Investment firm Galaxy Digital, after reviewing metaverse policies in the market, said that no company creating virtual worlds guarantees the protection of game property rights.
Galaxy Digital posted a report expressing concern that the metaverse could not become truly decentralized unless action was taken to protect users’ digital property rights. The authors of the report noted that if digital property in the metaverse were owned by companies and not by users, then it would be comparable to social credit or rent.
“If these issues are not addressed now, then decentralized metaverses will not be significantly different from those created by Web2 giants like Meta,” the report says.
As an example of companies granting digital property rights to users, the authors of the report cite the licensing agreements of the metaverse The Sandbox and Decentraland. According to them, both companies are “worthily” trying to transfer ownership of the content to their users. However, in both cases, they retain all intellectual property associated with the sale of land in the metaverses.
Experts emphasize that even if users own the rights to the content, there is no guarantee that the operator of the metaverse will support it in their virtual world. The content moderation policy allows them to disallow or remove content regardless of intellectual property rights.
“Merely owning the rights to a character’s avatar, for example, does not guarantee that Decentraland or The Sandbox will allow it to be used in the game. In the absence of a third-party alternative world in which to place your user-generated content, its effective use depends on the consent of the operator of the metaverse, ”the authors of the report say.
American billionaire and cryptocurrency enthusiast Mark Cuban believes that investing in the purchase of real estate in the metaverses is an extremely unfortunate and even “stupid” idea.
