Written by Ms. Sana Quayyum
Designation - Intern MediateGuru
I attended an enlightening webinar about Metaverse and Dispute Resolution on 4th March 2022 (5:00 PM IST), moderated by Aditya Mathur, Founding Partner, MediateGuru, and Ms. Ekaterina Oger Grivnova being the Guest Speaker.
Ms. Ekaterina Oger Grivnova is an arbitration lawyer with Allen & Overy Paris office with experience in advising commercial and investment arbitration cases. She holds a PhD degree on Inadmissibility of Claims in International Arbitration and also teaches International Arbitration and Comparative Law at Paris Bar School and the University of Versailles. She is an Editorial Board Member of Arbitration.ru Journal, Co-Chair of Paris Very Young Arbitration Practitioners (PVYAP) and Administrator of MetaverseLegal and is recognised among Top-10 Russian Young Arbitration Lawyers.
The session was talked about the legal challenges arising with the development of metaverse. It initially elaborated the concept of Metaverse and what challenges will it bring for Dispute Resolution.
A metaverse is an immersive virtual world based on cutting-edge technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Virtual and Augmented Reality, which may include blockchain. E concept can be interrelated with the renaming of ‘Facebook’ as ‘Meta’. Some may confuse a metaverse with the concept of video games wherein a virtual reality is created, however a Metaverse is intertwined with real life and is independent of your control. We can do various activities in a metaverse including gaming, working, learning, transacting, visiting places like exhibits or concerts, communicating, we can own assets, build and create things. Various features of Metaverse were discussed in the session, some are listed as follows:
· Access to metaverse and transactions therein are through cryptocurrency wallets
· Interactions pass between Avatars (animated characters possessed by user- it is a digital identity given to users)
· Assets are majorly digital
· Records with respect to ownership of virtual property are maintained on blockchain
· The users may be a part of Metaverse anonymously
· A metaverse can be centralised as well as decentralised (owned and governed by users)
Moving forward to the legal challenges generated, as broadly discussed in the session are two folds. Firstly, absence of adjusted applicable rules and secondly, lack of adapted Dispute Resolution tools. When talking about the rules the first question that pops up in mind is whether the national rules can be applicable to the disputes relating metaverse and if yes, how to filter which rules may be justifiable to apply to such matters and which are not, especially when matters related to Privacy are concerned.
Withal, we concern ourselves with the question of Dispute Resolution. Metaverse indeed disturbs the ordinary human activities in unpredictable ways. The apparent implications of the Metaverse include new parties, new disputes and new procedures. New parties on a Metaverse platform are anonymised Metaverse users which may include AI-driven robots. The new disputes arising could be classified into three categories depending upon where the subject-matter and parties to the dispute belongs, viz. Where both are outside metaverse, both are in the metaverse and where only subject-matter is in the Metaverse. These may include disputes among the users as well as that with the platform. Thus it diverts from the traditional approach to resolve the disputes so arose. The session inferred to the Nike v StockX case and Hermies v Mason Rothschild case of US District Court which alluded to the complexities arising with the use of NFTs (non fungible tokens) in metaverse created using the images of trademarked products. Thus invoking the legal question as to whether the same causes infringement or not. The case of Free Holdings v KevinMcCoy, Sotheby’s and al. And Timothy McKimmy v OpenSea were also discussed.
The new procedural frameworks viz. Traditional, Hybrid and Decentralised Dispute Resolution was introduced by Ms. Ekaterina comparing it with the Traditional Dispute Resolution which only concerns itself with litigation and arbitration in real State and not in Metaverse making it difficult in case of anonymity and enforceability resulting in frail tolerance. A Hybrid Dispute Resolution however can be considered as a Traditional dispute Resolution adapted to the requirements of a Metaverse. The rules of ex aequo et bono (latin for- according to the right and good) and lex metaversia. Thus is more based on the principles of equity rather than any particular State or Nation. It may also allow for seizures of digital assets and Seat and Hearing in Metaverse. The concept is convoluted but not unachievable. The concept of Decentralised dispute Resolution provides platform for Digital Courts specialised in dispute resolution services and are supported by blockchain technology. These innovations comprises of crowdsourcing decision makers that is Randomly selecting jurors to resolve the dispute out of a pool of various jurors, and the procedure is chain enforced that is the records maintained on blockchain automates the transfer of cryptocurrency or any other asset for the fulfilment of a smart contract, making execution enforceable.
Hence the Decentralised Justice is a new approach to online Dispute Resolution seeming to be faster, affordable and adaptable to the changes accruing in the Metaverse. The Metaverse is already in existence and though we have procedures developing accordingly as future legal practitioners we need to concern ourselves with the evolution of these procedures as the need be.
Comments