2023-07-11 13:39:17
According to a leaked European Commission strategy document, the European Union (EU) is preparing to develop a metaverse strategy, with a particular focus on regulatory and governance issues. It seems that although the metaverse frenzy has died down somewhat recently, the EU reckons that the issue still needs to be addressed. The leaked material also puts into perspective regulatory relaxations and deals with institutions still unknown in European law, such as DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations). The document emphasizes that virtual worlds offer unprecedented opportunities in many social fields, including healthcare, education and culture – not only can new technologies bring a paradigm shift, but also new types of management and collaboration. They also address the problem that central control currently covers a relatively narrow area of the Internet infrastructure – here they can think of large international organizations such as ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), which distributes domain names: “The Commission supports will establish a multi-stakeholder technical governance process to address essential aspects of virtual worlds and Web4 that are beyond the purview of existing Internet governance institutions’. By the end of next year, the Commission plans to explore the potential of new digital collaboration models (including DAOs) that are the basis of many new financial applications. In addition, they will examine what legal, administrative and economic obstacles prevent the spread of these models. According to the document, at the beginning of next year, similar to the crypto sandbox, the creation of a regulatory metaverse sandbox will also be supported. This will provide an opportunity to test new metaverse developments in a controlled environment, while developers are not at risk of conflicting with the legal framework. The authors of the document expressed their concerns regarding vested interests hindering innovation and the protection of brands and digital rights online. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen saw the document last September, and officials said they wanted the metaverse to preserve EU values such as privacy and fundamental rights. The Commission’s spokesperson has not yet responded to the proposal.
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