governance

Lawrence Lessig is rightly seen as one of the intellectual parents of much of the governance of information discourse. His "law is code" argument is both powerfully simple, and naturally persuasive. The theory on which it rests is built in significant part on a belief in a certain ind of market, and a certain kind of transparency.

This research questions some of Lessig's underlying assumptions - and suggests that this may have consequences for the breadth and generality of his "law is code" concept; the research as published in the 2008 Wisconsin Law Review.

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. more >>