comex wrote:
>> If you couldn't "sign away" some portion of your rights, contracts wouldn't
>> work at all, and the courts have clearly showed that they do actually
>> function.
>
> Wait, why wouldn't contracts work at all?
If you couldn't sign away some portion of your rights, then the thing
that would presumably stop you from doing so is R101's right of
participation in the fora, and prohibition on "abridge" etc.. (In
particular, you would be stopped from signing away your right to
send messages violating a contract.) Hence, the "rights can't be
signed away" camp runs into the reductio ad absurdum of "that would
mean that no contractual obligations can be enforced".
> However, Rule 2169 stipulates that equations are brand-new contracts
> between the parties, and goes so far as to say that they are subject
> to the usual processes concerning binding agreements. Rule 2169 can
> be reworded to satisfy Rule 101, but the way it is now, it does not.
The "equations work as intended" camp has argued that agreeing to the
original contract, i.e. binding agreement governed by the rules,
implicitly includes agreeing to equations imposed by those rules.
> But here is why that should NOT be fixed right now!
>
> Let's say the CotC and four other people decide to conduct a scam.
> This is a large group of scamsters, but it is entirely reasonable if,
> say, Agora is divided into teams.
>
> So, they pick some popular contest that everyone or nearly everyone is
> a member of. Person A joins it, everyone else leaves. Person A
> initiates an equity case regarding the contest. CotC assigns it to
> Person B, who judges the equity case with some equation like
>
> {{
> Anyone CAN act on behalf of any party to the contract by announcement.
> }}
>
> Of course, it gets appealed. CotC assigns the appeal to the panel of
> Person C, Person D, and someone else who isn't involved. Person C
> attempts to judge AFFIRM, Person D immediately supports, CotC supports
> the majority action, and this pretty awful equation is now binding on
> everyone who was in the original contest. People could leave the
> original contract, but if the scamsters did it right, they would make
> it appear as if the original judge (Person B) was just a maverick, and
> everyone would assume that the equation would be appealed normally,
> until the scam AFFIRM. Depending on the interpretation of Rule 2169,
> people who left the contract *after* the AFFIRM might or might not be
> bound by the equation.
I was going to say "this is why you shouldn't replace me as CotC any
time soon", but then there was that attempted "CFJs refused by the
scamsters cease to be CFJs" scam a while back...
I think the equation still wouldn't go into effect until a week after
the scam AFFIRM, which is enough time to block via proposal if the
anti-scamsters (including Promotor and Assessor) are quick about it;
otherwise, one of the anti-scamsters needs to publish "I cause each
party of the Evil Equation to agree to terminate it" right after it
goes into effect, and hope that one of the scamsters doesn't get in
their own message first.
> Not to mention that if the equation is a reasonably equitable
> resolution of the situation at hand with respect to the matters raised
> (compare Lindrum World, which did happen to resolve the issue at hand,
> although that was not the bulk of the judgement), the scamsters
> wouldn't even be breaking any rules, because it would be an
> appropriate judgement.
And we're back to whether equity-with-gravy should be inappropriate
solely because of the gravy.
> This isn't really a bug. The judicial system was not designed for
> cases where bad judgements could have such disastrous effects: it was
> designed primarily for inquiry cases, where a scam judgement has
> absolutely no effect on the game. Criminal cases have some power, but
> the worst you could do is deregister a lot of people, and there's a
> good chance you'll get overruled by proposal. With an equity court
> that can make an entire population of Agorans zombies, you need to be
> a bit more careful.
Given the one-week delay, I don't think blocking a scam mass EXILE by
proposal would be any more or less difficult than blocking a scam mass
zombification by proposal.
