"The Notary and Infrastructures for Agreement and Trust"

I'll be posting notes from all the sessions at this Saturday's series of opening events on Democracy Island. We'll start with Zarf Vantongerloo's session on his Nota Bene notary and mediation services in Second Life which have a presence on DI. The prepared text for his presentation, "The Notary and Infrastructures for Agreement and Trust," can be found here, or click continue reading at the bottom. I'm also looking for a full transcript of attendee comments and questions to post below that.

Democracy Islanders demo Zarf's notary process

"The Notary and Infrastructures for Agreement and Trust"

- Zarf Vantongerloo

given on Saturday, January 7th, 2005
on Democracy Island, Second Life

== History ==

Shortly after joining Second Life I took an interest in reading on the forums about self-governance, business relationships, and interactions that were larger than just "point interactions". At the time, and to this day, there is a fair bit of discussion and speculation about how such systems might be constructed.

I found that these discussions often got side tracked into issues of mechanics and infrastructure.

"How can we be certain that a chat log is accurate?"
"How can contracts written on digital notecards be tamper proof?"
"How do we know that two avatars are in fact the same, or different?"

While I was fascinated by the larger discussions (and still am), I am neither a lawyer nor political scientist. I am, however, an engineer, and so I could do something about the missing infrastructure.

== What is the Notary ==

I designed the notary to provide two clearly missing peices:

First: The notary certifies an avatar's signature on a particular document.

This is the function of a "Notary Public" in real life. They attest that a signature was made by the person it purports to be.

Second: The virtual notary provides verification that the document hasn't been altered.

In real life, the document is physical, and it is considered impractical to transfer a signature to a different document. (Or at least it is evident when it done.) In digital space, we need a different way to connect the signature to a particular version of the document.

The technique, cryptographic hashing, also provides a verification method for any tampering of the document. Hence, it goes one better than in real life.

== How it Operates ==

In practice, the process runs like this:

1) You write up a digital notecard with your agreement, contract, oath, etc...

2) You take it to the notary and drop it on the notary desk.

3) The notary hands back the notecard to each avatar that wishes to sign (so they can be sure they are all signing the same thing.)

4) To sign, the notary asks each avatar if they are signing, and they must respond in the affirmative.

5) After paying the fee, the notary constructs a certificate of the signing, then notarizes it, and finally produces a receipt object.

At this point, the signatures are irrevocable, and the document verifiable. It is impossible for either the avatars, the notary, or the operators of the virtual world, or even all of those working together to alter to notarization, or refute it's existence.

I can go into the cryptographic details later, if there is interest, though it is pretty technical and geeky.

The receipt objects can be freely taken and distributed, made public, or kept private, as the signers see fit. At any point, the receipts can be used to validate the two guarantees:

1) That these avatars did indeed sign the document.

2) That the document in the receipt is indeed the same as the one that was signed.

== What Infrastructure Gets You ==

Now, the notary is neither a system of justice nor a government. If a notarized contract is disputed, the notary agent, (that's me), won't come solve your problems.

But it lays a foundation on which one can build such systems.

For example, mediation and arbitration would be extraordinarily difficult if either party could easily deny having entered into any particular agreement in the first place. There would be no starting point.

But a notarized agreement, which the parties cannot refute, gives a place to start mediation or arbitration from.

There are other infrastructure pieces to be built in virtual worlds: escrow services, identity management, reputation systems and voting are a few. Having these pieces will make it easier for people create larger civic, legal and governmental structures in virtual worlds.

It gives us the ability to explore a larger space of possible civics than one could in real life.

== Virtual is a Lot Like Real ==

Now, many people, or at least many techno-geeks, pin their hopes that the infrastructure of the digital world will be superior to that in real life.

Having built one of the pieces of legal infrastructure, I think that idea is misguided.

Virtual infrastructure pieces are much more like their real life counterparts than one might think. A digital signature doesn't actually lock your thumbs, any more than physical one.

But, either signature is still important because there is social and emotional pressure associated with doing something, "signing", that is irrefutable.

The other infrastructure pieces have similar issues: A digital escrow still involves trust in the disinterested third party, and trust that they are indeed unrelated. Sometimes digital counterparts are stronger (document tampering, for example) and sometimes weaker (what is identity when you can get a new avatar at any time?)

So where are the benefits?

The benefit is that these infrastructures can transcend the restrictions of time and space that exist in real life.

The benefit is that, being digital constructs, we are much more free to re-mold infrastructure to our needs.

The benefit is that creating infrastructures will enable others to create legal, civic and social structures that themselves transcend time and space, and can be designed to meet the desires of the a virtual world.

- Zarf Vantongerloo
Nota Bene, Second Life's Notary
secondlife://Thyris/14/178
http://www.notabene-sl.com/
zarf@notabene-sl.com

Comments

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