Personality Rights Protection in the Metaverse Era: Challenges and Strategies in Law and Ethics
Jianchu Zou, Xiaowei Hu
Metaverse technology provides users with freedom, openness, and immersive experiences, but also brings risks in health, privacy, and personality rights.The metaverse is in its early stages, lacking unified standards and regulations, leading to frequent issues such as remote intrusion, AI manipulation, and addiction. Establishing standards is crucial for preventing harmful incidents. This study aims to explore the opportunities and challenges in the metaverse, particularly concerning legal and ethical issues. The research employs a mixed-method approach, combining qualitative and quantitative studies, to comprehensively investigate personality rights issues and regulatory challenges in the metaverse through case analysis and surveys. The results show that metaverse users have significant concerns about both physiological and non-physiological personality rights, including health issues arising from prolonged use of VR devices and safety risks associated with virtual avatars. Users generally believe that existing laws and regulations are insufficient to address the new challenges brought by the metaverse, calling for the development and evolution of the legal system. Regression analysis indicates that the impact of the metaverse on physiological and non-physiological personality rights, as well as regulatory challenges, are the main factors prompting users to believe that the legal system needs to evolve. Case studies further reveal the security risks and regulatory challenges in the metaverse, emphasizing the necessity of legal protection.
Keywords: Metaverse, Law and Ethic, Personality Rights, Regulatory Challenges, Legal Evolution
