The European Commission’s metaverse strategy, due next week, has been delayed and won’t have real teeth according to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. However, there are still policy concerns about how virtual worlds will cope with issues such as property rights, technological standards, and privacy.
Once the machine gets moving it doesn’t really stop, said Patrick Grady, editor of Brussels-based website and research initiative Metaverse EU. He points to the Commission’s 2018 strategy on Artificial Intelligence, which promised a stakeholder alliance and reinterpreted liability rules, and was followed by an AI bill in 2021.
The Commission has said the metaverse will need to embed European values with topics like discrimination, safety, and data controls. There is also a fear that Web3, like its predecessor, could be dominated by big players that squash competition.
At an April hearing, Meta’s EU Public Policy Director Aleksandra Kozik was questioned by lawmakers about the impact of the technology on jobs, discrimination, and abuse by organized crime. She said, The metaverse is not one single product that will be built by one company. It is a constellation of platforms, technologies and products that will be built by many different stakeholders, by companies big and small.
The Commission may be skeptical of this, given that it has often taken Meta to task for trying to be the brightest star in its firmament. Some in the digital sector see an opportunity in whatever the Commission might announce, with possibilities like cheaper online job training and virtual factories and power grids.
However, there are also legal quandaries raised by the metaverse, including basic rights. Joshua Fairfield, a law professor at Washington and Lee University, said, Personal property interests in virtual worlds are radically undermined by the fine print in online terms and conditions.
The Commission’s own paper is about virtual worlds, plural, suggesting Meta’s might be one of several separate walled gardens. One solution is to ensure that developers like Meta work within common international standards.
Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are likely to be the technological building blocks of a decentralized infrastructure that underpins the metaverse, according to the Commission’s Joint Research Centre. This carries a risk for the crypto sphere, as extended reality tech poses substantial risks to human rights and could continue the march towards ever-more-invasive sensitive data collection and ubiquitous surveillance by governments and corporations.