dg.o 2007

Law and Governance and Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds are a subset of the rapidly expanding gaming industry. Unlike in a game, however, virtual world users are not engaging with a clear and comprehensive rule system or with an experience in which there is a beginning or an end. Rather, in virtual worlds players engage with each other in almost all forms of existing social interaction – and are also creating a new range of social interactions.

The most prominent virtual world, SecondLife.com, has seen its membership increase from one million in October 2006 to five million users in late March 2007. SecondLife has casinos, schools, stores, banks as well as sex sites and crime. It is, in other words, an environment which present interesting research opportunities on the nature and role of government as it emerges in these environments.

Consider a governance spectrum within virtual worlds.

Consensus driven rules are at one end of the spectrum, where the will of the collective is transformed into law and/or policy. There are obvious problems with such a system when there is no set of rules or institutions or other to filter the consensus and make it sensible and meaningful and not to mention fair - if that is a concern. The law enforcer is typically a sovereign, but who is that in this situation? Is it the system administrators or could it be the users themselves? At the other end of the spectrum would be purely administrative solutions by the owners of these services – where administrators police practices according to protocols – which for the most part either existed at the virtual world’s inception or have been created administratively since. Between these exist a range of governance potentials – this panel is an effort to open a conversation about what populates that terrain.

Specifically, the panel will survey the virtual world phenomena, introduce the governance issues that arise there and suggests why the digital government community can both contribute to virtual worlds’ success and benefit from the online laboratory these environments provide.

Panelists

Ethan Katsh (Moderator)
Director, Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution

Professor of Legal Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Daniel Rainey

Director, Office of Alternative Dispute Resolution Services

National Mediation Board

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger

Associate Professor of Public Policy

John F. Kennedy School of Government / Harvard University