This goes back to some ancient precedents, which amount to "if a
communication has basic purpose, a contract can't redefine that
purpose to hijack the activity into joining". It's kind of covered in
R217 that doesn't allow willy-nilly redefinition of common terms into
other meanings (unless in high-powered rules). More broadly, I
think there are several precedents, one that I specifically remember
is CFJ 1290: https://faculty.washington.edu/kerim/nomic/cases/?1290
Brief summary since it's long: there was a period of bad feelings in
Agora in which people were really insulting/sniping each other.
Someone tried to calm things down by saying "an insult to another
player is considered intent to join this contract which will penalize
the insulter" which resulted in the precedent that "willful
consent/agreement means evidence that you're invoking consent on
purpose, not as an accidental/redirected result of doing something
else."
On Fri, Jun 7, 2019 at 10:53 AM Jason Cobb <jason.e.c...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Here's another newbie-ish question, since I'm sure someone has tried
> something like this before and I don't particularly wish to search
> through thousands of CFJs (I've done some basic searching, but maybe
> have not found the right words).
>
> Rule 1472 states:
>
> > It is IMPOSSIBLE for a person to become a party to a contract without eir
> > agreement. For the purposes of this rule, agreement includes both consent
> > and agreement specified by contract.
>
>
> "Consent" is a term of art in the Rules, but "agreement" is not, but the rule
> puts them on equal grounds.
> Thus permitting "agreement" to be specified by a contract seems like a
> vulnerability.
>
> It seems (to me) as if a person could publish a contract that defines
> "agreement" to include something completely unrelated, as in this example:
>
> (Fake) contract:
> {
> For the purposes of Rule 1742, agreement to this contract is given when an
> Officer publishes a weekly or monthly report that is required by the Rules.
>
> [...]
> }
>
> Obviously I would continue on to do something evil.
>
> Again, I'm sure there's a CFJ or a part of the Rules I am missing, but I
> haven't found it yet.
>
> Thanks,
> Jason Cobb
>
