In China, the “metaverse” is no longer a concept or field worthy of capital speculation, and public opinion on the mass media and interest in related academic research is waning; rather, it is shifting to generative AI and its applied industries. While academia still supports research on legal issues in the metaverse, the perception of relevant knowledge and research perspectives have already reached a kind of bottleneck, and arguments from the perspective of critical thinking continue to emerge. However, practice always brings some historical accumulation
and lessons learned. In this paper, the author examines the issue of metaverse under the framework of a broader theoretical analysis, tracing how the subject (if any) to which this concept refers has raised or developed new regulatory issues and how Chinese law and policy have responded.
The metaverse is a set of discourses or a kind of concept that imagines an immersive virtual world in which the boundaries between the real and virtual are dissolved and specific technologies are used to help users interact and collaborate. Metaverse is just a novel version of the concept of cyberspace that emerged in the 1980s, but since it can exist at different stages of technological and industrial development, there is still a problem of not being able to articulate exactly what it refers to and where it exists. The problem is that it is not yet possible to clearly explain the specific object covered by the concept. Even if a conceptual framework such as cyberspace is used to analyze the metaverse, there is no need to change the analytical framework with each investment or bubble cycle. From a legal angle,
there is no need to redesign a set of rules just because a new concept appears. What matters is
whether the reality on which the concept itself depends raises new issues. This is synonymous with the classic “Law of the Horse” question: whether “Law of the Horse” is a new concept worth using as far as the category is concerned. However, different groups (e.g., anarchists, engineers fantasizing about a technological utopia, Silicon Valley investors, darknet traders) have different views for the particularities of cyberspace. They all argue that certain “spaces” created by information technology have special interests that differ from those of traditional spaces and therefore cannot be subject to existing power structures and governance rules. The logical process
of their justification is to first establish an anarchist ideology (“Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace”)
in a political position. Subsequently, Internet companies assert their particularity through business expansion. Interestingly, this argument does not deny the existence of power itself, but rather hides that power behind a seemingly neutral technological architectural design, which is ultimately held and controlled by the founders of the architecture.
Countries have competed to establish the legitimacy of cyberspace in order to ensure their competitiveness, and have gradually built institutional systems ranging from Internet infrastructure to codes of conduct. The metaverse still relies on the existing Internet architecture, serving users through the same digital infrastructure. Its business model, too, appears not to have been newly designed, but only improved at the content layer, so investment has tapered off. The question then becomes, who actually has the drive to continue using this concept? What do they want? What rules are needed to protect rights and interests? How are the associated risks to be controlled and regulated?
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