Virtual worlds are like The Matrix. The answer to the question: “Who should own this spoon, the provider or the user?” is, there is no spoon. Once you understand this, the discussions of “virtual worlds” bring about an eerie déjà vu--“it feels like you’re in a room,” it’s a “virtual community,” we should have a “declaration of independence” for “new spaces for self-governance”. There is code, interface, and the social relations they make possible. There is no “governance of a virtual world.”  There is simply the question of governance in the relations among users of a class of software platforms that have certain degrees of freedom in their design, resulting in a variety of social affordances, and therefore facilitating a variety of social and economic interactions.