Inworld Store Closure - Similar to RL Blue Laws

[Tari Landar]

1 minute ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

Thinking too much is fun!

It definitely is!

[Bree Giffen]

5 hours ago, Bitsy Buccaneer said:

Seventh Day Adventists observe a Friday-Saturday Sabbath and refrain from working on it and that's enough for you to write them off altogether? OK.

Why should norms of respect be excluded from the internet? I know that's where things have gotten, but do they really need to be that way? Can't we try for better? Respecting another person's wishes still seems to me to be a basic and normal thing to do, even on the internet.

I write off all religions. 

Of course we can try for better and respect each other's wishes but I think it's naive to think everyone will. Better to plan for the worst. In the case of the storeowner mentioned by the OP, they should take away the option for buying if they are so concerned.

[ellestones]

7 hours ago, Syo Emerald said:

[ someone ] probably damages their store in the long run or at least prohibit your store from growing and networking ( you could never participate in any events, for example).

someone in this case being a owner of a shop/club/rental/etc

i agree with this. A person who has a business and then puts up banlines to prevent people from doing business with them is going to find that some of that business is going to be lost

like we are looking for a rental, take the teleport and banlines. We think whaa! How dumb is that. So IM the landlord: Excuse! me, do you know your parcel banlines are up?  Next day the vendor replies: Yes. I don't work on Saturdays. Its my day off. We go: Really? whats that gotta do with putting up banlines. And they say: Its my land. I can do what I like with it ok!  And we go: Ok! bye. And think: what a egg! oh! well. And go rent off some one else

so yes. Actions like this by a parcel owner can affect their business. Buts that is their call, not ours

[Prokofy Neva]

I think the Lindens would do well to close this thread.

If your religious practice includes not doing business on the Sabbath, then by extension and by analogy, that includes digital business, cam-shopping, the marketplace, whatever.

It's very important to allow soft norms to prevail and not have the entire online experience be governed by "code-as-law" and the screw-you hedonistic theory of the coder that "just because I can, just because it lets me, I should."

 

[Prokofy Neva]

10 hours ago, Tamara Artis said:

It is wrong to expect from everyone to respect and follow your own specific beliefs, leave them a way to disrespect those beliefs and then punish them for doing so. SL is a global place and by entering a global market one has to think globally and make sure everything is covered! Before asking to respect your own rules we should make sure we respect others and one way of respecting is not expecting everyone to follow your ideas. 

In RL I was raised as atheist and I'm not practicing any religion, officially. But I try as much as I can to understand, respect and apply positive things that can be found in different religions. 

By imposing rules about one day in week that is free of work religions actually force people to use that free day and focus on their own well being, to work on their soul and be better people (or at least think that, by practicing these things, they are becoming better). This is the time to pray, to rest, maybe even to spend time with your family, kids.... I respect this and will try to let people alone on that specific day.

SL is perfect place to see how other people, religions, nations do certain things. But, what is sad, instead of trying to find something positive in their rules, we focus on the differences. It is not a competition and we're not trying to find the best religion or best kind of people. 

And concerning the specific topic, my opinion is that the store owner needs to make sure they have done everything in their power to respect their own religious rules. There is no excuse like "ohh it is too much hassle to disable all vendors I will just ban people!". That is wrong and it shows negativity. The store owner can't know all kinds of people who will end up at their store's front doors and they can't expect all those people to obey. It is simply not possible. It is wrong on many levels. 

 

There are so many wrong assumptions here that I don't know where to start.

No merchant is required to enable you to shop. They create and open a store or don't create or close a store as they please in what amounts to a free market, in a relatively free world.

What is the definition of a marketplace? Where a willing seller meets a willing buyer.

The idea that someone wishes to close their sim or vendors for any reason or no reason somehow impacts "your rights" is absurd. You are not "forced to follow their beliefs." They are allowed to practice their beliefs and you can go elsewhere to shop for a day. They are not required to serve you and sell to you at your whim. The world is big enough and diverse enough that you can go find another store. If you find that one day a week curbs your shopping habit unbearably, you'll stop shopping there. The idea that everyone else exists to serve your hedonistic whims is hardly the basis for a civil and just society. Many aspects of civic life, including rights, exist in a balance, and exist with judiciary discretion. Otherwise it would be sheer domination by force.

If a person wishes to practice their religion in this way, and adapt it to online exigencies, that their freedom of religion. It doesn't harm your freedom not to believe. Indeed, for you to force them to be open to accommodate your freedom not to believe is the harm. Your beliefs haven't been touched -- you can go on practicing them as you wish. Your ability to shop has been touched but that's a separate matter, and easily remedied by *gasp* waiting  a day or shopping elsewhere. 

A human right often overlooked by many, when considering various seemingly conflicting rights, like women's rights or religious rights, is Art. 30 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says, "Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein."

What that means is that one right cannot be extended such as to cancel out another. 

The right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins. Your right to shop ends where the merchant decides to close their store. It isn't "negative" to make a judgement that turning on and off vendors or disabling marketplace

Once again, it's about the ability of soft norms to prevail in an electronic world. This is very, very important. You're requested not to buy from this vendor even if you still can technically or mechanically *out of consideration*. She doesn't need to be considerate of your need to shop because she isn't the only person providing that service and that content. (BTW, this is why the Christian bakers should not be fined for discrimination against gays, and in fact they obtained a ruling in their favour, although it is complicated and not a settled matter yet.)

If you can't heed soft norms, we will have totalitarian rule by coders, and totalitarian rule by various interest groups who are the coders or get the ear of the coders, be they atheists, BDSM, humanists or conservatives or, religious believers.

Edited December 1, 2018 by Prokofy Neva

[Prokofy Neva]

10 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

But if someone requests that you, say, don't distribute a script even though it's technically full permission, heck, a person can go ahead and do it anyway because you don't need to respect the thinking of that "cult":

 

I realize that you love to pounce and look for "gotchas" but you don't have one here.

The situation of this merchant is that she cannot translate her desire to practice her religion fully because while she can put her sim or land on "ban all" or "closed" she can't close the MP or cam-shopping or whatever, without a huge inconvenience, so she makes a request for a soft norm to be observed.

But a person who doesn't wish their script to be distributed has an easy solution -- just put "no transfer". Or charge money, and offer it all perms with a license. End of story.

This slapping on people of all kinds of other written caveats or verbal brow-beating is just plain ridiculous when you have another option -- checking off a box or creating a license and adding payment.

Soft norms need to exist when technical means are either insufficient or not granulated enough or flexible enough. But there's a way to deal with your whimsical desire not to have your script distributed to people you feel unworthy -- put it on no-transfer when you yourself give it to others. Or sell it on all perms with a license -- that lessons the ability of people to rip you off, if that's your concern.

What is the story of this creator of the "spirit" script? It's completely sectarian and parochial. She wants only people she likes to have this script. She wants  only people whose writing she approves to have this script. She only wants her friends she trusts to have this script. And I'm sorry, using a soft norm there is abuse of the principle when she has the option of either charging money and putting in a license (full perm items are sold this way all the time in SL) or putting "no transfer".

It's just completely arbitrary to set up a freebie in this fashion. 

I remember years ago there was a certain creator who made freebie GNU license houses but refused to put them on mod -- many creators get that way. That's their right, but it's a huge inconvenience. They want free distribution, but they don't want any modifications. I pleaded with this creator to make me a set of mod versions so that I could de-prim some of the hugely prim-heavy builds. Why? Because I had a sim where I was making an experimental community where people could come and live in these houses for free and just make donations. And so to enable there to be more of the houses, I needed less prims.

Reluctantly, because I was doing this socialist thing of helping poor newbies (so the urban legend went), she gave me these no-mod versions but then with this stern admonition not to distribute them with "mod". I heeded her call, but I also thought it was ridiculous. If you want to distribute things for free, put them on all perms and let them go. If you have an artistic vision, sell your item or put it on no-transfer. Don't inflict your constrictions on every other person and press them into service forcing them to become a re-distributor of unmodifiable items -- or face collective brow-beating if they sell the item for even $1 to offset the cost of tier to display the item.

P.S. There was also the ridiculous idea that the scripting forum should "never make it too easy" for people coming on and asking questions unless they are already admitted into the sacred cult of scripters. They should be re-directed to the "jobs" forums -- as if that was a place to find good scripters (it's not). No one is required to answer a newbie's question or the question of anyone for that matter. But they shouldn't discourage others who want to answer questions or provide free scripts when asked. The thrust of what that poster was saying was -- "Our secret club/cult can't have riff-raff in it, so let's discourage the riff-raff."

 

Edited December 1, 2018 by Prokofy Neva

[LittleMe Jewell]

Well, for those that were wondering:  If you click an LM or SLURL, you get rerouted into a small building at the edge of the property,  It has a sign saying they are closed, that you can click for more info.  Oddly enough, there are ban lines from that building over to the rest of the store parcel, however you can fly/walk directly there from the next-door neighbor store without hitting any ban lines.  In front of the door there is also a sign about the closing.

While I am not personally religious, I do think that everyone can believe what they want and practice it as they please, as long as others are not harmed by it.  Thus, while I've never encountered such before, I do hope that people respect her wishes and she doesn't end up having to ban lots of people for repeated cam shopping.  Though it might be a tad confusing to folks initially that come in via the weekend sales listings.

[Syo Emerald]

11 hours ago, Callum Meriman said:

The number of people who expect a support question answered in under 5 minutes is pretty high.

 

Imagine how those people react, if they can't even enter your shop and you aren't there the whole day, when they are sending one IM after another... 😂

[Tari Landar]

22 minutes ago, Syo Emerald said:

Imagine how those people react, if they can't even enter your shop and you aren't there the whole day, when they are sending one IM after another... 😂

It's a LOT of fun when they fail to read your profile (this is a more recent event, lol), and send you repeated IMs yelling about not being able to find something in "your store", and you finally get them to stop ranting like a lunatic so you can get a word in. You tell them "I don't have an inworld shop", then you get to watch repeated "yes u do, I'm standing in it" messages. No matter how many times you tell said person "I'm sorry, I don't know where you are, but it's not in my store, as I don't have one", they insist.

Eventually I gave up, told her to go to the back far left corner, she'd find what she was looking for.Then about 15 minutes later she im'd telling me "I found it, tks"

Umm, happy to help..I think.

That's not the first time this has happened, it's happened at least a dozen times over the years, though the specifics change here and there. 

[Syo Emerald]

38 minutes ago, Tari Landar said:

That's not the first time this has happened, it's happened at least a dozen times over the years, though the specifics change here and there. 

Now thats something I haven't heard yet. Why do those people assume you have an inworld store?

[Qie Niangao]

9 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

BTW, this is why the Christian bakers should not be fined for discrimination against gays...

It misrepresents a major world religion to refer to that baker as "Christian". The vast majority of Christians do not share that view, of course. It is the same as confounding radical Islamist terror with Islam as a religion. Although the terrorists may claim a religion, no religion claims them. Same with bigoted bakers claiming "religious" justification for their bigotry (notwithstanding yet another reactionary SCOTUS decision on the road to Gilead).

To the thread topic, I'm sure the merchant can do as they like for whatever reason they want. We are not required to respect that reason, only to accept their ability to do as they please. If they don't invoke a religion as justification for their action, there's no grounds to be offended on behalf of any particular religion in this case.

If, on the other hand, they had cited a religious justification for their behavior, another follower of that religion might very well object, particularly to this aggressive threat of banning any infidels who dare to operate switches on Saturday. It's one thing to observe a practice and quite another to go out of one's way to do so by threatening non-observers.

[Syo Emerald]

4 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

It misrepresents a major world religion to refer to that baker as "Christian". The vast majority of Christians do not share that view, of course. It is the same as confounding radical Islamist terror with Islam as a religion.

You would be suprised how many christians actually share a mindset similar to that baker. On another forum (not related to SL), I was shocked to discover one day how many of the american forum users, who I thought were fine and friendly people before, shared views like "hate the sinner, not the sin" and even believed that made them good people. Maybe not to suprising, considering the things the pope sometimes says about womens rights, gays and the mentally ill...

A religious extremist is essentially just someone placing their religion above a countries law or wants his religion to become the guiding force of law. Although of course no religion wants to be associated with the extremists (its bad PR), those extremists are  just as much part of a religion as the people who just go to church on christimas and for weddings and furnerals. There is enough material in the bible to find "justification" for their hateful views, they don't need to make that stuff up.

 

But back to topic: I think we can conclude the merchant can do whatever pleases them, although his/her current way of doing that isn't the best option and maybe he/she should have invested a little bit more thought into it.

[ellestones]

54 minutes ago, Qie Niangao said:

It misrepresents a major world religion to refer to that baker as "Christian". The vast majority of Christians do not share that view, of course. It is the same as confounding radical Islamist terror with Islam as a religion. Although the terrorists may claim a religion, no religion claims them. Same with bigoted bakers claiming "religious" justification for their bigotry (notwithstanding yet another reactionary SCOTUS decision on the road to Gilead).

To the thread topic, I'm sure the merchant can do as they like for whatever reason they want. We are not required to respect that reason, only to accept their ability to do as they please. If they don't invoke a religion as justification for their action, there's no grounds to be offended on behalf of any particular religion in this case.

If, on the other hand, they had cited a religious justification for their behavior, another follower of that religion might very well object, particularly to this aggressive threat of banning any infidels who dare to operate switches on Saturday. It's one thing to observe a practice and quite another to go out of one's way to do so by threatening non-observers.

i agree with your wider point. Using a belief as justification to discriminate against a class or classes of people

there is a difference tho in the specifics of the cases being discussed. In the baker case the ban is against a specific class of person while the premises are open for business.  In the SL case the threat of banning is against everyone, infidels, non-infidels and non-observers alike,  who breach the premises while closed. In the SL case there is no discrimination 

[Qie Niangao]

4 minutes ago, ellestones said:

In the SL case there is no discrimination 

Oooo... I don't know about that. An act may not formally discriminate while still having a profoundly differentiated effect on a particular class. In this specific case, it's simply that "true observers" presumably won't be shopping on the Sabbath anyway, so they're not being threatened, unlike those pesky non-observers.

More generally in RL, this comes up all the time in equal rights law. Perhaps most prominent currently are attempts to preserve white control of increasingly non-white-majority districts using voter suppression techniques: sure, those laws demand of all voters equally official documentation of identity, but the legislators are keenly aware that poor people are very substantially less likely to already carry a driver's license or own a passport, so the laws have their intended highly discriminatory effect.

[ellestones]

1 hour ago, Qie Niangao said:

More generally in RL, this comes up all the time in equal rights law. Perhaps most prominent currently are attempts to preserve white control of increasingly non-white-majority districts using voter suppression techniques: sure, those laws demand of all voters equally official documentation of identity, but the legislators are keenly aware that poor people are very substantially less likely to already carry a driver's license or own a passport, so the laws have their intended highly discriminatory effect.

in the USA, putting onerous demands on people is generally resolved as a constitutional issue eventually, when the State (local or national) impedes a class of people's ability to exercise their constitutional rights. There is no unconditional US Constitutional right to participate in the elective process. I find it a bit odd that there isn't, but thats the way it is. Convicted felons for example, are in some States excluded from the elective process by local state law

this makes it easy for some US lawmaking bodies to do what they do in impeding the elective process for their own ends.  This impediment can in some states be resolved as a  local State constitutional matter,  in others not and when so can be taken forward as a civil rights matter - a matter of law and not of constitutional rights. Can a class of persons, for no reason other than belonging to that class be impeded, and in impeding those persons is the effect of this unlawful discrimination ?

the comparative parallel to the SL case I think is: The electoral office is unduly closed for business (or is non-existent) in only those areas where a class of people predominately reside. When so then I would assert that this is unlawful discrimination

[Tamara Artis]

16 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

There are so many wrong assumptions here that I don't know where to start.

No merchant is required to enable you to shop. They create and open a store or don't create or close a store as they please in what amounts to a free market, in a relatively free world.

What is the definition of a marketplace? Where a willing seller meets a willing buyer.

The idea that someone wishes to close their sim or vendors for any reason or no reason somehow impacts "your rights" is absurd. You are not "forced to follow their beliefs." They are allowed to practice their beliefs and you can go elsewhere to shop for a day. They are not required to serve you and sell to you at your whim. The world is big enough and diverse enough that you can go find another store. If you find that one day a week curbs your shopping habit unbearably, you'll stop shopping there. The idea that everyone else exists to serve your hedonistic whims is hardly the basis for a civil and just society. Many aspects of civic life, including rights, exist in a balance, and exist with judiciary discretion. Otherwise it would be sheer domination by force.

If a person wishes to practice their religion in this way, and adapt it to online exigencies, that their freedom of religion. It doesn't harm your freedom not to believe. Indeed, for you to force them to be open to accommodate your freedom not to believe is the harm. Your beliefs haven't been touched -- you can go on practicing them as you wish. Your ability to shop has been touched but that's a separate matter, and easily remedied by *gasp* waiting  a day or shopping elsewhere. 

A human right often overlooked by many, when considering various seemingly conflicting rights, like women's rights or religious rights, is Art. 30 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says, "Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein."

What that means is that one right cannot be extended such as to cancel out another. 

The right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins. Your right to shop ends where the merchant decides to close their store. It isn't "negative" to make a judgement that turning on and off vendors or disabling marketplace

Once again, it's about the ability of soft norms to prevail in an electronic world. This is very, very important. You're requested not to buy from this vendor even if you still can technically or mechanically *out of consideration*. She doesn't need to be considerate of your need to shop because she isn't the only person providing that service and that content. (BTW, this is why the Christian bakers should not be fined for discrimination against gays, and in fact they obtained a ruling in their favour, although it is complicated and not a settled matter yet.)

If you can't heed soft norms, we will have totalitarian rule by coders, and totalitarian rule by various interest groups who are the coders or get the ear of the coders, be they atheists, BDSM, humanists or conservatives or, religious believers.

Was my English hard to understand?? 

This person, Prokofy Neva, is quoting my text and commenting in a way that shows they did not read the text or that they have read it and then decided it's not fun to simply reply, it will be better and faaar more amusing to interpret it in a weird and wrong way and invent another, completely new version of my text and simply reply to this new version! Yes I believe this is what happened (though I'm not a believer but oh well there are worse things in this world).

I don't know what is causing them to misunderstand everything I wrote but I don't discuss anything with this kind of people so I will just wish them a nice day! 

[JJack Montreal]

The 21th century zealots are the atheists

[LittleMe Jewell]

1 hour ago, Tamara Artis said:

Was my English hard to understand?? 

This person, Prokofy Neva, is quoting my text and commenting in a way that shows they did not read the text or that they have read it and then decided it's not fun to simply reply, it will be better and faaar more amusing to interpret it in a weird and wrong way and invent another, completely new version of my text and simply reply to this new version! Yes I believe this is what happened (though I'm not a believer but oh well there are worse things in this world).

I don't know what is causing them to misunderstand everything I wrote but I don't discuss anything with this kind of people so I will just wish them a nice day! 

Welcome to the special world of Prok.  

[Scylla Rhiadra]

18 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

It's very important to allow soft norms to prevail and not have the entire online experience be governed by "code-as-law" and the screw-you hedonistic theory of the coder that "just because I can, just because it lets me, I should."

OMG, I think I kind of agree with Prok here. It's maybe the second time, ever?

I don't see anyone in this thread to whom this particular mindset applies, but I do think that this quasi-Solutionist attitude towards the subordination (or maybe merging) of ethical norms and technological capabilities is often at work in our culture, although most often at a subconscious level. It's why people who would never consider shoplifting give almost no thought to downloading pirated content onto their computer.

And it's why this particular merchant's approach is going to fail: because the mere ability to do something with technology so often trumps considerations of whether one should do it.

I think that the merchant, whatever the nature of their beliefs or motivations for being closed this one day, has every right to do so, and every right to expect that others will honour those wishes. But it just soooooo isn't going to happen. While Bitsy is entirely right, and generosity, courtesy, and ethical behaviour (Prok's unnecessarily jargonish "soft norms") should prevail, the technology is increasingly displacing our ability to reason ethically.

[Madelaine McMasters]

1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

the mere ability to do something with technology so often trumps considerations of whether one should do it.

While this is certainly true, it has been true for far longer that the mere ability to craft rules often trumps considerations of whether one should do it.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

3 minutes ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

While this is certainly true, it has been true for far longer that the mere ability to craft rules often trumps considerations of whether one should do it.

Of course! But I do think that the advent of technology, which enables so much that was once impossible or difficult, is something of a special case.

[Madelaine McMasters]

3 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Of course! But I do think that the advent of technology, which enables so much that was once impossible or difficult, is something of a special case.

When did it become special? With the advent of the wheel? The spear? The nail? Ships? Clocks?

As an engineer, I find myself in the camp that thinks technology is neither good nor evil. It's all about how you use it, and that comes back to rules.

The rate of progress is accelerating, and that makes it all the more important for people to start thinking seriously about it, not to rely on dogma.

Edited December 1, 2018 by Madelaine McMasters

[Scylla Rhiadra]

1 minute ago, Madelaine McMasters said:

When did it become special? With the advent of the wheel? The spear? The nail? Ships? Clocks?

As an engineer, I find myself in the camp that thinks technology is neither good nor evil. It's all about how you use it, and that comes back to rules.

What is special is that technology is increasingly become a kind of new touchstone, which in turn is a kind of development from the way science has displaced religion.

I don't want to overstate the effect, though. It's all on a continuum, certainly.

[Tari Landar]

10 hours ago, Syo Emerald said:

Now thats something I haven't heard yet. Why do those people assume you have an inworld store?

I have no idea, they're almost always new people though. It doesn't always end like that, this was just one of the more amusing endings, lol. Usually it requires an awful lot of effort on my end to prove to them it's not my store they're standing in, or empty plot they'e standing on for that matter(that's happened a couple times "where's the store, this land is empty". Sometimes I just give up, because nothing I say is working and it's better than getting frustrated with someone,s o I just end up saying "I'm sorry I don't think I can help you, I do hope you find someone who can" and just end the convo, it's about all I can do really, lol.  Some people are just too thick headed to listen  

 

[animats]

"The Oasis will be closed Tuesdays and Thursdays".