Metaverse vs employment law: the reality of the virtual workplace
元宇宙與雇傭法：虛擬工作場所的現實
In December, 43-year-old doctoral researcher Nina Jane Patel put on a headset and entered Meta's virtual world to see what was hAppening that day. "Within seconds of being there, there were three avatars near me," she says. "Suddenly they were taking selfies... I couldn't see at first that they were groping the avatar's upper body..."
去年12月，43歲的博士研究員妮娜·簡·帕特爾（Nina Jane Patel）戴上耳機，進入Meta的虛擬世界，看看當日有什么新鮮事。她說：“我剛進去幾秒鐘，身邊就出現了三個化身。突然他們開始自拍了……一開始我沒反應過來他們在摸我化身的上半身……”
The incident took place in the metaverse - an immersive virtual world accessed via wearable technology. Last year Microsoft, in its first step towards blending the physical and digital worlds of work, began rolling out a plan to enable workers to appear on its Teams collaboration software as avatars.
這一事件發生在元宇宙——一個通過可穿戴技術進入的沉浸式虛擬世界。去年，微軟推出一項計劃，讓員工以化身的方式來使用微軟Teams協作軟件，朝著現實與虛擬相結合的混合辦公方式邁出了第一步。
But the metaverse takes hybrid working a step further, and brings with it a host of thorny employment law issues. These range from practical challenges, such as how are employees paid, to more philosophical ones, like whether avatars have a legal identity. "The legal conundrums are about as diverse as the possibilities of the metaverse itself," says Jonathan Newman, managing associate at law firm Simmons & Simmons.
但是，元宇宙一方面推進了混合的工作方式，另一方面也帶來了一系列雇傭法的棘手問題。例如從員工薪酬支付方式的這種實際問題，到虛擬化身是否有合法的身份等更加哲學的問題。西盟斯律師事務所（Simmons & Simmons）副總經理喬納森·紐曼（Jonathan Newman）表示：“法律難題就像元宇宙本身的可能性一樣多種多樣。”
"Existing laws do not account for new paradigms being created in immersive technology," writes Brittan Heller, a technology lawyer and fellow at US-based think-tank Atlantic Council in a discussion paper published in 2020. "Many questions prompted by the new technology bring us beyond current frontiers of the law: How are scans of user data collected? How is the information stored? How often is the information updated? How long is data retained?"
美國智庫大西洋理事會（Atlantic Council）的研究員兼技術律師布里坦·海勒（Brittan Heller）在2020年發表的一份討論報告中寫道：“現有法律無法適用于沉浸技術帶來的新局面，現有法律無法解決新技術引發的許多問題，包括如何收集掃描的用戶數據？如何存儲信息？多久更新一次信息？數據保留多久？”
Nor do the laws that protect employees from harassment and discrimination map neatly on to a world in which users operate digitally. Holding an avatar accountable for acts such as harassment would mean attributing a legal persona to it so it could be sued or prosecuted.
保護員工免受騷擾和歧視的法律也沒有充分適用于虛擬世界。如果要化身對騷擾等行為負責，那么就需要賦予該化身法律人格，這樣才可以起訴或訴訟他。
In a blog post last year, Meta said the "metaverse won't be built overnight by a single company." But Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg has pledged to spend $10bn a year over the next decade on the metaverse, while other big tech groups are snapping at his heels.
Meta在去年的一篇博客文章提到：“元宇宙不會由一家公司在一夜之間建成。”但Meta創始人馬克·扎克伯格（Mark Zuckerberg）承諾，未來十年將每年在元宇宙上投入100億美元，其他科技巨頭也不甘示弱。
Meta's blog acknowledged that the wait for the technology is "frustrating for those of us eager to dive right in, it gives us time to ask the difficult questions about how they should be built". Workers expected to inhabit the metaverse might be glad of that.
Meta在博客上承認，這項技術的發展是一個漫長的過程，“對于迫不及待想投入元宇宙的人來說，這是一種煎熬，我們需要在這段時間里思考一些復雜的問題，思考應該建立一個怎樣的元宇宙。”那些期待加入元宇宙的員工會為此感到高興。
