This article questions the preconceived notions that participants in virtual worlds are essentially consumers. Building on the existing scholarship around virtual worlds and notwithstanding the current character of virtual worlds, this paper explores aspects of End User Licence Agreements and notes the unfairness of their provisions, particularly the imbalance between user and developer interests governed by such contracts. It argues that the contracts cannot be regulated with consumer protection legislation, as interests such as property or intellectual property are beyond the scope of consumer protection regimes. Finally, recognising the phenomenon of constitutionalisation of virtual worlds, the article argues for stronger regulatory solutions in this domain, in order to strike a more appropriate balance between competing interests in virtual worlds.

This article aims to shed some light on post-mortem privacy, a phenomenon rather neglected in the legal literature. Acknowledging the quite controversial nature of the phenomenon and certain policy and legal arguments pro and contra, the paper explores the data protection (informational privacy) aspect of the issue. More precisely, the focus is on the distinction between the current and the newly proposed data protection regime in the European Union (EU), assessing how these regimes are susceptible to protecting the deceased’s personal data. The paper will note the differences between the proposed text of the Data Protection Regulation Proposal and subsequent amendments. Moreover, the paper will assess which solutions are more suitable to enable incorporation of the post-mortem privacy in the data protection regime, acknowledging the overall lack of certainty regarding the finalisation of the Regulation’s content. In so doing, this paper aims to detect elements in the new regime that seem to be promoting, at least theoretically, the propertisation of personal data, while partly disregarding its human rights basis. Having this assumption in mind and noting the difference between property, liability and contracts regimes (e.g. transmission on death), it will be argued that the new regime, at least in theory, could be perceived as promoting post-mortem privacy and, under certain circumstances, enabling better control of deceased people’s personal data. The paper, however, does not support this change and suggests that post-mortem privacy should be contemplated within the human rights-based regime.