There was a huge amount of interest in the project. It was a particular pleasure to meet Oliver Goodenough (Co-Director of the Berkman Center’s Law Lab) and David Johnson (Senior Resident Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology). They were jointly responsible for the reforms passed in the Vermont state legislature in 2008 opening the way for virtual corporations. Both Oliver and David have graciously agreed to join One Click Orgs’ Advisory Board.

One of the most interesting topics discussed at the Berkman summit was the way that virtual corporations could undermine key planks of the corporate regulation regime. Currently the vast majority of corporations are registered in the jurisdiction in which they’re located. The notable exception is the United States where the state of Delaware has a long-standing reputation for business-friendly company law which has led a lot of ventures to incorporate there.

The emergence of virtual corporations threatens to cut the tie between the location of a business and the jurisdiction where it registers. Just as shipping businesses register their fleets under “flags of convenience” such as the Bahamas where regulations are looser and multi-national firms organise their tax affairs around the laxest regimes, businesses will increasingly be free to incorporate in whichever jurisdiction in the world has the most favourable company law. This raises a host of questions about how governments will be able to fulfill their responsibilities to protect consumers and shareholders from abuses and fraud.

The invention of artificial personality and limited liability by the UK Parliament in the nineteenth century reflected a quid pro quo where joint-stock corporations gained significant privileges and protections in return for which they submitted to state regulation and agreed to place key information in the public domain. That bargain is now in danger of unraveling.

Virtual corporations pose many other questions for society. The internet has given rise to millions of online communities which will soon have an easy route to acquire legal personality. Are we ready for a world where “guilds” in the online game World of Warcraft can become corporations, own assets, have their own governance systems and enter into contracts with the rest of the world?

Important advantages are offered by virtual corporations. They will permit entrepreneurs to set up a venture in a matter of hours in response to a new opportunity and greatly reduce the bureaucratic friction involved in running a company. But we need to be sure that the regulatory regime keeps up with the challenges presented by this new world.

The event is free and open to guests, so feel free to come along if you are around in London!

Following is the blurb for the event:

For two millennia democratic systems have been designed to accommodate a set of limiting factors which the internet has rendered obsolete. This opens the door to substantially new models of democracy which are more fluid, more responsive to changing circumstances and more efficient at harnessing a society’s collective intelligence. The seminar draws on ideas explored by Charles in his chapter on emergent democracy which forms part of O’Reilly’s forthcoming book “Open Government”.

Charles is CEO of the social analytic software business Trampoline Systems, recently recognised by Red Herring as one of the world’s top 100 technology firms. He is founder of think tank CIRCUS foundation and Director of the One Click Orgs project, providing automating legal structures and governance tools for non-profits. Charles is a Fellow of the School for Social Entrepreneurs, a board member of Fondacja Techsoup and was the final person to be mentored by Michael Young.

One Click Orgs demo at OpenTech 2009 from CIRCUS foundation on Vimeo.

Meanwhile our presence at the BIL Conference was a great success. I was the second keynote in the main auditorium talking about the relationship between technology and organisational structure, the principles of emergent democracy and the One Click Organisations project. Then Emma had a main-auditorium session on the Sunday afternoon discussing the democratic open source development approach we’ve pioneered with OCO. Both sessions were well received and we met a lot of people who are interested in the project and/or have groups wanting to use it. The conference as a whole was overflowing ideas and projects. I’ll link to videos of our sessions as soon as they’re published.