  This paper addresses policy challenges of complex virtual environments such
as virtual worlds, social network sites, and massive multiplayer online games.
The complexity of these environments--apparent by the rich user interactions
and sophisticated user-generated content that they offer--poses unique
challenges for policy management and compliance. These challenges are also
impacting the life cycle of the software system that implements the virtual
environment. The goal of this paper is to identify and sketch important legal
and policy challenges of virtual environments and how they affect stakeholders
(i.e., operators, users, and lawmakers). Given the increasing significance of
virtual environments, we expect that tackling these challenges will become
increasingly important in the future.
