Regulating the Metaverse
A multi-jurisdiction legal approach to understanding the Metaverse and ascertaining if it is a lawless digital zone.
A commentary 6 months after my first commentary… let’s dive into chapter one shall we?
When I first wrote my masters thesis on regulating the Metaverse, I thought I had hit the goldmine of academic literature. There had been few commentaries on this somewhat fantastical digital ecosystem, which inevitably made my legal arguments and theories more valuable within the realm of academia.
However, fast forward 6 months into the future and I have a better understanding of where I hit the mark regarding legal critique and analysis and where I perhaps got far too exited about the innovation and progression of technology that my ideas were a tad expansive.
Chapter 1: A summary of “What is the Metaverse? Challenges, definition uncertainty and the law.”
When I wrote this chapter, understanding what ‘the’ Metaverse was, within a legal critique, was difficult. Not because the idea and concept wasn’t graspable but because there wasn't an agreed definition that new or previous laws could be based on. You see in law, definitions are everything. They underpin the building blocks of society and ascertain whether an entity breaks the law or not. Similarly, it wasn't concluded if there was one primary Metaverse, or multiple other Metaverses. Understanding this is critical as it needs to be determined if it is one main digital envrionment that needs to be legally regulated, or many. Therefore, 6 months ago, due to the definition uncertainty, the application of the term metaverse within the legal realm was close to impossible.
A primary reason why application was not simple, is because in 2021 Meta (Facebook) evolved the 1992 Neil Stephenson novel definition into the 21st century depicting an ‘open’ landscape that constructed a cyber space that was easier for digital asset transfers and immersive entertainment for its users. Meta’s version of the Metaverse was legitimised internationally, by lawyers, academics, and politicians alike. Whereas others argued “metaverses” such as roblox and decentraland were not legitimised to the same degree. For Meta, the definition of the Metaverse actually reflected a new reality rather than an extension of our current one which was characterised based on the employ of “full-dive” immersive technology and the level of immersive-ness felt by users. For fully immersive virtual environments, the law, whether national or international, needs to account for the level of immersion felt and how that immersion is to be measured and legally defined as the current precariousness of immersion creates a slippery slope for privacy rights as well as civil (torts) and criminal (assault/ bodily harm) law. Whilst virtual reality engineers have their own techniques to quantify immersion, this has not yet been implemented or codified into any national or international law and cyber strategy.
Do I still agree or have I dissented from my previous view?
Firstly, it must be noted that I now believe that a Metaverse extends far beyond Meta’s depiction. Within 6 months, the world has created hundreds of more Metaverse’s which are independent in their own creation and right.
Within chapter one I agreed with academics Albakajai and Adams that the traditional laws centered around governing cyberspace had become outdated and invalid for further developed cyber activities like the creation of Meta’s Metaverse. I still do believe that national and international law is too archaic to apply to Meta’s Metaverse. However, 6 months later I believe that ‘some’ Metaverses such as virtual communications platforms, can be regulated by traditional laws (such as the Computer Misuse Act) as they do not employ the same full-dive technology that fully immersive Metaverses aim to offer.
I still believe that Meta’s Metaverse is a dynamic, ever- evolving world that fails to create any static definition that encapsulates an understanding of what the environment truly is. However, 6 months ago I believed that the understanding of the Metaverse was purely based on Meta’s depiction and not the evolved technology landscape that is today.
On the contrary, whilst the world has progressed, and the creation of Metaverses have flourished with some codification of defintions that have been created by scholars, business professionals and lawyers. Fundamentally, there is still no concrete definition or legal understanding of what the Metaverse (or Metaverses) is and how the user interacts with the Metaverse and real space. Thus new legal frameworks will still be difficult to create, and existing legal frameworks will nonetheless be difficult to apply.
