In Brief:
- The UK govt wants its Online Safety Bill (OSB) to make it the safest place in the world to be online.
- Bulls on metaverse can’t escape regulation and are subject to billions of pounds of fines in the UK.
- In harmony with the UK Govt, the report addresses their concerns after risks posed by Meta in a securities filing.
Metaverse as a concept has been as much of a “talk-of-the-town” as for its capabilities to invite scrutiny. The recent news and outlines created by Prof. Lorna Woods and Prof. William Perrin and backed by the UK Government straighten out its stance on virtual worlds created by companies such as Meta and Microsoft that will be subject to a new safety bill enabling the regulator Ofcom to tackle.
‘OSB regime will roughly work, with some tweaks. Or to put it another way that technology companies can’t use the metaverse to escape regulation,’ the report read.
Based on the assumption to define metaverse, the study goes on to address the issues that may get multiplied from the current digital situation, for example, intellectual property; ownership of assets; contractual issues (and not just smart contracts), consumer protection; worker protection; data privacy; issues arising from the use of AI; platform integrity; cyber-security; competition, application of the criminal law; and user safety, etc.
The primary concern among policymakers and regulators is Facebook, which has now rebranded to Meta in order to pursue its Metaverse ambitions.
“The feeling is that Meta has moved the debate on to a new type of service that avoids regulation. But that isn’t the case at all in our view. The Online Safety regime applies.”
The warning comes just days after Meta, warned investors in a securities filing about potential regulatory risks associated with its metaverse strategy.
Several high profile tech companies such as Microsoft, Nvidia, Disney, and Apple have expressed Metaverse motivations but Meta (Facebook) still appears to be the largest threat due to its previous track record regarding user privacy and safety online.
