Napster's Second Life? - The Regulatory Challenges of Virtual Worlds

Mayer-Schoenberger, Viktor; Crowley, John

doi:10.2139/ssrn.822385

Cited by 19 publications

(16 citation statements)

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“…The third section will tackle the question of whether social media's terms of service and the bills of rights of social media users represent mechanisms of constitutionalisation in the social media environment. This investigation will build on the existing scholarship which analysed private actors' self-regulation (Suzor 2016a;Mayer-Schönberger and Crowley 2006;Teubner 2012) and the bills of rights of social media users (Gill, Redeker, and Gasser 2015;Yilma 2017) from a constitutional perspective. In line with this literature, it will be argued that both instruments could theoretically perform the quintessential constitutional functions of protecting fundamental rights and balancing the powers involved.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Terms of service and bills of rights: new mechanisms of constitutionalisation in the social media environment?

Celeste

2018

International Review of Law, Computers & Technology

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From a cursory look at the terms of service of the main social networking websites, it is immediately possible to detect that Facebook's show a peculiar configuration. Although they represent a mere contract between private parties, these terms adopt the traditional jargon of constitutional texts, and articulate their contents in terms of rights, principles, and duties. This curious pairing between norms regulating social media and the constitutional sphere is also apparent in a series of non-binding documents that are unequivocally named 'bill of rights', and seek to articulate a set of principles to protect social media users. This paper examines whether the emergence of a constitutional tone in this limited number of texts could be related to the effective, or aspirational, constitutional function that these documents exercise. The identification of a series of significant shortcomings will lead to exclude that social media's terms of service and bills of rights of social media users currently play a constitutionalising role. Nevertheless, the possibility to theoretically justify the use of these documents as mechanisms of constitutionalisation in the social media environment will be adduced as an evidence of the potential constitutional aspirations of these texts.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Terms of service and bills of rights: new mechanisms of constitutionalisation in the social media environment?

Celeste

2018

International Review of Law, Computers & Technology

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“…Both Second Life ® and Entropia Universe ® can be considered successful virtual games in view of the observations made by Mayer-Schönberger and Crowley (2006) who concluded from the review of virtual games that four criteria are necessary for success: persistence (players can return to a shared virtual space after a time of offline), teleology (players can pursuit and complete concrete tasks), malleability (players have the ability to modify the world), and verisimilitude (players are in an immersive experience sufficiently resembling the reality). Song and Lee (2007) found similar criteria by examining what the players are valuing.…”

Section: Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game: Second Life mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second Life ® and Entropia Universe ® exhibit all the necessary factors of a virtual games proposed by Mayer-Schönberger and Crowley (2006): persistence, teleology, malleability, and verisimilitude. Both games are now in the sustaining stage looking for further growth in new markets.…”

Section: The Technologymentioning

confidence: 99%

An Exploration of Entrepreneurship in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games: Second Life and Entropia Universe

Kieger¹

2010

JVWR

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Virtual worlds represent a new market with a distinct economy andmany individuals are trying to exploit this very new technology in thesearch of profitable opportunities. The current paper proposes to studyentrepreneurship in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-PlayingGames (MMORPG) Second Life® and Entropia Universe® in whichmonetary trades are possible. A survey was proposed to the community of players of both games, and from a sample of 244 players, nineteenentrepreneurs were contacted for a second survey. The traits of theentrepreneurs were compared to those of the players andentrepreneurship was observed in Second Life® and Entropia Universe®. In fact, all the necessary conditions are present for entrepreneurship: a new technology giving new sources of revenues, an entrepreneur willing to invest money in order to increase his wealth, and a market with an economy well understood. The different entrepreneurs have developed successful ventures in several markets, and they had well defined the strategy they wanted to adopt. They have examined the different markets in which they have entered although they did not use all the tools known in the marketing fields. Further, some steps in the process of creation of the venture may not be important and some may be done relatively swiftly, thus the venture creation in MMORPG may be relatively easy. In conclusion, the venture creation may be relatively undemanding in virtual worlds, and this opens new possibilities for the future.

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“…From the outset of Second Life's existence, Linden Lab,"…has portrayed itself as a common carrier and platform rather than as administrator or government, leaving dispute resolution to its residents and avoiding the creation of formal dispute resolution policy" (Mayer-Schönberger and Crowley, 2006). Despite the considerable powers it has attributed to itself in the Terms of Service, Linden has kept its interventions to minimum and at least passably fair (LGSG, 2007a).…”

Section: Governance In Second Lifementioning

confidence: 99%