Spatial News™ #011
This week we're all about IP rights in the metaverse, data dignity, and history-makers and histories of VR.
Extra, extra! Read all about it! Spatial News™ is on its 11th edition!
A fable: “Once upon a time, the wolves sent ambassadors to the sheep desiring that there might be peace between them for all time. ‘Why’, said they, ‘should we be forever waging this deadly conflict? Those wicked dogs are the cause of it all. They are incessantly barking at us and provoking us. Send them away, and there will no longer be any obstacle to our eternal friendship and peace.’
The silly sheep listened, and the dogs were dismissed. The flock, now deprived of their best protectors, became easy prey to their treacherous enemies.” -Aesop’s The Wolves and the Sheep
Don’t sheep.
Notions from the ‘Nation
XR Nation is Spatial8’s Extended Reality community made up of companies from all over Europe. Last week was the first community meeting of 2022. Teemu and I wanted to know what our community members thought about all of the metaverse hullabaloo so we had some fun with Menti. Here are some of the results:
What do you think about the metaverse?
“Its a promising concept however not so sure if it will be interconnected”
“It’s reality now”
“Probably in future metaverse will be the same as we know internet today”
“It is B2C with little place in industry. At least the Metaverse stamp is completely unnecessary, virtual/3D does the trick.”
“Emperor's new clothes”
“it was already invented in 1999 they called it Matrix“
“A new marketing name for VR/AR/XR”
Where are we in the metaverse hype cycle?
“Hype is in 5 years.”
“Enlightenment”
“In the beginning”
“Midway to the top”
“Near peak of Metaverse/NFT hype”
“Early adopters have already done their move”
“Always peaking in the media if mentioned”
“Beginning of the end”
What are some opportunities that have opened up for you/your company due to the metaverse hype?
“Take a selfie while sitting on WC and mint NFT. It'll sell.”
“Stadium level AR solutions”
“Build a new NFT platform (already in progress)”
“The investments to 3D technologies, indirectly supporting industrial 3D and XR as well”
“Put a black cowboy outfit on and shoot everyone in the metaverse”
“Gain market share. Faster than before”
“Score a corporate client that has the money to invest”
As you can see there is a wide variety of views, opportunities, enthusiasm, and sarcasm coming from XR Nation citizenry. It’s hard not to see this as a microcosm of what’s going on in the greater AR/VR community. Besides hype, the reality side of the metaverse and Web3 raises some serious legal questions about IP rights, for instance.
Expanding IP Rights for Gaming and VR
Erik Röuk, a trade mark attorney at Marks & Clerk, an ecosystem partner of Spatial8, wrote an excellent piece on what’s changing at the frontiers of intellectual property in virtual and fictional worlds. His advice? Seek advice on your IP rights for your creations and investments.
In a comment in a LinkedIn post, Simon Portman, a colleague of Röuk’s and Of Counsel at Marks & Clerk, explains that
“Much of the law [for the metaverse(s)] is already there, for example, whether one has a licence permitting the use of third party software, content and brands in the Metaverse, and just being grafted onto new settings, but there are also interesting new challenges. For example, if one is using material under a licence which preceded the Metaverse, does that licence impliedly extend to it or not?
Also, given this virtual playground is already becoming a target for predatory and fraudulent behaviour, how can service providers protect users and, to the extent that they can't protect them, mitigate their risk contractually and with insurance cover? Lawyers and underwriters are already wrestling with these issues - upsets experienced in xr can result in very real damage in the (actual) Universe.”
In a separate LI post, Simon asks,
“What scope is there to acquire trademark protection for avatars’ distinctive gestures, walks and memes in this virtual world?”
As another example of IP at the metaverse frontier, this is something I’m personally interested in finding out, too.
What is Virtual Reality?
“My intent is to describe in specific terms the formal and structural aspects of a particular form that was and is called Virtual Reality. I also want to warn younger folks of the consequences of stretching a name too thin. Back in the 1990s, that’s exactly what happened — and the form, along with the discoveries of those who created it — largely disappeared. Let’s be mindful of that this time around.”
You’d think this quote is about 2022. The article was actually written in 2016, around the beginning of the previous XR hype cycle, by Brenda Laurel, PhD, one of “the hardcore VR veterans in the 1980s and 1990s”. Her Placeholder VR experience was designed in 1993 to see if VR could be used for things other than training (in her case, art) and as an experiment in presence. Read more about her findings in the article.
Dr. Laurel’s contributions should solidify her place in the annals of VR history, and yet…
Histories of VR
The histories of VR, while helpful, always have something missing depending on the perspectives (or other parameters) of the ones that are writing up the history.
Image: A quick snapshot of VR history, Credit: G2
G2’s “a very real history of virtual reality” does a decent job (it ends at 2018 since the article was written in 2019), while the Virtual Reality Society’s history of VR adds more meat to the proverbial bones.
And because people like a good infographic, here’s the “evolution of virtual reality” by Visual Capitalist, which takes from the VR Society’s article and other sources.
What would you add from the past (Plato’s Cave? as I’ve read Dr. Heather Dobbs mention in a post or a version of the Hindu concept of Maya, a "magic show, an illusion where things appear to be present but are not what they seem"?) and what about for the years 2019, 2020, and 2021?
Data Dignity
Continuing with the theme of “the hardcore VR veterans”, Jaron Lanier’s (a big deal in the history of VR) belief in how the internet could be ‘fixed’ is captured by his and fellow collaborator economist Glen Weyl’s concept of “data dignity”:
“You should have the moral rights to every bit of data that exists because you exist, now and forever.”
This sounds like something Web3 folks would agree with, in principle. Backed by law, data dignity could be put into practice by using “MIDs” (Mediators of Individual Data) that act like unions for different types of data who represent their members by negotiating payment from the companies that profit from that data.
It’d be interesting to hear how MIDs could work or not with Blockchain technology. Oh, wait, Lanier and Weyl do go into it in this subscriber-only Harvard Business Review article entitled “A Blueprint for a Better Digital Society”. Suffice it to say, the pair are skeptical that Blockchain technology itself will be enough to truly decentralize the power that platforms like Google and Meta currently have.
The saga continues…
Thanks for reading this week’s Spatial News™! Feedback is welcome like a mat before you enter a home. And, remember, we are spatial!
Joh, Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing
Spatial8
P.S. Don’t forget to take our Future Technologies Usage Survey 2022 for a chance to get some random NFTs! Ends in February.