The core of the course will be an innovative experiment in self-governance wtihin World of Warcraft. We expect to publish the results: co-author credit will be available.

The class will be Wednesdays from 4 to 7:55 in the Law College.
Governance of Virtual Worlds

SLN #: 26479
Course Prefix: LAW-791
Course Section: 019
Credit Hours: 3
Instructor(s): Mableson;McKnight

Course Description:
Virtual worlds, including massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), used by tens of millions of people worldwide, have given rise to new forms of social, economic and political organization, and present unique challenges in their interaction with current legal, political, economic and cultural institutions. This course will use cross-disciplinary methods to examine community self-governance within virtual worlds, as well as regulation of virtual worlds by businesses and governments worldwide.

The workload and intellectual demands for this course will be substantial. We will usually meet three hours a week in a seminar setting, but may substitute sessions within a virtual environment for some or all of any week’s course time.

While no previous familiarity with virtual worlds or MMOs is required, students must be comfortable with software tools and online discussion.

A significant portion of this course will involve a hands-on experiment in virtual worlds governance. Active participation in the project, or an equivalent, will be essential to success in the course.

Graduate students in many fields (including CSPO students, political science, education, engineering and graphic arts), and exceptional undergraduates are welcome. Enrollment will be capped at 20 law students and 20 students from other fields.

Additional Information:
Credit Hours: 3
Grading Option: Numerically Graded, and ONE Time Pass Option is Available
Written Assignment: Yes
Graduation Writing Requirement: No
Seminar Writing Requirement: No
Skills Requirement: No
Final Exam Given: No
Paper or In-Class Presentation: Yes
Participation Points: Yes
Blackboard Course Site: Yes

Japan’s Asian Women’s Fund: Reparations to the “Comfort Women”

Context & Injury:
Beginning around 1940, Japan found its WWII soldiers alarmingly prone to commit rape and contract STDs, so it purposefully undertook a campaign to establish many additional “comfort stations” (military-affiliated brothels) throughout the Asia/Pacific region. These brothels were typically houses of rape, torture, and enslavement. “Comfort women” (the enslaved prostitutes) were often misled into thinking they were to be employed as nurses or other service personnel. Sometimes they were outright kidnapped. At the comfort stations, they endured many (10–30) daily rapes, violence at the hands of soldiers and others, and a lack of medical treatment and even food.

Victims:
There were as many as 200,000 comfort women, taken from Korea, China, the Dutch East Indies, Taiwan, Malaysia, Burma and the Philippines, and stationed wherever the Japanese came to occupy Asia during WWII. Only about 25% survived their servitude, with the primary causes of death being both illness and murder.  Unfortunately, it has been difficult for interested parties to generate accurate statistics about the comfort women.

Perpetrators:
The comfort women were raped by enlisted and civilian men affiliated with the Japanese  military. Some brothels were run by civilians who were complicit in the wrongdoing.

Responsible Parties:
While Japanese military and government officials may not have themselves have patronized the comfort stations, they are responsible insofar they developed and approved the plan to establish them in a grossly self-defeating attempt to curb the incidences of rape and STDs.

Nature of Reparations Sought & Given:
Beginning in 1991, a small group of former comfort women began to come forward to tell their stories and file their grievances in court. Evidence supporting the women’s stories began to emerge. The relatively few remaining living former comfort women sought for the Japanese government officially to accept responsibility, apologize and offer compensation, but it was loath to do any of these things.

Agent/Entity Making Reparation:
Ultimately, the issue was handled by an agency called the Asian Women’s Fund, which processed the claims of former comfort women between 1995 and 2007.

Success/Failure:
The Asian Women’s Fund was very controversial and enjoyed only limited success. Some comfort house deniers and apologists took issue with the AWF’s attempt to provide any semblance of an apology or proper compensation to the former comfort women. On the other hand, many were unhappy that the apology was not made in an official enough capacity, and that much of the AWF’s funding came from private charitable donations instead of directly from the state. Approximately half of the living former comfort women refused to participate in the AWF program. Some of those who were citizens of countries other than Japan were eligible to receive compensation from their local governments instead of from the AWF.

Legal Issues:
Japan’s responses to the legal issues surrounding the comfort women really added insult to injury. Three counterarguments to demands for reparations were offered. First, Japan claimed that the treaties it signed around the ending of the war exhausted its obligations to the comfort women. This is not an acceptable argument because the crimes against humanity of enslavement, rape and torture are taken so seriously by international customary law that treaty provisions dismissing them would be void. Additionally, many of the women were not Japanese and were therefore not even loosely a party to the treaties (which were really amongst states and not private individuals anyway). Second, Japan argued that the passage of time imposed a de facto statute of limitations on the reparations. This too is an unacceptable argument, because Japan was actually in a much better to position to offer sufficient reparations after the war had been long over. Furthermore, a major reason it took so long to uncover the crimes was because Japan was keeping evidence from the public, so it would be a miscarriage of justice to absolve it from duties of reparation as a reward. Third, Japan argued that the sheer number of victims and claims was so prohibitive that a full-scale reparations process would not be possible. This is false on its face, for Germany was able to do so on even a larger scale, and anyway a wrongdoing party should not be able to justify its way into immunity by harming additional victims.

In the Sarah Haskins spirit, I have to share with you my unhappiness with this product, Cargo Classic Lip Gloss.

Ordinarily, I would not spend a whopping $22 for lip gloss. But, it was for the wedding, and came with a bunch of other stuff I wanted in a package deal, so I ended up with it anyway. What makes this particular lip gloss so special is its “Timestrip technology:”

“Timestrip™ is a strip that remembers when a product was first opened and alerts you when it is no longer wise to use it. Simply insert the Timestrip™ into the cap and it is immediately activated. As the months go by the Timestrip™ window gradually turns red and, when the entire window is red, it is time to replace your gloss.”

More propaganda from the Cargo Timestrip website:

This “best-before” date has become so important that European countries recently launched legislation requiring cosmetics companies to have a PAO (Period After Opening) time frame listed on their products.

But how are you to remember when you first opened the product? Most women have multiple glosses in multiple locations: purses, bathrooms, offices. It is almost impossible to know when each gloss was used for the first time.

Enter Timestrip® technology. Simply insert the strip into the cap of the gloss to activate. The Timestrip® window will start turning red, indicating the passage of time. When the nine months are over and the entire window is red, you know it is time to throw out your gloss.

CARGO Founder Hana Zalzal explains, “We are proud to be the first to offer this technology. Women can now be assured that their gloss is fresh and effective.”

I suppose I should be thanking my lucky stars that some benevolent materials scientists out there have created a technology that allows me to sleep at night now that I can be sure my gloss is fresh and effective. But seriously now, this is banking on a variety of dubious marketing techniques:

1. Naturalness: They have formulated the product without parabens, which are effective preservatives typically used in tiny amounts but which strike carcinogenicity fears in the hearts of conspiracy theorists everywhere.
2. Germiness: Partly because they removed the parabens, this product will grow tons of bacteria, requiring its disposal after nine months. They liken this to food, as if old lip gloss were as dangerous as old milk.
3. Technology: But never fear! In today’s day in age, there is no need for forgetful women to rashly continue to use germ-ridden lip gloss. We have valuable technology to fix everything. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.

From where I’m standing, it’s pretty obvious that the real point of the exercise is, first, to charge more for the lip gloss in the first place and, second, to stimulate additional lip gloss purchases that the customer otherwise wouldn’t have made. C’mon, almost no one actually follows those makeup guidelines. Alot of people don’t even change their toothbrushes often enough, and they are used to physically dislodge chunks of bacteria from the inside of one’s mouth. I’m pretty germphobic, but oldish lip gloss doesn’t bother even me.

Of course, it’s not really wrong for Cargo to advertise in this way, but I will not be purchasing this particular product again. The gloss itself is not anything $5 couldn’t buy you at Target, and the Timestrip doesn’t even work!!! I opened my gloss 3.5 months ago, and the Timestrip reads 6 months. Never again, Cargo, never again.