Legal nature of the metaverse: methodology of research

Abstract

The metaverse is a large-scale network of virtual worlds that operate in real time, merging physical and digital space through the convergence of Internet and web technologies. Since the metaverse is a new object from a legal point of view, legal science has not developed a specific method for studying its legal nature. . Understanding of a legal nature would make it possible to determine which legal rules should be applied to it. The methodology of legal nature research is necessary to create scientifically based and stable regulations, as well as to understand the essence of the object under study. After analysing the existing theoretical approaches to the study of legal nature, it was concluded that this category is controversial in legal scholarship: there is no unified understanding of what it is and what its definition means for previously non-existent objects. Emergence of new objects of law brings with it certain adjustments to the very concepts of what constitutes legal nature. The proposed process of legal nature research involves three steps: first, defining the essence of the object (in this case, the metaverse); secondly, the identification of potentially similar objects; thirdly, searching for similarities and differences of the objects being compared. Depending on the results obtained, we can come to a conclusion about the similarity or, on the contrary, the specificity of the legal nature of the object under study.

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