Regulating the Metaverse: A Critical Assessment

The metaverse seems to be on everybody’s lips - and yet, very few people can actually explain what it means or why it is important. This book aims to fill the gap from an interdisciplinary perspective informed by law and media and communications studies. Going beyond the optimism emanating from technology companies and venture capitalists, the authors critically evaluate the antecedents and the building blocks of the metaverse, the design and regulatory challenges that need to be solved, and commercial opportunities that are yet to be fully realised. While the metaverse is poised to open new possibilities and perspectives, it will also be a dangerous place - one ripe with threats ranging from disinformation to intellectual property theft to sexual harassment. Hence, the book offers a useful guide to the legal and political governance issues ahead while also contextualising them within the broader domain of governance and regulation of digital technologies.

Ignas Kalpokas is Associate Professor at the Department of Public Communication, Vytautas Magnus University where he also heads the MA program Future Media and Journalism. His research focuses on the social and political impact of digital technologies, fake news and information warfare, and media theory. Ignas’ teaching stretches across the domains of journalism and media studies, disinformation and propaganda studies, and geopolitics of the internet. He is the author of Creativity and Limitation in Political Communities: Spinoza, Schmitt, and Ordering (Routledge, 2018), A Political Theory of Post-Truth (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Algorithmic Governance: Politics and Law in the Post-Human Era (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Malleable, Digital, and Posthuman: A Permanently Beta Life (Emerald, 2021), and co-author of Deepfakes: A Realistic Assessment of Potentials, Risks, and Policy Regulation (Springer, 2022).

Julija Kalpokiene is a Lithuanian qualified attorney specialising in commercial law and dispute resolution with a particular interest in intellectual property, data protection, and IT law. She is a PhD candidate at Vytautas Magnus University, where she is a Junior Research Fellow, teaches Technology Law, and is course leader for An Interdisciplinary Introduction to AI. Julija also has experience in internet governance and policy work. Her research focuses on internet regulation, cybercrime, technology regulation, with a particular focus on AI and creativity, and more generally intellectual property and privacy law. Julija is also an active member of Lithuanian Young Bar Association where she is a Vice-Chair of Kaunas Chapter and a member at the Information Committee. She is a co-author of Deepfakes: A Realistic Assessment of Potentials, Risks, and Policy Regulation (Springer, 2022).