Real Rights in a Virtual World: An Analysis of Users’ Rights in the Metaverse- cultural and psych perspectives

Project Code: RRVW- 29870841

Project Description:

The metaverse is an increasingly popular concept as companies vie to build what they hope will become the next iteration of online socialisation. Notions of how this space will look, what purpose it will serve, and how users will engage with it are, at this stage, limited. However, the concept of virtualizing our social interactions and creating a purely digital space for these interactions to take place raises a myriad of legal questions such as what kinds of harm am I exposed to in a virtual world and how can the law protect me from it? This project looks to answer these questions with three goals in mind.

First, it will establish what rights users should expect in a metaverse by contextualising legal models of protection with an understanding of behavioural science and media and culture. Second, after mapping those rights, it will analyse how territorial law would apply in these virtual spaces to protect these rights and any potential issues in doing so. Anticipated problems are difficulties applying and/or enforcing territorial law in these spaces due to cross-border scope of Metaverse platforms as well as dilution of protection of basic rights in general when expressed online. However, more issues may be discovered. Finally, this research will argue the best way that companies who control these spaces can look to fill any identified gaps through end-user agreements. This final goal will take the shape of a model for protection or advice to relevant parties operating in this field.

Anticipated Findings:

There are two key anticipated contributions from this project. The first is an analysis of how basic rights function in a virtual world. In the early 2010s, legal researchers looked into this topic to an extent as a result of the rising popularity of SecondLife, a virtual socialisation platform. However, there are still extensive gaps in the literature with respect to our understanding of basic rights and how they can be expressed and protected in a virtual world. Moreover, this project’s planned engagement with interdisciplinary subjects adds depth to an evolving body of work.

The second anticipated contribution of this project is the model for protection it will provide. It acknowledges that in digital spaces, gaps in legal protection are often filled through end-user agreements. The final goal of this project will be to construct a model for policies that should be implemented in end-user agreements for emerging metaverse applications to provide the most comprehensive protection to end-users. Such a model would not only be a useful tool academically but could serve as a basis for the implementation of actual policy for platforms worldwide.

Contact (and Director of Studies for this project): Dr Mitchell Longan, mitchell.longan@bcu.ac.uk

How to apply

To apply for this project, visit the 'How to Apply' section on the Law PhD course page.