I don't think an avatar is like an amalgam of a DBA and a corporation. An avatar by definition is a presentation of self. So the avatar can never have rights apart from the entity (person) behind the avatar. DBAs could certainly be seen as similar to avatars: by definition, as you note, DBAs are legally tied to a specific person, so that's a pretty good analogy AFAICS. There are some cases where payment to a DBA is not the same as payment to the person the DBA represents, but those fall into two areas as far as I know: Where you can't prove or haven't proved that you're the person behind the DBA; and where you need to keep up a wall for tax purposes. Neither of those absolves you from any liability: If you shoot someone as "DBA JayceLand", Jason O goes to jail.
Corporations, on the other hand, are legal persons. They have an existence separate from that of the people who are part of them. It's possible for a corporation to exist which has no actual human persons as members. Corporations often "act" in ways (often by design) that aren't traceable to any specific person's decisions. It's all a social fiction, of course; the Corporation stands in for stuff we can't or won't take responsibility for, or takes action we can't take alone (too often these days the former is the more important part). There are legal means to force members of a corporation to take responsibility for actions of the corporation -- people can be named in lawsuits against corporations, for example. So if John Smith shoots someone on behalf of BP, he stands a good likelihood of going to jail, but 'BP' can't go to jail, by its very nature. I guess I'm puzzled by your question about 'extending rights to an avatar.' As far as I'm concerned, it's never going to make sense to extend a right to an avatar as such. Rights adhering to the avatar would be rights that adhered to the person the avatar represents. The right you have to be secure in your person extends into your avatar in ways that are analogous to the way your right to be secure extends into your video representation -- I think you pretty much nailed that one. . On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 3:03 PM, Jason Olshefsky <[email protected]>wrote: > Here's a different take on it: how should an avatar be different from doing > business as (DBA)? Is it an amalgam of a DBA and incorporation? > > With a DBA (which I have and I'm sure most of you all do too), it is simply > a legal alias for yourself. As such, any actions you take as the business > are not differentiated from those taken by you as yourself. I assume that > likewise, actions of others applied to the business is legally no different > than actions applied to you. However, the business is philosophically > treated as if it were a different entity. > > A corporation is legally an entirely new entity that is not tied to a > person. In some ways it is like an avatar controlled by more than one > puppeteer. It is possible to make a corporation that has one employee > (shareholder? trustee? ... you get the idea.) Actions of a corporation and > actions applied to a corporation by others are considered independent of > actions related to the individual(s) in the corporation. > > Would either of these concepts sufficiently cover the extension of rights > to an avatar? I suspect a DBA is closest, where any event relating an actor > to an avatar to an individual can be mapped exactly to an actor to a DBA to > an individual, and offhand I can't think of a counterexample. > > ---Jason Olshefsky > http://JayceLand.com/ > http://JayceLand.com/blog/ > > > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<r-spec%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en. > > -- -- eric scoles | [email protected] -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en.
