Intellectual property (IP) laws will be significantly harder to enforce in a world dominated by digitally monetized assets. Here’s why:
Anonymity and Pseudonymity: In traditional lawsuits, the plaintiff can usually locate the defendant. In the metaverse, users are often anonymous or pseudonymous, making them hard to find.
Seizure of Assets: Traditional payment systems and physical assets are much easier to seize or confiscate. In contrast, digital assets like cryptocurrencies are much harder to track and seize.
Imagine I create an unlicensed Superman movie as an individual and sell it online for Bitcoin or any self custodial cryptocurrency.
To enforce IP laws, authorities would need to:
- Find me.
- Ensure I am in a jurisdiction where they can enforce their laws, which is becoming increasingly difficult with increasing global decentralization.
- Impose their will on me. Also increasing in difficulty especially at scale.
- Somehow force me to turn over assets that they cannot directly seize or otherwise confiscate even if they killed me.
As a result, enforcing IP laws would become prohibitively expensive and time-consuming, making it time consuming, costly and impractical to pursue most violators who are savvy enough to leverage these decentralized systems.