Privacy in the Metaverse - Regulating a complex social construct in a Virtual World

Second Life by many is considered to be more than just a game. It is a social microcosmos in which fairly normal people behave normally and where (complex) social behaviour develops. As such it is an interesting environment to study social and legal phenomena. In this chapter we will look at the privacy and how privacy is regulated within Second Life. The analysis will point out shortcomings of the current mode of governance within Second Life and point at near future changes therein. 1 From Snow Crash to EPIC yearbook In 1992, some years before the Internet entered the sphere of ordinary people, Neil Stephenson published the sci-fi novel Snow Crash. In this book, Stephenson sketches a bleak future where the US government is almost completely replaced by private organizations and entrepreneurs who run sovereign suburban enclaves, ‘Burbclaves’. Other notable features of Stephenson's projection are the perfection of pizza delivery, finally, by ‘pizza deliverators’ – pizza delivery guy meets Terminator – and that people, besides taking drugs (the title's Snow Crash), have found distraction in the Metaverse. The Metaverse is a computer generated 3D environment where the players move around as Avatars. Central to the Metaverse is ‘the Street' which is '... subject to development. Developers can build their own small streets feeding off the main one. They can build buildings, parks, signs, as well as things that do not exist in Reality, such as vast hovering overhead light shows, special neighbourhoods where the rules of three dimensional spacetime are ignored, and free combat zones where people can go to hunt and kill each other.’ [1, p.23]. Snow Crash is an interesting novel, not only because it inspired Linden Lab to model what is now known as Second Life (SL) on the Metaverse, but also because of the model of governance it offers. The novel depicts a world void of the governance structures common to the Western world. Instead, it shows a libertarian society where traditional government responsibilities are subsumed by corporations and private interest, both offline and online (the Metaverse). Interestingly, Second Life is slowly moving to such a model of governance, where the corporation Linden Lab governs the 1 http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/money/20070205/secondlife_cover.art.htm