analogy with the 'contemporal /or/ old world'.

We should discuss these cases before they occur or cause problems to arise.

That is why I took the initiative to start: The I:O forum interop3

A background on how this came to be:

Learning from the HTML/W3C -how it came to be so incompatible before it got interoperable again- misses. Like implementing a functional piece (with quirks) and using that to base standards upon. I propose we initiate our Standards discussion while implementing functional pieces. And those standards discussions begin in the Ethical realm.

InterOp3 includes:

Ethics standards, and commercial interests (moderated discussion).

Functional standards, (and accompanying) moderated discussion. Leading to a potential WG at W3C.

Implementations are considered to be independent-implementor produced.

For the nerdy-(actual)-implementors:

Let's start the discussion! What do we do with compromises in contemporal tech, like UTF-8 which came to be because of missing run-length-encoding in previous/forgone file-systems but shouldn't be a problem to let go off now?

For the higher-(abstract)-ups:

Legal issues like 'ownership' could be homogenized amongst platforms so that legal issues using analogy (or) "on another platform" don't arise. Proper Digital Rights Management for example. Accessible to- and achievable by, the individual user?

For the ethically-inclined:

Issues like Accessibility and rights to abstain or change-to-suit-needs (fit-for-function, adapted to needs) arise. How much should be customizable/malleable to accommodate disabilities, and when?

Thank you for your attention (-spans ;) )

-b

, Bart, (implementor of Playtime! on the Apple platform iOS)