I point my finger at Corona for violations of Rule 2532, "Zombies", and/or Rule 2466, "Acting on Behalf", committed by causing Quazie to violate Rule 2550, "Bidding". I CFJ, barring G., on the statement 'Rule 2532, "Zombies", enables zombie owners to act on behalf of their zombies.' I CFJ, barring Corona, on the statement 'Corona has violated of Rule 2532, "Zombies", and/or Rule 2466, "Acting on Behalf", by causing Quazie to violate Rule 2550 "Bidding".'
[For reference, I don't really see how a violation could have been committed, but this is all rather unclear and I'd like to see what people think." Arguments: If Quazie bid in the auction, e committed a violation of Rule 2550, "Bidding", and in particular the provision that "A person SHALL NOT bid on an Auction if it would be impossible for em to pay that amount at the conclusion of the Auction." Quazie did not have any money at the time of the bid, and did not get any by the end of the auction. We clearly do not hold em culpable for this violation, given that we do not in general hold people responsible for violations they could not reasonably have avoided, but the violation remains nevertheless. If Corona successfully caused Quazie to bid, e violated Rule 2466, "Acting on Behalf", and specifically the provision that "A person SHALL NOT act on behalf of another person if doing so causes the second person to violate the rules." What remains in question is whether or not Corona's action succeeded. There are three possibilities: it succeeded, it failed in this specific case, or it never works at all. I believe that it is one of the later two. The crucial question is one of interpreting Rule 2532, "Zombies". which states that "A zombie's master, if another player, is allowed to act on behalf of the zombie (i.e. as the zombie's agent) to perform LEGAL actions." The phrase "allowed to" is ambiguous, it could mean CAN or MAY, although I find it somewhat unlikely that it means both of them at once. If it means CAN, then the action failed because the action was ILLEGAL, and the affixed conditional resolves to false. I believe that the phrase probably means MAY. Granted, the Rule 217 factors suggest that the phrase means CAN, but I don't think that they can overturn the presumption to the contrary in this case. I'm not saying that "allow' can never mean "enable', but reading "allowed to" to mean "able to" doesn't really sound right. For instance, seems reasonable for someone to say "I will allow you to open your mind", but (to my ears) it sounds ridiculous to say that "you are allowed to open your mind". I think the only reason there even appears to be ambiguity is because of preconceived notions of what the zombie rule means. Reading the text without judgement, the MAY reading is the obvious one. Under this reading, there is no provision anywhere that says that an owner CAN act on behalf of a zombie, so e can't. -Aris
