The headquarters features conference facilities, art by Aeleen Tompsen (of Another Shade of Blue and member of the Constitutional Team), a world clock, as well as tea and cake for longer meetings. New art will be added in the next days, so keep an eye on forthcoming changes!

You can take a look at the snapshots we posted on Flickr or visit the real thing right away.

Thank you Colleen, and please join us to take a look to the new HQ and know more about the Metaverse Republic!

Thomas Malaby on Terranova has an interesting commentary on governance and legitimacy in virtual worlds, two points which, for us, are of the utmost importance. The most interesting point Malaby makes is about Second Life, where he spent some time as a research intern. Quoting from Malaby:

Second Life is a good example of a project – and Linden Lab has been a good example of a company – that is deeply informed by the “left-libertarian” attitude toward technology and its promise which has shaped everything from the structure of the early internet to the proliferation of personal computers, but about which I do not have sufficient space to say more here (see Turner, 2006). Suffice it to say that in a political sense Linden Lab in 2005 was characterized by an almost overpowering faith in technology, matched only by a similarly monumental suspicion of vertical authority – especially bureaucratic authority, although charismatic authority was suspect as well. The paradox for Linden Lab was how to realize the ongoing creation of Second Life in a way that was consistent with their idealized vision of individual creativity and liberty, while remaining indisputably and unavoidably the single most powerful institutional player on the scene.

In the next posts, we’ll give you an update on the ongoing activity of the Metaverse Republic, so stay tuned for more

Over time, a number of principles that consitute the foundations of the Vulcano community arose from the community itself, which is now growing to another stage of maturity by letting the group, and not one person, manage everything, from the finance aspects to the governance aspects, in what can be considered a lab of self-government in Second Life. They recently asked us to help them outline in a proper fashion these principles, which will result in a document which will be a part of the manifesto of the community. This is not something we usually do, but being Vulcano such a unique example of governance, some of us are willing to help them with this effort. Stay tuned for more

One of the commonest misconceptions of the Metaverse Republic project is that there is a conflict between, on the one hand, an independent system of law within a virtual world such as we are designing, and, on the other, the laws of various nations from which users of the virtual world come or the rules created by the operators of the virtual worlds and accepted by their users in their terms of service (or equivalent) agreements. In fact, there is no conflict: all three sets of rules can happily run in parallel to each other, because they each have their own independent means of enforcement, and because the existence of those rules, and that means of enforcement, is not a breach of any of the other two sets of rules.

This is what we call “normative parallelism”. The academic way of putting it is this: it is easily possible for two separate normative systems to exist in parallel in the same domain. So, for domain X, normative system A might impose duties P and Q, normative system B might impose duties Q and R, and normative system C might impose duty S, each with its own, independent, means of enforcement, without necessarily creating any conflict. Likewise, the systems might not apply the same standards in assessing an equivalent duty, so, for example, normative system A might impose duty Q1, and normative system B duty Q2, again, without any conflict. With one exception, the same is true of all kinds of normative relations, including rights, liabilities, privileges, etc. The one exception is that a conflict would arise if any normative system purported to mandate that which another normative system prohibited. (more…)

Here’s a link to the presentation that I delivered at the workshop, hoping to have some feedback on how we can make things better understood for next slides. Any input is welcome, as always.

But there are indeed some news: the Metaverse Republic will be presented at Virtual Worlds Forum in London next week (Oct 23-26), in the workshop called “Risk, reputation and virtual worlds”, where Mondrian Lykin (with his Real Life avatar Antonio Bonanno) will be delivering a presentation on what we are doing here at the Metaverse Republic. Should you be at the conference and want to touch base with Mondrian, e-mail him. We hope to see some of you there!

There are two kinds of legal systems in the world: common law systems, and civil law systems. In common law systems (which originated in the UK; common law countries include the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and many other parts of the world that were once British colonies), the law is based on the decisions of courts in previous cases(”precedent”): the courts are bound to decide subsequent cases consistently with the way in which previous cases were decided. In all common law systems, that common law precedent is subject to legislation, which, when passed, over-rides previous decisions of the court on the point, but only applies from the time that it was passed, not retrospectively. Where no previous decisions of the courts or legislation fully answers any question of law with which the court is posed, it must come up with a fresh principle, based on what fits in best with existing legislation and common law precedent. That then becomes a precedent for future cases.

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Professor Farfield also wrote a paper on the same topic (of which last night’s presentation was a very effective summary): the paper is available for download from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1002997