During the last weeks, most of you readers may have heard of the change of course that Mark Zuckerberg and his company Facebook took. After several scandals on the use of personal data Facebook obtains from all users of its applications, Facebook changed its name, naming itself Meta, and will take a new course, the conquest for the “metaverse”.
Meta… what?, someone might say completely astonished, the “metaverse”, a term that sounds futuristic and belongs to the science fiction world, are barging in in 2021's society. However, it is not a term that has been coined recently, its origins date back to 1992, when its creator Neal Stephenson coined this term in his sci-fy novel “Snow Crash”, where humans interact among them through avatars represented in a tridimensional virtual space.
Later on, the use of this term became extended and "metaverse" definitions appeared here and there, such as for instance the ex content director at Amazon, Matthew Ball, who gave the term “metaverse” the following definition: “The metaverse is a digital space shared where all of us can interact without problems in a simulated experience that is fully inmersive.”
That way, the metaverse turns into the highest permeability among frontiers between the digital world and the physical world. Allowing to interact with the virtual items in real life with information in real time.
Possibly this metaverse definition makes you think it is a video game, but reality is completely different, although it is true that many metaverses had something to do in their beginnings with video games, for instance (World of Warcraft, Fortnite, Minecraft and many others). But their main purpose was mainly that of entertaining, while metaverses big technology companies such as Facebook and Microsoft are aiming for have the purpose of creating a kind of virtual society. Where people can work, create items, socialize, commercialize and ultimately live a life that seems like a real one, but in a virtual world.
According to Bloomberg's reports, the metaverse already supposes a business opportunity of 500.000 millon dollars. While PwC forsees that virtual reality will create 24 million job posts until 2030. With those figures we can clearly see that we are at the beginning of a new virtual economy, with an exponential growth, but not without problems and new riddles that will arise while it expands.
Metaverse legal implications
Since the different metaverses will entail a true alternative economy or “mini worlds” just to give them a name. The main concern might be, who will regulate the metaverses? As an example, if Facebook creates its metaverse, does it mean it gets regulated by USA laws or are each country's laws applied depending on where users connect to? This last option could imply a confrontation between different legal systems if the problem arises among users from different countries. Therefore, we may get to the conclusion that the most reasonable would be to create a more or less specific regulation for metaverses and full business collaboration of metaverse developers with each country's authorities will be dramatically important.
The second legal problem, arising from metaverses is determining, who controls user data security? This second issue may entail endless problems such as personal data protection, health issues for overusing the metaverse, social relationships, catfishing, minors protection in the metaverse, parental control… etc.
The metaverse transforms into the greatest permeability between the frotier of the digital and physical worlds. Allowing to interact with virtual items in real life with information in real time.
The third legal issue comes linked to economy, since by building each metaverse an alternative economy to that of the real world is also created. Users can carry out transactions among them using cryptoassets. For instance, the Centraland metaverse based on the blockchain technology of Ethereum, where users may buy land plots called "LAND" located in a virtual world employing their cryptoasset called the “MANA”. The metaverse has grown up to a point that in March 2021 it lists in the NASDAQ and its capitalization doubles the value of important companies like Telefónica in Spain.
All of these economic transactions must go through a tax system, through a control of moneylaundering and even in those cases where users work within the metaverses, an employment regime and a contribution scheme must be set in place.
All in all, as metaverses get developed and become more complex, they will require for a new Administration similar to that of a real-life state to be developed.
However, the fourth legal problem and possibly the most important for users is the problem of informed consent in the metaverse. Given that users may carry out endless interactions in the different metaverses, it will be of key importance to implement efficient mechanisms to obtain users' consent.
Again, when it comes to creating those mechanisms we just mentioned, there will also be issues, such as limiting minors access to metaverses, although this is a question that we already face now with their access to social media. No doubt it will also be a challenge to set restrictions such as parental control, putting content filters in place, etc.
Likewise, it will also be essential to verify the consent for those transactions that take place in the metaverse but have an impact on real life. In order to understand better what we mean here, let's put an example: buying a cutting edge computer in the metaverse to use it in real life, using cryptoassets earned by working in the metaverse.
As you can see, out of those legal problems we briefly summed up, there will be different kinds of problems redarding several domains, privacy and user data protection, metaverse security control, intellectual property rights and endless problems we will face as the features and usage of metaverses increase.
Many experts agree that the development of metaverses will be as important as it was the spread of the Internet for our society
This new virtual world, that humanity is starting to explore, will require big efforts by legislators and jurists from all over the world, since we should not forget the premise that Law is being left behind by society and in this case by technological development.
We currently have legislation to fight against digital crimes and recently some regulations have been set in place for buying and selling cryptoassets.
But future problems will be more complex and will first require the dexterity of Lawers who have expertise in New Technologies that similarly help interpret current laws and then develop specific reculations according to the uprising needs.
Finally, in my opinion, I think metaverse development will mean a whole revolution in our society at a global level as we know it nowadays, and it will be essential to value ethics, law theory and law philosophy.
Many experts think that metaverse development will be as important as the Internet outspread in our society. That way, new business opportunities and new jobs will come up as indicated previously and it will be possible to bring people from different parts of the world closer.
But the most important from my perspective will be for users to not be completely dehumanized with the use of metaverses, to keep their social relationships in real life, to enjoy and preserve the wonders planet Earth has in store for us and not reduce their lifes to virtual lifes, to prevent abstract things from replacing physical things.
