A "Decentralized autonomous organization ('DAO')" white paper has been published by German blockchain company Slock.it UG. This white paper is part of a larger conversation that's been going on for a few years in the Bitcoin/blockchain world. The basic idea is to build a software program that runs like a company, but on a decentralized software platform (e.g. Ethereum). Slock.it's paper is one of the longer contributions to this effort (31 pages, including code examples).
This blog post details a few thoughts on the Slock.it proposal, from a lawyer's point of view.