Could Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse still be under his control?

This article originally appeared Conversation.

Convert the Internet It seems to be the ambition that emerges when a Facebook group takes on the name “Meta”. In the “Metaverse”, everyone will live a part of their life through their 3D avatar and can maintain a certain number of social contacts there. For example, organize a business meeting.

The Metaverse, this dream that Mark Zuckerberg seems to want to achieve, is largely based on a concept that is not new, a digital world in which users can interact creatively, as well as a major advance if it comes to that. Rely on augmented reality with tools such as virtual reality headsets.

Ten years ago, we proposed in Article – Commodity Published in an academic journal to model how editors of a virtual world, such as Second Life, There, or World of Warcraft, can control the lives of their creations themselves, without the need for general organizing intervention. The nodal point is about accepting the general terms of use, which many check for correctness without reading them.

The issues are related to a specific feature. The created digital universe has the peculiarity of being static, in the sense that the user avatar is still present, at least in the lines of computer code, even after the latter has turned off his computer, tablet or smartphone.

Creativity, community, symbol and copyright

Our model is “5C”. The first “C” is creativity. This remains an essential element of any virtual world and in particular determines the success that it will meet with the audience. It is expressed through a combination of art (the quality of graphics and text of the universe), technology (the ergonomics of the virtual world, its ease of use and the security it provides to users) and social interactions.

social communication is the second “C”. The network formed within a virtual world can be based on strong connections. This is especially the case when users share a canonical link, for example a link based on product loyalty. The share of the second “C”, community expansion makes it difficult to coordinate user preferences.

And the third is cipher. It is a set of instructions for a computer that determines whether or not users can perform certain actions in a virtual world. The more the creator of the universe uses a permissive code, the more control the user has over the evolution of the universe. Tokens also ensure the security of virtual properties.

Virtual property and ip now with the fourth letter “C”, i.e. Copyrights. The idea, in countries of Roman-Germanic law, leaves its place for copyright. Once there is originality, this protection can be applied to a certain number of creations: texts, fiction, digital images, characters, building design, or even music.

Legal security? Weak points

Alone, these first four elements are not limitless. In particular, these universes cannot be the subject of continuous innovation, the larger the user community, the greater the risk of conflict, the more computer code restricts the domains of possibilities in the universe and the less attractive it is to users. On the other hand, copyright and copyright do not protect all kinds of information.

So companies resort to the fifth letter “C”: bypass. In order to access a virtual world, users must enter into a contract with the publisher company. The latter allows to establish a certain level of control over the virtual world and takes the form of General Terms of Use (T&Cs). It also aims to provide a sufficient level of legal certainty in relationships with users.

Adequate ? Our analysis of 20 virtual worlds revealed a certain fragility, at least in theory, for these decades. Not only did they expropriate all property rights at the users’ expense (or in the best case give them very limited rights), but they also expressed a clear disproportion between the rights and obligations of each party (the company and the user). All are enhanced by their lack of readability (meaning ‘understanding’) for the average user.

distribute the rights

How do you respond? Our proposals find more resonance when we talk about the potential manifestation of metaverses because the field of possibilities is more important thanks to immersive technologies, cryptocurrencies, and the intertwining of real and real.virtual worlds.

Contracts should, in our opinion, recognize users’ ownership rights over virtual goods. It is a matter of getting rid of the toxic mixture consisting of substances that are difficult to understand to the user and clearly harmful to him. Publishers will also benefit from legal tools that allow them to have permanent and equitable control of the metaverse, reducing the risk of governments taking over their regulations.

Special attention should be paid to personal data. This is necessary because the permeability between the real and virtual universes will be strong, as this data will be used for the “profile” of the user in one as it is in the other.

It also seems desirable that the contract provisions align with the development model chosen by the company controlling the metaverse. In the “free-to-play” model in which the user’s creativity goes, the copyright must be wholly or partly attributed to the latter. In particular, he must be authorized to exchange virtual goods he owns for real money.

The development of so-called “irreplaceable tokens”, thanks to the blockchain, will allow the authentication of intangible assets created in the metaverse. By doing this, it will be possible to distinguish them from potential copies and facilitate monetization, especially with cryptocurrency. It seems likely that the government regulator will remain in this field if these tokens are considered as securities.

Only responsible behavior

A final vigilance point we stress: the alignment of contract provisions and the “games model”. In fact, if the company that controls the metaverse wants to avoid real financial transactions, nodes are still not enough to discourage them. It’s a matter of being able to rely on a global community of users hostile to this behaviour, having computer code that makes exchanges difficult, and setting up a planned obsolescence that would eliminate the life-long value of virtual goods.

And the more the metaverse is an intersection between real and virtual life, the more an avatar becomes an almost Siamese projection for its user. And the more the economy of the virtual world is a real one, the more public authorities will interfere in the regulation of metaphysics. They will come to consider that regulation by contract will not be sufficient to avoid fraudulent conduct, corruption, or infringement of free play of competition, to name a few.

Only responsible corporate behavior and enduring commitment Compliance The Metaverse will prevent itself from being the embodiment of corruption in the real world. But will it really be possible to distinguish between what is real and what is hypothetical? Digitization does not create virtual reality, it builds our reality only using symbols.