Avatars in the Federation Council: the upper house took on the metaverse

“Legal Aspects of Metaverse Regulation”. It seems that the topic of the “round table” held on Monday in the Federation Council can leave quite indifferent to few people. Someone, having learned about it, will feel a surge of inspiration: finally, they say, the legislators have reached the hands of the metauniverses. But there won’t be many of them. Most citizens will certainly experience sincere amazement: regulation of what? What the hell is this?

Therefore, the story about the event will have to be preceded by an excerpt about the all-knowing Wikipedia: “The Metaverse is a constantly operating virtual space in which people can interact with each other and with digital objects through their avatars, using virtual reality technologies. Interaction can occur using various technological devices, using both traditional personal computers and virtual and augmented reality headsets.

If someone doesn’t “get it” after that, it doesn’t matter. The participants of the “round table” did not fully understand the subject of their discussion. In any case, there was no common understanding: everyone gave different definitions. And one expert said that the subject may not exist at all: “All these components that make up the metaverses, we somehow observed in other phenomena of our social reality: in games, in cryptocurrencies, and so on. Is there really some new phenomenon, which can be called the metaverse – now we can not get a definite answer.”

It was not immediately possible to understand what caused the interest of legislators in this, at first glance, a topic that is extremely far from the concerns of the country. The speeches of the majority of experts did not add clarity, to put it mildly.

The development of neurocomputer technologies has gained such a pace that “the level of interaction between a person and an avatar will begin to subjectify this avatar,” Vladimir Statut, head of innovation projects at ISG Neuro, shared, for example, with the audience his view on the present and future of the metaverses. “That is, the avatar will cease to be abstract object. It will begin to become part of your essence. And we don’t know when this will happen. And here a very interesting legal question arises: if you committed some crime with the help of an avatar, including one that has an effect, suppose on the real universe, what is your level responsibility… To what extent is he a part of you, and are you a part of him?

No, it’s interesting, of course. But something suggested that it was not the “subjectivization of avatars” that worried our authorities. Anyway, not only that. What worries me the most became clear from the speech of Boris Glazkov, vice-president of Rostelecom.

According to Glazkov, metaverses are “a much more serious challenge for the state system” than computer games, cryptocurrencies and other elements of alternative reality. Risks also arise for other states. “But if in other countries there are, so to speak, friendly metauniverses that can somehow come to an agreement with them, then in our country there are, unfortunately, no products comparable in terms of quality,” the Rostelecom employee warns. for us the main threat … The main strategic risk in general of this whole situation.

Glazkov believes that the main task of the state in this area is to create conditions for the emergence of a competitive domestic “metavuniversal” product. If it does not work out, if there is no product of your own, nothing can be done – you will have to subject someone else to strict restrictive regulation.

The moderator of the discussion, Alexei Sinitsyn, Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council Committee on Economic Policy, fully agreed with this assessment of risks: “If the history of the real world can be rewritten to please some political trends, then creating your own vision of any issue in the metaverse will be absolutely no problem. “We are raising our children at present, not the fact that more than they are being raised by the virtual environment. A rare child now goes to a parent for an answer to a question when Google, Alice and everything else is nearby … The state will face a big, big task : how to make sure that it does not get out of control.

The participants in the discussion did not find a key to solving this problem. “The question of how the state can influence the creators of metauniverses remains absolutely open,” Sinitsyn admitted. But the trouble is the beginning. “I hope that in the next meetings we will begin to formulate some possible answers,” he concluded optimistically, closing the “round table”.

However, it is possible that the participants of the meeting got more than they themselves think. The only commentary on the broadcast of the “round table” on YouTube reads: “Is this what you need to do now in the Federation Council? Are you completely sick there ?!” Well, that is, if you agree with the author of the commentary, the organizers of the round table managed to create their own parallel universe. Small, but local. And very alternative.