Metaverse still not ready for virtual weddings and legal proceedings

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As the glob­al Web3 ecosys­tem con­tin­ued to evolve at a stag­ger­ing pace, so have the var­i­ous use cas­es asso­ci­at­ed with this niche. In a strik­ing new devel­op­ment, a high-rank­ing Sin­ga­pore­an gov­ern­ment min­is­ter recent­ly not­ed that legal mar­riage pro­ceed­ings, court case dis­putes, and gov­ern­ment ser­vices could one day be con­duct­ed using Meta­verse plat­forms.

While deliv­er­ing a keynote address at Singapore’s Tech­Law Fest 2022 late last month, the country’s sec­ond min­is­ter for law, Edwin Tong, was quot­ed as say­ing that he would not be sur­prised if, in the future, inti­mate events such as the sol­em­niza­tion of mar­riages as well as legal dis­putes “could take place with­in the Meta­verse,” adding:

“It would not be unthink­able that, besides reg­is­tra­tion of mar­riages, oth­er gov­ern­ment ser­vices can soon be accessed online via the Meta­verse. There’s no rea­son why the same can­not be done for legal ser­vices. The pan­dem­ic has already shown us that even dis­pute res­o­lu­tion — once seen to be a phys­i­cal, high-touch process […] can be held online.”

Expound­ing on his stance, Tong used a hypo­thet­i­cal exam­ple of a dis­pute involv­ing an acci­dent on a con­struc­tion site, which he believes could be viewed in a 3D envi­ron­ment using aug­ment­ed real­i­ty tech­nol­o­gy, thus allow­ing for a bet­ter reimag­in­ing of the acci­dent. “You can put your­self into the actu­al tun­nel or the oil con­tain­ment facil­i­ty to look at the dis­pute,” he added.

A hybrid out­look such as this, Tong believes, could make the dis­pute res­o­lu­tion process extreme­ly con­ve­nient and effi­cient for gov­ern­ments across the planet. 

Could digital legal proceedings become the norm?

Accord­ing to Joseph Colle­ment, gen­er­al coun­sel for cryp­tocur­ren­cy exchange and wal­let devel­op­er Bitcoin.com, dema­te­ri­al­iz­ing gov­ern­ment ser­vices that require in-per­son atten­dance is the next, most coher­ent step for nations across the globe, espe­cial­ly as the world shifts from an anal­o­gous age to a dig­i­tal one in this post-covid era. He added:

“Nowa­days, approx­i­mate­ly one-third of legal agree­ments world­wide are signed elec­tron­i­cal­ly. There­fore, it comes as no sur­prise to see mod­ern nations such as Sin­ga­pore adopt all-inclu­sive tech­nolo­gies like the Meta­verse for gov­ern­ment ser­vices. The same think­ing should apply to cer­tain civ­il court cas­es, which are still sub­ject to extreme delays due to back­logs. While jus­tice is delayed, the involved par­ties often have to suffer.”

A sim­i­lar view is shared by Alexan­der Firsov, chief Web3.0 offi­cer for Sen­so­ri­um — an A.I.-driven Meta­verse plat­form. He told Coin­tele­graph that as a space ded­i­cat­ed to bridg­ing the gap between the real world and dig­i­tal expe­ri­ences, it’s only log­i­cal that the Meta­verse will one day trans­form into a medi­um where legal pro­ceed­ings can take place. 

In his view, by adopt­ing immer­sive tech­nolo­gies, vir­tu­al legal pro­ceed­ings won’t feel much dif­fer­ent from real-life events. In fact, he believes the use of pho­to­re­al­is­tic avatars can bring a degree of human­iza­tion and pres­ence that online meet­ings fail to meet. Last­ly, Firsov not­ed that jus­tice sys­tems all over the world are noto­ri­ous­ly slow, cost­ly and the Meta­verse can help address these inef­fi­cien­cies, adding:

“The Meta­verse can have a pos­i­tive impact when it comes to the work of law enforce­ment agen­cies and oth­er legal enti­ties on issues such as coop­er­a­tion, record keep­ing, and data trans­mis­sion, as it holds the abil­i­ty to improve impor­tant process­es through the use of emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies such as blockchain.”

Not everyone is sold on the idea

Dim­it­ry Mihaylov, A.I. sci­en­tist, UN expert con­trac­tor and asso­ciate pro­fes­sor at the Nation­al Uni­ver­si­ty of Sin­ga­pore, told Coin­tele­graph that the first prob­lem when talk­ing about dig­i­tal­ly facil­i­tat­ed legal pro­ceed­ings is that of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty (IP) based leg­is­la­tion — since geo­graph­i­cal bor­ders do not fac­tor into pro­ceed­ings tak­ing place in the Meta­verse, least as of yet. He explained:

“When you get a patent, it’s valid only with­in a par­tic­u­lar ter­ri­to­ry. Yet, with the Meta­verse, it will be used by peo­ple world­wide. Peo­ple can acci­den­tal­ly vio­late laws by using a patent in the Meta­verse that is out­side its area of legal­iza­tion. Here’s where rel­e­vant author­i­ties need to deter­mine who owns the IP and under which court’s juris­dic­tion it falls.”

The sec­ond issue, in his opin­ion, per­tains to data col­lec­tion and own­er­ship. This is because main­stream tech con­glom­er­ates have for the longest time been abus­ing the data of their clients and, there­fore, it will be impor­tant that reg­u­la­tions per­tain­ing to the stor­ing and use of legal data on the Meta­verse are devel­oped before any court pro­ceed­ings can take place on it.

Colle­ment believes a phys­i­cal court­room presents fea­tures that can­not be repli­cat­ed in the Meta­verse. For exam­ple, the cross-exam­i­na­tion of a wit­ness in front of a jury to attack his cred­i­bil­i­ty is an impor­tant strat­e­gy in cer­tain cas­es. Even with advanced video-con­fer­enc­ing, some impor­tant cues and details from a wit­ness exam­i­na­tion can be missed by the jury. He added:

“It is unclear to me that the Meta­verse is ready to host tri­als. Uncer­tain­ty remains as to the enforce­abil­i­ty of Meta­verse-held judg­ments in coun­tries that are a mem­ber of the Hague Con­ven­tion but who have not yet issued any guid­ance or laws in regard to these vir­tu­al proceedings.”

Fur­ther­more, Mihaylov not­ed that the ques­tion of copy­right is quite per­ti­nent in this regard since it pro­tects dig­i­tal works across many coun­tries. He explained that nowa­days, com­pa­nies like Google are extreme­ly swift with their copy­right actions and block any sites that infringe on their rights. “Copy­right cov­ers more than 100 coun­tries, and it’s very close to the mod­el that the Meta­verse should use. But it has no appli­ca­tions yet, and no such prece­dents have arisen so far,” he added.

Are the masses willing to accept court proceedings on the Metaverse?

Mat­tan Erder, asso­ciate gen­er­al coun­sel for pub­lic blockchain infra­struc­ture provider Orbs, told Coin­tele­graph that as things stand, it is actu­al­ly a ques­tion of whether peo­ple are tru­ly will­ing to believe the out­come of what occurs on the Meta­verse as being real, espe­cial­ly from a legal per­spec­tive. In his view, most indi­vid­u­als are quite detached from a real­i­ty where they can ever see tri­als decid­ing the future of an indi­vid­ual, adding:

“I think we have some time before these things become real. How­ev­er, the more peo­ple live their lives in the Meta­verse, the clos­er we will get to a men­tal shift. There are a vari­ety of ele­ments that need more devel­op­ment before it will be real­ly pos­si­ble to have these types of core social insti­tu­tions exist there.”

In Erder’s opin­ion, the sit­u­a­tion being dis­cussed here is one that is usu­al­ly dealt with by gov­ern­ments almost exclu­sive­ly. There­fore, it makes sense for the mass­es not to get ahead of them­selves in think­ing that any of these changes are going to come in the near term. He believes that legal sys­tems have a clear pref­er­ence when it comes to want­i­ng the phys­i­cal pres­ence of all those involved in a tri­al, adding:

“Most peo­ple have the belief that being in the same room with some­one, such as a wit­ness, and look­ing them in the eyes, see­ing their man­ner­isms, etc., is impor­tant in eval­u­at­ing their cred­i­bil­i­ty. Democ­ra­cies grant defen­dants the right to direct­ly con­front the wit­ness­es and the evi­dence against them, and lit­i­gants have the right to con­front each oth­er and the judge/jury.”

Last­ly, a key dri­ver when it comes to peo­ple and gov­ern­ments get­ting onboard with Meta­verse-based legal pro­ceed­ings and mar­riages is their def­i­n­i­tion of real­i­ty. To this point, Erder thinks that as the Meta­verse becomes an inte­gral part of people’s lives, the things that hap­pen there will start to mat­ter to peo­ple. “The Meta­verse will become a micro­cosm of human soci­ety where there will be a nat­ur­al need for things like dis­pute res­o­lu­tion,” he concluded.

The future looks “Metaverse ready”

Sim­i­lar­ly, quite recent­ly, the South Kore­an gov­ern­ment announced that it had been active­ly tak­ing steps to bol­ster its Meta­verse ambi­tions by set­ting aside $177 mil­lion from its cof­fers. The coun­try is look­ing to devise a plat­form for its cit­i­zens that grants access to a wide array of gov­ern­ment ser­vices in a com­plete­ly dig­i­tal fashion.

Back in July, Meta­verse infra­struc­ture com­pa­ny Con­dense closed a seed fund­ing round to con­tin­ue the devel­op­ment of a 3D live stream­ing tech­nol­o­gy. The tech­nol­o­gy under­ly­ing the firm’s dig­i­tal offer­ing uti­lizes “cut­ting-edge com­put­er vision, machine learn­ing and pro­pri­etary stream­ing infra­struc­ture to cap­ture and embed a live 3D video (Video 3.0).” In the near term, the firm hopes to stream this unique live video expe­ri­ence into var­i­ous Meta­verse games and mobile appli­ca­tions, as well as oth­er plat­forms that have been cre­at­ed using Uni­ty or the Unre­al Engine.

Ear­li­er this year, Meta­verse plat­form Decen­tra­land laid claim to the dis­tin­guished hon­or of host­ing the world’s first wed­ding on the Meta­verse, with the event being attend­ed by a total of over 2,000 guests. The pro­ceed­ings were admin­is­tered and sol­em­nized by the law firm Rose Law Group.

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