It’s no secret that every move you make on the internet can be tracked. Even when you are not actively searching, scrolling through a social media feed, or using your phone to navigate to a new local restaurant, your digital behavior can be tracked, analyzed, stored, marketed, and sold. But is that simply the price we now pay for convenience and connectedness? Maybe, but companies should at least tell you what they are doing with your valuable data.
Who are you, really?
Identity can be hard to define. In the real world, we don different (often overlapping) masks depending on the situation—family, work, public service or private play. Online, the distance between the “real you” and these masks is often more pronounced. We adopt pseudonyms, handles, avatars and personas—each associated with a different reputation, a different level of trust from the community, and different data (profile pictures, posts, etc.). While some may be closer to what you might consider your “core” identity than others, they are all part of your overall digital identity. As the concept of the metaverse evolves, and with the prospect of avatars that span multiple virtual environments, identity becomes more complicated and protecting it becomes all the more important.
On May 4, 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Executive Order N-9-22 to create a coordinated state regulatory approach for cryptocurrency and blockchain, with the further aim of harmonizing the state’s laws with those (potentially) enacted at a federal level. Another goal of the Order is to determine the usage of blockchain technology for state and public institutions. Through the Order, California is aiming to continue its innovation leadership by developing new and clear rules in support of the further development of emerging cryptocurrency and related blockchain technologies.
In this week’s News of Note, ransomware continues to ravage institutions—including a 157-year-old college and the government of Costa Rica—AI learns to accurately predict a patient’s race based on their medical images, cryptocurrency crashes, and more.
We’ve written extensively on the still somewhat recent arrival of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as both a potential revenue stream, caveat-filled investment destination and pop culture marker of the moment. Back in 2018, we wrote about the Los Angeles Dodgers giving away digital bobbleheads to fans, who could redeem a private hidden key to send the bobblehead to a personal cryptocurrency wallet or sell the unique serialized bobblehead to another fan. Later, we wrote about NFTs in the art world, from a burned Banksy to the record-setting sale of Beeple’s Everydays – The First 5000 Days, which sold for $69.3 million (including fees). Increasingly, the practical uses of NFTs are being examined in places beyond entertainment and IP portfolios, including the real estate market. Recently, Spanish airline Air Europa even sold the first NFT plane ticket, called a “NFTicket,” for just over $1 million.
In today’s News of Note, we explore ransomware-as-a-service profits, the continued untangling of IP issues with NFTs, the prospect of scented virtual reality experiences, the development of a humanoid robot, and much more.
Every year professional sports franchises introduce new marketing tactics and sponsorship models to increase their revenue streams—new gear, new placements for logos in stadiums/arenas and on jerseys, not to mention an array of online engagement opportunities. As the concept of the Metaverse becomes more established in the minds of fans, there is, not surprisingly, a good deal of buzz about this futuristic environment. But even as professional sports franchises announce their own forays into the Metaverse, organizations around the world would do well to consider how this bifurcation of the sporting experience (viewing the venue in person vs. in the Metaverse) creates a whole new world of marketing revenue streams.
Modern cloud computing only came into existence about 20 years ago, but now virtually all enterprises (99%) are using cloud services. Cloud adoption accelerated further in the last two years because of the COVID pandemic as a result of an increase in remote work, the evolution of online business strategies (e.g., e-commerce), and the focus on business resilience. In addition, given budget uncertainties, moving technology tools, data and storage to the cloud usually results in significant cost savings to an organization, which is the top priority for organizations using cloud services six years in a row.
Anyone who has ever been involved in a real estate purchase knows how complicated the process can be. Determining where and what one wishes to purchase, deciding how best to finance the transaction, even knowing exactly why buying something makes sense in the first place—there can be a lot to juggle before one even encounters the complexity of forms, contracts and payment mediums. While going through the process of purchasing real estate in real life, I became curious about purchasing real estate in the metaverse. What exactly would I be purchasing? What can I do on my new virtual real estate? How can I prevent trespassers? Eager to find out (and assuming it would only cost a few hundred bucks), I set out to buy some real estate in the metaverse.
Is Russia’s invasion of Ukraine altering the landscape of the internet? Can AI help historians decipher ancient texts? How did two siblings allegedly use a digital token to defraud investors? Explore this and more in today’s News of Note.
Internet & Social Media Law Blog