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phenomenon deserves special attention in the context of our work as the second (after multiplayer games) polar example of a collision between serious and unserious, clearly having a legal dimension and once again confronting us with the question of the possible limits of the intervention of law not only from the point of view of morality, but also from the point of view of common sense.

Returning to the main theme of this paragraph, we emphasize that contemporary information culture in the context of the medial turn is such a socio-cultural context in which the problem of the semantic limits of law is actualized.221 The development of information technologies, which allow everyone to produce information arbitrarily and freely share it, is becoming one of the main prerequisites for the intensification of communicative practices, the subject of which is “unserious” information – from complex and multidimensional reconstructions of social systems in gaming multiuser computer environments to simpler cases of new popular forms of humor and satire, which in some cases take on social significance. What is important for us, the following empirical material clearly shows that law enforcement agencies currently do not have the necessary tools for legal argumentation in the event of specific legal conflicts under consideration, and it is to overcome this gap that this study is aimed at from practical perspective.

In culturology and sociology, the viewpoint according to which at the current stage of development of the information society a new information culture is formed, is justified. This approach is based on the idea that quantitative changes in the social impact of

“kinship connection”. Within the framework of the interpretation concept of this work, the “material” for the creation of “works” of actionism is the generalized symbolic media in the terminology of T. Parsons, which are described in more detail in Chapters 3 and 4 of this dissertation, and this is essentially different from the material for traditional works of art, although the aesthetic effect of the latter situationally may also speak of “social and currency value” in some cases. Therefore, the legal assessment of radical examples of corporatism cannot be considered absurd from the point of view of jurisprudence, and the maximum may be in the “border zone” of weighing different values in the application of the law.

221 Let us emphasize the connection of this observation with the main approaches reflected in legal theory and law. Thus, for example, S.S. Alekseev noted: “Each historically specific society objectively requires a strictly defined measure of social regulation, otherwise negative consequences for the social system are inevitable – its disorganization or, conversely, its excessive regulation (“over-organization”). This measure, which expresses the volume and intensity of social regulation, depends on the requirements of the existing social system, on the stage of development of society, the level of its organization”. See: Alexeev S.S. Theory of Law. – M.: BEK Publishing House, 1995. – P. 31.

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information and telecommunication technologies and “new media” in general are becoming qualitative, which leads to the emergence of new social practices and values, as well as changes in the old ones. These factors predetermine the changes in social relationships and, as a consequence, increase the problem area of jurisprudence. As it was planned earlier, in addition to special and often dogmatic problems of the philosophy of law, it allows thinking about new aspects of legal ontology. In a sense, it would be appropriate to cite the position of L. Lessig, a representative of the Harvard Law School (who, in addition to well known biographical information, was not only one of the founders of the scientific discourse of Internet law or “cyberlaw” and a copyright area activist and co-founder of Creative Commons as an organization promoting the system of free license models, but can also be regarded as a successor to the methodological direction of the “principles of social order” laid down by L. Lessig’s predecessor – L. Fuller). In a dispute with F. Easterbrook, who objected to the introduction of disciplines related to the study of legal aspects of the digital environment and built on the principle of integrating legal knowledge around new technological phenomena and practices, L. Lessig noted that the study of these problems at the present stage through the prism of technological architecture, can shed light on fundamental issues of law.222 As it seems to us, this idea is quite consistent with the methodology, the consistent application of which allows us to postulate the problem of the semantic limits of law as a problem of legal ontology.

In conclusion, we emphasize that the main purpose of this paragraph is to determine the current socio-cultural context of the problem of the semantic limits of law. Undoubtedly, the digital and game turns as components of the medial turn have an economic dimension as well. Facts from the economy can also be used to confirm the relevance of these trends in the development of society. Both digitalization and game

222Lessig L. The Law of the Horse: What Cyberlaw Might Teach [Electronic resource] // Berkman Center for Internet

&Society at Harvard University Website. – [Site]. – URL: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/works/lessig/finalhls.pdf (accessed: 26.01.2019).

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industry are linked to significant economic indicators. At the same time, the subject matter of this paper and its scientific novelty is connected, first of all, to the interdisciplinary research focused on jurisprudence, culturology and theoretical sociology, therefore, the economic aspect of the phenomena under consideration is noted as necessary and is presented in this context.223

Thus, the key socio-cultural factor determining the relevance and content of the problem of the semantic limits of law in the context of social-humanitarian and legal scientific discourse is the medial turn. The medial turn determines the shift of attention of science and socio-cultural practices towards the media as the main tool for constructing social reality. The most important components of the medial turn are the digital turn and the game turn. The digital turn is characterized by the “computerization” of culture, which poses new private legal problems and the general context of the universal problem of the semantic limits of law. The game turn is characterized by a rethinking of the meaning of games in culture, as well as the spread of game artifacts in culture. And, particularly relevant in the context of this study, the game егкт exacerbates the problem of simulation in the media space, including the problem of recognition of such simulations, because not everything that seems to be a simulation is a simulation, at least, for legal purposes. In 2010, J. Raessens gave the following example: “...media use may initially look like harmless, disinterested fun. Think of all the creative adaptations of StarWars on YouTube. It can also, however, become involved in political ends. Think of the Turkish court recently blocking access to YouTube because it allegedly hosted videos that attacked Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey; the element of make believe refers to the

223 However, we can note the following examples. Thus, according to experts, the volume of the digital economy in Russia may grow up to RUB 7-8.76 trillion by 2021, if the growth rate is about 10-15% per year. See: Expert: the Volume of Digital Economy can Reach 9 Trillion Rubles by 2012 [Electronic resource] // TASS. April 6, 2018. – [Site]. – URL: https://tass.ru/ekonomika/5100974/ (accessed: 26.01.2019). As for the global videogame market, according to Newzoo, the global game market is estimated at $137.9 billion at the end of 2018. See: Semyonov A. The World Market of Games Will Earn $137.9 Billion for 2018 [Electronic resource] // App2Top.ru. – [Site]. – URL: https://app2top.ru/industry/mirovoj–ry–nok–igr– zarabotaet–137–9–mlrd–za–2018–god–120106.html (accessed: 26.01.2019).

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dual nature of media”.224 In addition to their own games, new cultural practices are emerging that exacerbate the conflict between serious and unserious, fictional and real, such as actionism. There currently are no universal means of legal argumentation to resolve new conflicts, and the concept of the semantic limits of law is aimed precisely at overcoming this scientific and practical gap.

§ 5. Forming of the hypothesis of the semantic limits of law: virtual reality, absurdity and common sense

There is no doubt that the subject-matter domains of the representative normative sources and empirical material that relate to the topic of this research are not limited to those explicitly mentioned. The list is far from being exhaustive. Nevertheless, those previously mentioned areas allow forming enough material for preliminary formulation of the problem of the semantic limits of law that would be have empirical grounds. We admit that other examples are also mentioned throughout this work but not specifically detached to separate paragraphs and are dispersed through the text. The principal task that is reached by means of analysis of the examples that follow is to identify a set of characteristic traits of complexity of facts and/or argumentation that are relevant for typical instances that, in their turn, would allow to provide an intuitive yet reasoned hypothesis on the absurdity of interpretation or application of law, and in certain cases – lawmaking.

It may look that the previously mentioned examples are of different nature. However, when we speak about the problem of determining the semantic limits of law in the context of this paper, we mean quite definite scope of instances that are characterized by a set of invariant features predetermined by the context of the medial turn. Let us

224 Raessens J. The Ludic Turn in Media Theory. P. 14. The lecture on which this material is based was delivered back

in 2010.

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generalize these features in order to confine the subject-matter of the research further. Hence, in each of the situations that have been considered:

legal qualification of social relationships depends on circumstance that are external to the subject-matter of jurisprudence that is focused on the norms characterized by mutually determined rights and obligations.225 For instance, resolving of the question of contradiction to norms of morality depends on norms of morality; resolving the question of whether certain information pertains to the category of information prohibited for dissemination or not, depends on whether or not the information in question meets certain criteria etc.

the object of social relationships does not relate to things or imperatively set legal constructions (such as, for example, legal entities or obligations). In other words, it can be said that the object is not put into the context of cause and effect connection with the facts of real world that pertain to the present or the past.226 It relates to virtual, imaginary or spiritual world (e.g. problems of virtual property relate to virtual world in narrow sense of this word, while using of toy weapons in the course of robbery – to imaginary world in broad sense; at the same time, resolving of the question on contradiction to morality is connected to spiritual world).

there is no direct legitimate normative way to resolve the issue of possibility to interpret and/or apply law in respect of the issue in consideration at the present normative level or at the level of higher (in Kelsenian sense227) norm. For the purposes of

225An example of a case when the legal qualification of social relations depends on legal concepts can be a matter of law in corporate law (the structure of a legal entity and related legal structures constitute a rather clear and in its own way virtual world of legal logic) or in intellectual property law (the result of intellectual activity is, first of all, an artificially created legal object with the same features as the concepts of corporate law).

226We emphasize that this feature does not conflict with the group of examples that refers to “information that is no longer relevant due to subsequent events”. This is the case with this example, and it is necessary to establish whether the information is relevant (and then it is in a causal relationship with the facts of the real world) or not (in such a case, there is no causal relationship with the facts of the real world).

227For example..: “At the same time, the basic norm as the last ground for the validity of these [legal] norms is not established by an act of will at all, but is presupposed in legal thinking”. See: Kelsen G. Pure Theory of Law (in Russian). 2nd

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this research, we, as a rule, do not consider situations where a norm that directly excludes possibility to apply certain legal qualification exists. If we imagine for a second that such hypothetical norms exist, however, good examples probably could be: “Anyone is entitled to say what he/she wants, without limitation. This rule cannot be limited by anything, including any private or public interest”, or an opposite one: “Anyone is prohibited from making expressions on this topic, even if such an expression is humorous, relates to nonrelevant events or to artistic imagination”. However, we do consider in present work those cases where the higher norm does not allow legitimating the lower one, or there are doubts in this.228

the invariant nature of the next feature is probably rather subjective, but let us keep it at this stage of the research. In those cases that potentially constitute a subjectmatter of the semantic limits of law discourse, it is in principle possible to raise a question on the “absurdity” of the conclusion on applicability of law to certain social relationships. This concerns that kind of absurdity which is related to the semantic links of certain concept-words and not rules in general (it would be absurd to extrapolate criminal prohibition of murder to a “murder” of a videogame character, “because it is obvious that this article of the Criminal Code speaks about different things at all”).

Why this set of features is determined by the context of medial turn? The case is that the situations we consider became possible and common specifically in the context of medial turn and the context of the whole Chapter 1 of the research can be considered as an argument to that thesis. In the most general sense one can suggest a hypothesis that the key

edition / Transl. from German by M.V. Antonov and S.V. Lyozov. – St. Petersburg: OOO Publishing House “Alef-Press”, 2015. – P. 36.

228 As in the case of Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Violations of the Russian Federation, which explicitly prohibits, among other things, the public display of Nazi symbols in famous historical photographs showing the banners lowered by soldiers of Nazi Germany on Red Square in Moscow after their surrender. The text of Part 1 Article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Infringements explicitly prohibits public display of such photographs, but the question arises, nevertheless, as to the appropriateness of such a ban for historical or scientific purposes. Perhaps it is expedient, but this does not exclude the need for a rational explanation of why such a ban is needed, and even more so does not exclude the possibility of raising the issue theoretically.

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factor here is virtual reality which may be interpreted in the context of this work in a broad way. The cases of absurd interpretation and application of law in the context of the medial turn happen in connection with the phenomenon of virtuality, and that is why we see now a special and new case of absurdity in law that needs to be studied. One of the methodological premises of this research is that by far not in all cases the reasons for considering something in law as absurd are connected to the contradiction to morality. At the same time, as the subsequent analysis will show, its analysis would be helpful for the legal problems in question as well.

In this understanding, virtual reality or, simply, “virtuality”, intersects with the interpretation that was given by E. Castronova to the phenomenon of game, when he reconsidered the works of J. Huizinga and R. Caillois in the context of the medial turn and emphasized that in the game (and we can make a broader rephrasing by saying “virtual”) conditions we act “as if”229 something has significance and [moral] consequences. Furthermore, is also especially important to mention that we are interested in such kind of virtual reality that is intersubjective and communicative, either by nature (like virtual worlds), or under certain viewpoint (such as, for example, in case of artistic works where we, in the context of present research, are interested from the angle of “dialogue” of the author with perceiving audience).

In essence, what we understand by virtuality of relationships for the purposes of this research are the “ruins of magic circle” that remain after reconsideration of the previous hypothesis on strict separation of game or unserious spaces. It is mostly apparent in the works of M. Consalvo and R. Stenros that would be discussed later (see § 5 Chapter 2 of this research). This presents the core of the problem: while, from a naïve ludological point of view there is strict borderline between serious and unserious, in the conditions of the modern medial turn – and scholarly understanding in this case is also a reflection of

229 Here we can see the connection with philosophical fictionalism.

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processes of social reality – there is no such clear borderline. What is called by “game” in game studies research, as the textual analysis shows, it much broader – the case concerns a broad range of practices that actually constitute the subject matter of the present research. Considering that the main methodological instruments of this work can be found in theoretical sociology, at this stage we can stop on mentioning an approach by P. Berger and T. Luckmann, on which R. Stenros focuses while assessing the theories of “magic circle”.

In “The Social Construction of Reality” (1966) the sociologists mentioned that

«…Compared to the reality of everyday life, other realities appear as finite provinces of meaning, enclaves within the paramount reality marked by circumscribed meanings and modes of experience. The paramount reality envelops them on all sides, as it were, and consciousness always returns to the paramount reality as from an excursion. This is evident from the illustrations already given, as in the reality of dreams or that of theoretical thought. Similar ‘commutations’ take place between the world of everyday life and the world of play, both the playing of children and, even more sharply, of adults. The theatre provides an excellent illustration of such playing on the part of adults. The transition between realities is marked by the rising and falling of the curtain. As the curtain rises, the spectator is ‘transported to another world’, with its own meanings and an order that may or may not have much to do with the order of everyday life. As the curtain falls, the spectator ‘returns to reality’, that is, to the paramount reality of everyday life by comparison with which the reality presented on the stage now appears tenuous and ephemeral, however vivid the presentation may have been a few moments previously. Aesthetic and religious experience is rich in producing transitions of this kind, inasmuch as art and religion are endemic producers of finite provinces of meaning».230

If we follow the philosophy of common sense (see § 3 Chapter 2 of this research), there should be no special need in evidence to the idea that law, in the terminology of social constructionism, acts in reality of the day-to-day life.

230 Berger P., Luckmann T. Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (in Russian). – M.: «Medium», 1995 – 323 p. [Electronic edition] // «Library of Skepticism». – [Site]. – URL: http://skepdic.ru/wp– content/uploads/2012/11/0458680_BCA67_piter_berger_lukman_t_socialnoe_konstruirovanie_realnosti_tr.pdf_BCA67_piter_ berger_lukman_t_socialnoe_konstruirovanie_realnosti_tr.pdf (accessed: 21.02.2019). – P. 15.

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Therefore, the main question of this research that we conceptualize in the term the “semantic limits of law” is the question of in which cases law (irrespective of kind of legal understanding – the discrepancies between them are not important for us for the time being,231 because each of the types of legal understanding in any case sooner or later is oriented towards application of law in reality of the day-to-day life) may be applied in the other reality, that is different from the reality of the day-to-day life that we instrumentally call “virtual reality”. The alternative realities that P. Berger and T. Luckmann speak of, are defined by “finite domain of meanings”, and that is why we are in position to designate the limits of law researched in this work as the “semantic” ones.

The key quality of the objects of mediaand virtual reality interpreted in the context of present work is simulation (that can also be identified as imitation or mimesis232) as it is, and not just its technological basis. As the researchers note, “...postmodern is an epoch in the development of humankind, which is characterized by a non-linear development, a qualitative increase in the uncertainty of many social realities, which is associated with randomness, multiple variants and alternative development, as well as the emergence of virtual realities, in which simulacra and simulations dominate (emphasis added –

V.A.)”.233 For this study, we will focus on the instrumental understanding of these phenomena in the discourse generated by J. Baudrillard: “Simulacrum in the postmodernist sense is a sign that does not have a referent, a sign that is detached from it, and therefore has lost touch with the reality that it should have denoted”.234 That is why, for instance,

231At the end of the discussion reflected in the present study, however, we will come to quite definite conclusions about the type of legal understanding within which the methodology proposed to address the problem of semantic limits of law in a medial turn is developed.

232On the one hand, imitation, especially in Aristotle’s “Poetics” terminology, has accompanied human culture from the earliest times, but on the other hand, only in the conditions of the modern medial turn, imitation does not become a discrete reflection of any text in the individual consciousness, but forms a persistent virtual environment of referents.

233Kravchenko S.A. Sociological postmodernism: theoretical sources, concepts, vocabulary of terms. – Moscow: Moscow State Institute of International Relations (Unt.) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, 2010. – P. 12. Cited by: Bronzino L.Yu. Postmodernism: Essential Ideas and Their Representatives // Proceeds of MGIMO. – 2010. – No. 3. – P. 98.

234Bronzino L.Yu. Postmodernism: Essential Ideas and Their Representatives // Proceeds of MGIMO. – 2010. – No.

3.– P. 104.

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electronic cigarettes without nicotine or alcohol-free beer235 in the terminology of this research form the same phenomena of virtual reality in the context of medial turn as “virtual property” in multiplayer [role-playing] games (both these examples are not arbitrary – they form part of quite acute problems of practical jurisprudence). However, although this study uses the concepts of “simulations” and “simulacra” in the general sense in which they were used by J. Baudrillard in “Simulacra et simulation” (1981),236 this is where the fundamental intersection of the methodology of this study and the approach of this postmodern classic ends. The paper does not defend the thesis that we live in a society that is almost entirely made up of simulacra, otherwise it would mean deconstruction of the law itself, which would deprive the law as a whole of meaning. On the contrary, it is proposed that, metaphorically speaking, the “anchors of reality” shall be sought, the ones that establish the points of reference in law to define the “genuine” rather than the illusory, which can be formally seen in the view of social reality mediated by law as a relatively closed universe of meanings (see § 4 of Chapter 3 of this study), and substantively in the theoretical sociology and concept of generalized symbolic media (see § 6 of Chapter 2 and § 2 of Chapter 3 of this study). Philosophers point out that, in the context of the anthropological and digital revolution, “we are already struggling to distinguish between where the product of our virtual activities is and where the real objects are”,237 and “we have redundancy in representation, we have to understand which representations are illusory and which relate to reality”.238

235An inquisitive reader can continue the analogy, but we will refrain from doing so for ethical reasons.

236See e.g.: Baudrillard J. Simulacra et simulation (in Russian) / Transl. from French by A. Kachalov. – Moscow: POSTUM Publishing House, 2015. – 240 p.

237“The Realistic Turn in Modern Epistemology, Consciousness Philosophy and Science Philosophy? Materials of the Round Table / V.A. Lektorsky, B.I. Pruzhinin, D.I. Dubrovsky, D.V. Ivanov, G.D. Levin, A.S. Karpenko, E.A. Mamchur, S.V. Pirozhkova, A.V. Rodin, N.M. Smirnova, E.O. Trufanova, E.L. Chertkova // Problems of Philosophy. – 2017. – No. 1. – P. 16.

238Ibid. P. 20.