Limits of Virtual World Governing
This research project, headed by Centre director Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, looks at the limits of governability of virtual worlds. In his previous work, "Napster's Second Life?", Mayer-Schönberger analyzed the regulatory dynamic among providers of virtual worlds. As virtual world slowly move towards more permissive regimes of user rights (spearheaded perhaps by Linden Lab's decision to let users of SecondLife retain their intellectual property rights), virtual world providers have fewer options to differentiate themselves from competitors. Size continues to play a dominant role, but governance may increase in importance.
In "Napster's Second Life", Viktor Mayer-Schönberger argued that given limited differentiation possibilities for virtual world providers coupled with their choice in real world jurisdiction, real world policy makers may soon face a troubling dilemma: either leaving virtual worlds largely unregulated to the potential detriment of social welfare in these worlds, or over-regulating virtual worlds, thus pushing virtual world provision to decentralized peer-to-peer models. Encouraging robust virtual world self-governance may be the pragmatic solution for real world policy makers to escape of this dilemma.
In "Virtual Heisenberg", Viktor Mayer-Schönberger looks at the inherent limitations of substantively regulating virtual worlds while at the same token keeping alive market competition among virtual world providers.
