From Asia Times, April 25:
Metaverse ownership is complicated by fact blockchain-derived assets are governed by contract rather than property law
In 2021, an investment firm bought 2,000 acres of real estate for about US$4 million. Normally this would not make headlines, but in this case the land was virtual. It existed only in a metaverse platform called The Sandbox. By buying 792 non-fungible tokens on the Ethereum blockchain, the firm then owned the equivalent of 1,200 city blocks.
But did it? It turns out that legal ownership in the metaverse is not that simple.
The prevailing but legally problematic narrative among crypto enthusiasts is that NFTs allow true ownership of digital items in the metaverse for two reasons: decentralization and interoperability.
These two technological features have led some to claim that tokens provide indisputable proof of ownership, which can be used across various metaverse apps, environments and games. Because of this decentralization, some also claim that buying and selling virtual items can be done on the blockchain itself for whatever price you want, without any person or any company’s permission.
Despite these claims, the legal status of virtual “owners” is significantly more complicated. In fact, the current ownership of metaverse assets is not governed by property law at all, but rather by contract law.
As a legal scholar who studies property law, tech policy and legal ownership, I believe that what many companies are calling “ownership” in the metaverse is not the same as ownership in the physical world, and consumers are at risk of being swindled.
Purchasing in the metaverseWhen you buy an item in the metaverse, your purchase is recorded in a transaction on a blockchain, which is a digital ledger under nobody’s control and in which transaction records cannot be deleted or altered.Your purchase assigns you ownership of an NFT, which is simply a unique string of bits. You store the NFT in a crypto wallet that only you can open, and which you “carry” with you wherever you go in the metaverse. Each NFT is linked to a particular virtual item.
It is easy to think that because your NFT is in your crypto wallet, no one can take your NFT-backed virtual apartment, outfit or magic wand away from you without access to your wallet’s private key. Because of this, many people think that the NFT and the digital item are one and the same.
Even experts conflate NFTs with their respective digital goods....
....MUCH MORE
The mention of Canada in the headline refers not just to the freezing of citizen's bank accounts by the the State during the trucker protests but encompasses how casually, even flippantly Trudeau and Freeland went about their totalitarian business. OED via Lexico:
Totalitarian: Relating to a system of government that is centralizedand dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state.
Can there be anything more frightening than someone with a Chilliwack accent saying:
"If we see you oot and aboot in your truck, it's our money then, eh?"
well, maybe a few things
Still though, it was a bit of an eye-opener to see how quickly the government used the Emergencies Act, which is supposed to be used for, well, emergencies, how quickly they considered it just another Enabling Act. Speaking of which—and the Reichstag Fire Decree—I see that ##BlackfaceHitler is trending again in the Great White North, this time regarding the government's decision to emulate the Dutch nitrogen rules.
