Following the news that the EU Council has formally adopted both the draft Digital Services Act (DSA) and a Digital Markets Act (DMA), which will allow for better control over the spread of counterfeit goods, hate speech, cyber threats, disinformation and unfair digital services competition within member states;
Emma Mohr-McClune, Technology Service Director at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, comments: “Whereas the internet grew up in a regulatory Wild West, future metaverse experiences for Europeans will need to be governed by the simple maxim that ‘what’s illegal offline will also be deemed illegal in the metaverse’.
The EU’s twin internet-regulation package will no doubt influence the technology industry’s approach to shaping the metaverse, and the EU’s latest decision has brought it one important step closer to legislation.
In particular, the DMA defining larger digital platforms and service providers as ‘gatekeepers’ of online content – as opposed to the long-disputed ‘content providers’ role – will put further pressure on global social networks such as Meta (formerly known as Facebook) to better police their own platforms. The granularity of societal and economic responsibilities implied within ‘gatekeeper’ creates an attractive regulatory template for other markets to consider replicating.
Taken as a whole, the DMA and DSA will usher in an era of faster EU regulatory action, and larger fines for violators; potentially up to 10% of global turnover.”
