Start of the CiP Metaverse

■ Start of the CiP Metaverse

The opening greetings from the Metaverse Project launch event are as follows.  

The metaverse and Web3.0 have garnered attention as new policy issues.

The transformation of virtual spaces into parallel worlds has been anticipated since the dawn of the Internet.

Now, 25 years since Ultima Online and 15 years since Second Life, significant movement has accumulated.

Facebook's announcement of its rebranding as Meta in 2021 flipped a switch.

The metaverse has become a field drawing in new technologies such as VR, AR, NFTs, and blockchain.

It also becomes a venue for public functions serving education and tourism, along with entertainment such as gaming and music festivals.

The metaverse is envisioned as becoming a place where economic activities and lifestyles unfold, increasing people's dependence on it.

In no time, numerous policy challenges have surfaced.

These include rules for building metaverse spaces, intellectual property rules on issues such as copyright within those spaces, handling of data and personal information, technological standardization, and even taxation system support measures.

Numerous government ministries and agencies will also be involved.

As the metaverse is a borderless space transcending cities and nations alike, the establishment of rules and methods for conflict resolution will also be key topics.

International discussions on these have already begun.

However, reality here has yet to catch up to concepts, and policy discussions remain unfocused.

In discussions, Japan's first Minister for Digital Transformation Takuya Hirai raised troublesome issues like digital ownership rights, and expressed hopes that Japan would take the lead in finding solutions.

Yoshiko Tsuwaki of Japan's Digital Agency stated that the Agency would play a role in coordinating these issues, while Shigeaki Tanaka of the Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters spoke about a soft-law approach to resolving issues of rights.

Minister Hirai, who says that building trust will be important, noted that Japan's earnest approach could be surprisingly helpful in eliminating the "fishiness" inherent in Web3.0. This is yet another major task to tackle.