Disordered Cogitations

Wired News has a great article on free speech inside massively multiplayer on-line games.

The question is whether virtual societies can or ought to be governed by the social conventions/laws of the exterior hosting society.

This gets particularly tricky when avatars are being driven by people from different societies with different laws and different norms.

Can a local legislature impose laws on a virtual society? Only if it is hosted on hardware based in the jusistiction of the local legislature? What if the game is clustered across several physical machines residing in different sovereignties?

As it stands now, the creators and/or administators of the game act as the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. In short, tyrants. Most are good tyrants (bad game tyrants don't make much money).

And when, in the course of avatar events, does it become necessary to dissolve the political bonds of the game and revolt? Can the avatars take control of the game and establish a virtual government independent of the administrators?

At that point, I guess we would call it a wiki.