TRANSFORMING LEGAL RULES INTO VIRTUAL WORLD RULES: A CASE STUDY IN THE VIRTUALLIFE PLATFORM Vytautas Čyras * / Kevin Glass ** / Francesco Zuliani *** * Vilnius University, Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics Naugarduko 24, 03225 Vilnius, Lithuania vytautas.cyras@mif.vu.lt ; http://www.mif.vu.lt/~cyras/ ** Tavae S.a.r.l. Avenue Saint Jerome 13, 13090, Aix-en-Provence, France k.glass@tavae.com ; http://www.tavae.com *** Nergal S.r.l. Viale Battista Bardanzellu 8, 00155 Rome, Italy francesco.zuliani@nergal.it ; http://www.nergal.it Keywords: virtual world, norm, legal rule, technical rule, virtual law, enforcement, Ought to Be in-world reality, translation Abstract: The paper addresses operationalisation of legal rules in online 3D virtual world software. The development is performed in the frame of a virtual world platform within the FP7 VirtualLife project, which pursues the goal to create a secure and legally ruled collaboration environment. The novelty of the platform is an in-world legal framework, which is real world compliant. Legally ruled behavior of avatars is addressed. We call this kind of ruling virtual law. A sample (toy) rule is „Keep off the grass‟. We follow the legal approach “From rules in law to rules in artefact”. It accords with the thesis “Computer code is law” of Lawrence Lessig. We also approach the concept of a code of avatars that is concerned by Raph Koster. VirtualLife implies the transformation of legal rules (which are formulated in a human language) into machine-readable format. Such a translation requires natural intelligence. 1. Introduction The paper is devoted to the operational implementation of legal rules (norms) in virtual world software. (Further the terms “rule” and “norm” are treated as synonyms; discussing the difference is out of scope.) The issues arose while developing a virtual world platform within the FP7 project “Secure, Trusted and Legally Ruled Collaboration Environment in Virtual Life” (VirtualLife). 1 Legal rules of a VirtualLife virtual world are formulated in a human language. A norm is treated as it is generally accepted in law – a rule of human behavior. However, in virtual worlds the subject of a norm can be extended (from the legal person and the juridical person) to the avatar. The operationalisation of rules aims primarily at preventing unwanted behaviour. An example of a rule is „Keep off the grass‟. It can be expressed more formally: „The subject – avatar – is forbidden the 1 Supported by EU FP7 ICT VirtualLife project, FP7-ICT-2007-1, 216064, 2008-2010, http://www.ict-virtuallife.eu.