In December, a researcher put on a headset and entered a virtual world to see what was happening. I couldn't see that they were touching the upper body. They yelled at me, "Don't pretend you don't like it, this is what you came for."
Tech groups expect us to spend more time in the future, both playing and working, thanks to the metaverse, an immersing virtual world accessed via Wearable Technology.
It is not clear what rules of engagement apply in a universal digital realm. What does harassment mean in the metaverse? Is it possible that an avatar can be discriminated against? Will national legislation protect employees or will a new rule book be required?
In the past two years, the global workforce has grown accustomed to working remotely, and companies have begun experimenting with virtual reality in the workplace. It is used to train staff on how to handle guests. Microsoft began rolling out a plan last year to allow workers to appear on its Teams collaboration software as "avatars."
The metaverse brings with it a host of employment law issues. Jonathan Newman, managing, says the legal conundrums are about as diverse as the possibilities of the metaverse itself.
National legal frameworks regulate the physical world of work. In California, workers can be fired without notice, while in Holland, employees can't be fired without approval from the court. The national employment law is not obvious in the metaverse.
AdvertisementThe metaverse is just another platform. The fundamental tenets of an employment relationship are the same regardless of platform, says Jonathan Chamberlain, a partner at Gowling WLG.
Employment law is mostly country or state specific. Even if you want to, you can't opt out of your country's employment protection regime.
No one has decided what legal framework should apply to a digital workspace in which workers may be nomadic and geographically disconnected from each other and the company they work for.
There are no national boundaries in the metaverse, so the first question is, "Where is the jurisdiction with the greater connection to the work?"
Worker participation in the metaverse raises important questions about privacy and data security, given the scale of personal data that companies such as Meta expect to gather and monetize.
An investigation by the Financial Times in January looked at hundreds of Meta's applications to the US Patent and Trademark Office. It highlighted Meta's plans to harvest a vast array of data from eye twitches to nose scrunches and body movements. The data will help the company ensure the digital environments they build are realistic, but it also revealed the extent of its plans to cash in on the metaverse including using deeply personal data to sell ads in more targeted ways.
In the UK and Europe, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) governs what information employers can and cannot collect and store about their workers, including medical and personal records as well as things such as appraisals. Companies that want to occupy the metaverse will have to consider how to protect workers data while requiring them to participate in a virtual world.
Existing laws don't account for new paradigms being created in immersive technology, according to a technology lawyer and fellow at the Atlantic Council. The information is stored. How often is the information updated? How long is the data retained?
AdvertisementShe was subjected to a sexual assault in the metaverse and is a researcher at the University of Reading. She knows what it feels like to violate a digital interaction.
She says that the virtual space seems to be acceptable to behave in a way that people wouldn't do in real life.
The laws that protect employees from harassment and discrimination are not in a world in which users operate digitally. It would mean giving up a legal persona to be sued or prosecuted for acts such as harassment if it were to be held accountable.
There have been reports of sexual harassment in the metaverse, which raises the question of whether a digital being can have rights.
Sex, religion, race and other protected characteristics are not allowed to be used to discriminate against workers in the UK. In a world where people can present themselves as anything they want, do such laws still apply?
Legal and ethical issues of self-expression could be difficult. What if I presented myself as a young black woman in the metaverse? Should I be able to do that? Are employers going to say that you have to be similar to them? What extent would we be allowed freedom of expression?
In a post last year, Meta said that the Metaverse won't be built overnight by a single company and that many of the products will only be fully realized in the next 10 years.
Microsoft agreed to buy a gaming company in January in a $75 billion deal intended to provide building blocks for the metaverse, according to the company. In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Microsoft's chief executive said that he would be sitting on a conference room table with either his holograms or 2D surfaces with surround audio.
It gives us time to ask the difficult questions about how they should be built, which is frustrating for those of us eager to dive right in.
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