3b Governance and Law Enforcement

Foundations for privacy, data protection and data governance

Virtual Worlds (VW) represent a convergence of physical and digital realities into an interconnected and data-driven environment, rapidly expanding the ability to collect, store, and connect vast datasets. User engagement within these environments generates and processes large amounts of personal data, encompassing declared, observed, and inferred information. To ensure that VW in the EU respect the right to privacy and data protection of their users and affected individuals, it is crucial to identify, analyse, and further research the most urgent privacy and data protection challenges. Addressing these challenges is essential for fostering the development of trustworthy and secure VW.

Research topics for privacy, data protection and data governance

3b.1 Privacy and data protection by design

It is crucial to develop and implement innovations in privacy and data protection by design to safeguard user trust in VW. XR devices continuously capture highly sensitive personal data, blurring the lines between biometric and behavioural information and allowing for the inference of an unprecedented range of intimate details about users. This enables deep profiling, raising concerns about invasive user models that could be used for ad targeting, manipulation, or surveillance. Adopting principles of ‘privacy and data protection by design’ is paramount for ensuring VW adhere to regulations like GDPR and the e Privacy Directive, fostering trustworthiness and security.

Problem Definition and Research Gap: The complexity of data collection in VW, where highly sensitive personal data such as emotional states, cognitive reactions, and subconscious preferences are inferred, requires thorough evaluation. Challenges include obtaining informed, free, and meaningful consent, as immersive services often rely on implicit, continuous data collection, and users frequently lack understanding of the scope and use of their data. Issues persist in ensuring adequate data control, data minimisation, purpose limitation, transparency, and the effective exercise of data subjects’ rights, as well as maintaining data security and portability. Loss of anonymity is a serious concern, as biometric patterns can uniquely identify users, leading to continuous surveillance. Inferences from XR data may qualify as sensitive data requiring robust safeguards, and the possibility of discrimination or dignity harm from misuse of such data is significant. Bystander privacy presents an emerging challenge, as devices collect data on non-users without consent. Furthermore, new data legislation poses challenges for innovation, and significant gaps remain in understanding the implications of these regulations within immersive environments. Fragmented data governance could also inadvertently hamper innovation and collaborative research.

Research and Innovation Objectives:

• Develop, incentivise, and enable the uptake of innovations in privacy and data protection by design for VW to safeguard user trust.
• Address main challenges such as robust user consent/control and transparency, handling new data types and protecting vulnerable users, ensuring interoperability and portability, mitigating data security risks, and enabling the exercise of data subject’s rights.
• Tackle challenges related to identity and anonymity, abusive profiling and surveillance, and the evolving normative expectations regarding privacy that make it difficult for users to understand how their data will be used.
• Stimulate a shift from static consent mechanisms towards real-time transparency and adaptive governance for inferred and synthetic data.

3b.2 Evaluation of data governance frameworks in practice

Comprehensive, interdisciplinary normative analysis of legal dimensions is paramount for Europe to fully harness the economic, societal, research, and innovation potential of VW. The EU's data governance model, based on fundamental rights and values, aims to empower all actors in the data economy. This includes enabling companies to pool relevant data for more realistic VW environments while preserving commercial confidentiality, often through trusted data intermediaries. Evaluating these frameworks in practice is essential to understand their effects on technology deployment, innovation speed, UX, and cross-sector interoperability.

Problem Definition and Research Gap: Significant gaps persist in understanding the implications of current data law within specific immersive, interactive environments. Research efforts need to focus on data governance to promote the effective implementation of recent EU legal instruments, such as the Data Act and Data Governance Act, in the context of VW, ensuring parties are adequately protected without creating unjustified and disproportionate obstacles to the goals pursued by these legal frameworks. These include a promotion of competition and innovation, including by reducing barriers to data sharing, and the strengthening of the EU’s open strategic autonomy. Governance frameworks must specifically address the complex real-time data flows, user interactions, and interoperability requirements inherent in VW to enable EU competitiveness in agile global markets.

Research and Innovation Objectives:

• Evaluate data governance frameworks in practice, particularly their effects on technology deployment, innovation speed, UX, and cross-sector interoperability.
• Inform policy refinement by balancing regulatory compliance with innovation facilitation, essential for fostering Europe's leadership in digital transformation.
• Fund multi-disciplinary collaborations involving academia, technologists, policymakers, and industry stakeholders to achieve these goals.
• Investigate data governance frameworks and their enforcement in VW, including via novel techno-regulatory approaches, while maintaining a high standard of human oversight.

Foundations for governance

Governance in VW encompasses the legal, institutional, participatory, and ethical frameworks that regulate how immersive digital environments function. These mechanisms are critical for ensuring virtual spaces align with societal norms, support democratic values, and protect fundamental rights. Unlike traditional online platforms, VW blend persistent 3D environments with avatars, biometric data, and real-time interaction, raising novel governance challenges that outpace existing laws and institutions.

The European Commission’s 2023 strategy on Web 4.0 and VW recognises governance as a cornerstone of its vision: open, interoperable, inclusive, and ethically sound virtual spaces that support innovation without compromising user rights. However, current systems are fragmented, overly reliant on corporate discretion, and often lack effective mechanisms for public oversight or user participation. This chapter explores four key governance challenges and proposes strategic Research Topics to ensure that future virtual environments serve European public interests.

Institutional gaps and legal fragmentation

One of the foremost challenges in VW is the absence of a cohesive legal and institutional framework. Jurisdictional ambiguity undermines the enforcement of laws in borderless environments. For instance, when a user in one country experiences harm from another user in a different jurisdiction on a platform hosted elsewhere, it is unclear which legal system applies or how redress is pursued. Such gaps are especially problematic for issues like virtual harassment, fraud, and the regulation of digital assets.

The Council of Europe’s 2023 recommendation on democratic governance in virtual environments was a milestone in identifying these institutional blind spots, but implementation remains at an early stage. Fragmentation among Member States, and between the EU and global actors, risks a patchwork of laws that invite regulatory arbitrage by dominant platforms. To address this, coordinated legal frameworks must be explored, including potential adaptations of the Digital Services Act (DSA), Digital Markets Act (DMA), and the AI Act to immersive contexts. Research must focus on legal models that accommodate immersive experiences, digital property rights, and identity sovereignty while supporting cross-border cooperation. There is also a growing case for an EU-level governance sandbox to test how existing rules can be applied—or where they must be extended—to effectively regulate the VW.

Limits of platform self-regulation

Currently, most governance in VW is dominated by platform operators, who enforce their own terms of service and community standards. While self-regulation allows for flexible, fast-moving rule-setting, it frequently lacks transparency, consistency, and accountability. Platforms act as lawmakers and enforcers without independent oversight, leading to arbitrary enforcement, unclear redress mechanisms, and potential suppression of user rights.

Moreover, content moderation in immersive environments is significantly more complex than on 2D platforms. Moderators may be unable to review three-dimensional, time-sensitive interactions without advanced tooling, and AI systems lack the nuance to address complex social behaviour in VR. Despite this, platforms are rarely held accountable for governance failures, and many users are unaware of how decisions are made or appealed. To overcome these shortcomings, hybrid models of co-regulation must be explored. These could include enforceable industry codes of conduct developed in collaboration with civil society and regulators, accompanied by independent audits or certifications. The XRSI Privacy and Safety Framework (2020) and Meta’s Oversight Board are examples of emerging accountability mechanisms, but broader and more inclusive frameworks are needed. Research should investigate scalable governance architectures that embed transparency and allow for third-party review and user input.

Fragmented standards and governance models

The development of common standards for interoperability, safety, accessibility, and ethical design is essential for governing VW. Yet the current standards landscape is fragmented. Multiple actors— including the IEEE, Metaverse Standards Forum, ISO, and ITU—are developing overlapping or divergent protocols, creating confusion and inefficiencies. While technical interoperability (e.g., avatar or asset portability) is a necessary foundation, socio-technical standards that embed human rights, child safety, and privacy into design are equally crucial.

EU-funded projects such as OPENVERSE and XR4Human are attempting to address this by integrating ethical principles into the development of European VW. These initiatives demonstrate the importance of standards not just for functionality, but for upholding shared values and ensuring compliance with EU legal norms. However, uptake remains voluntary, and without alignment to regulatory frameworks or incentives such as funding conditionality or procurement criteria, many platforms may not adopt them. The EU should therefore lead in promoting European-led standards that are open, human-centric, and globally compatible. Research should identify ways to harmonise these efforts, evaluate impact, and ensure broad adoption, particularly among smaller developers.

Civic and multi-stakeholder participation

Ensuring democratic legitimacy in VW governance requires mechanisms for stakeholder and citizen participation. These include public consultations, citizen panels, advisory councils, and even direct democratic tools like virtual assemblies or decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs). The European Citizens’ Panel on Virtual Worlds (2023) provided a successful example of participatory foresight, generating citizen-driven recommendations on fairness, safety, and inclusion.

Yet these mechanisms are not yet embedded into virtual platforms. Most users remain passive consumers, with little say in the rules that govern them. Even in decentralised platforms that use voting systems, participation often skews toward wealthy or tech-savvy users, risking new forms of exclusion. Civic governance models must therefore be carefully designed to ensure accessibility, diversity, and accountability. Future research should focus on building participatory governance tools that are inclusive, scalable, and legitimate. This includes exploring how civic tech methods such as digital sortition, participatory budgeting, or co-design workshops can be translated into VR environments. These innovations can support trust, increase rule compliance, and make VW more responsive to societal needs.

Research topics for governance

3b.3 Develop harmonised legal frameworks for immersive environments

The inherent borderless nature and real-time interactivity of VW create significant legal uncertainties regarding jurisdiction, liability for AI-driven actions, and digital rights. Developing harmonised legal frameworks is crucial for establishing clear rules, ensuring consistent enforcement of civil, criminal, consumer, and fundamental rights, and providing effective redress for online harms. This will reduce legal fragmentation, prevent regulatory arbitrage, and provide legal certainty for users and operators, fostering a trustworthy and legally sound environment for innovation and growth.

Problem Definition and Research Gap: One of the foremost challenges in VW is the absence of a cohesive legal and institutional framework, leading to jurisdictional ambiguity and undermining law enforcement. When harm occurs across borders or involves AI-driven actions, it is unclear which legal system applies, or how redress is pursued. Current legal frameworks, including the DSA, DMA, and AI Act, may require adaptations to effectively regulate immersive contexts. There is a need for research on legal models that accommodate unique aspects like immersive experiences, digital property rights, and identity sovereignty while supporting cross-border cooperation. Additionally, a gap exists in using EU-level governance sandboxes to test existing rules and identify where extensions are needed for effective VW regulation.

Research and Innovation Objectives:

• Investigate how existing laws (covering civil, criminal, consumer, and fundamental rights) can be adapted to the immersive, interactive, and cross-border nature of VW.
• Define jurisdiction in cases of online harm, liability for AI-driven actions, and enforceable rights over digital identity and assets.
• Utilise comparative legal studies, regulatory sandboxes, and co-design workshops with legal scholars, regulators, and platform operators to help shape practical policy blueprints for the EU and Member States.

3b.4 Design scalable co-regulation models for platform governance

Current governance in VW is largely dominated by platform operators, leading to a lack of transparency, consistency, and accountability in rule enforcement. This often results in arbitrary decisions, unclear redress mechanisms, and potential suppression of user rights. Content moderation in immersive environments is also more complex than on 2D platforms, requiring advanced tooling and nuanced AI systems. Designing scalable co-regulation models that augment platform self-regulation with independent oversight and legal safeguards is essential for embedding transparency, accountability, and user rights into VW governance. This will enhance legitimacy and ensure users have meaningful recourse.

Problem Definition and Research Gap: Most governance in VW is currently dominated by platform operators, leading to a lack of transparency, consistency, and accountability. These platforms act as lawmakers and enforcers without independent oversight, resulting in arbitrary enforcement and unclear redress mechanisms, potentially suppressing user rights. Content moderation in immersive environments is significantly more complex than on 2D platforms, requiring advanced tooling and nuanced AI systems, yet platforms are rarely held accountable for governance failures. There is a notable lack of research on how to design hybrid models of co-regulation that combine voluntary industry codes of conduct with enforceable obligations for transparency reporting, external auditing, and meaningful redress mechanisms. A key gap is investigating how such systems can be effectively scaled across platforms of different sizes, including SMEs, to ensure broad adoption and equitable application of governance principles.

Research and Innovation Objectives:

• Design and test co-regulatory frameworks that combine voluntary codes of conduct (e.g., on content moderation, biometric data use, algorithmic fairness) with obligations for transparency reporting, external auditing, and meaningful redress mechanisms for users.
• Give special attention to how such systems can be scaled across platforms of different sizes, including SMEs.

3b.5 Advance standards for ethics and interoperability

The current standards landscape for interoperability, safety, accessibility, and ethical design in VW is fragmented, leading to confusion and inefficiencies. While technical interoperability is foundational, socio-technical standards that embed human rights, child safety, and privacy into design are equally crucial for upholding shared values and ensuring compliance with EU legal norms. Advancing European led standards that are open, human-centric, and globally compatible is essential for fostering a cohesive and values-driven VW ecosystem, attracting broader adoption, especially among smaller developers, and integrating ethical principles into technological development.

Problem Definition and Research Gap: The development of common standards for interoperability, safety, accessibility, and ethical design is essential for governing VW, yet the current standards landscape is fragmented, with multiple actors developing overlapping or divergent protocols. While EU-funded projects are integrating ethical principles, their uptake remains voluntary. There is a need to identify ways to harmonise these efforts, evaluate their impact, and ensure broad adoption, particularly among smaller developers, especially without direct alignment to regulatory frameworks or strong incentives. A key gap lies in fostering robust EU participation in global standard-setting efforts while simultaneously funding technical and socio-technical work to create new standards that explicitly embed accessibility, safety-by-design, privacy-enhancing technologies, and sustainability requirements, and validating their adoption through pilot implementations across sectors.

Research and Innovation Objectives:

• Align interoperability standards (covering avatars, virtual assets, data portability, and communication protocols) with ethical principles and user rights.
• Support EU participation in global standard-setting efforts (e.g., IEEE, ISO, Metaverse Standards Forum).
• Fund technical and socio-technical work to create new standards embedding accessibility, safety-by-design, privacy-enhancing technologies, and sustainability requirements.
• Utilise pilot implementations to validate adoption across sectors.

3b.6 Pilot multi-stakeholder governance bodies at the EU Level

To ensure democratic legitimacy and balanced rulemaking in VW, mechanisms for stakeholder and citizen participation are crucial. Currently, such mechanisms are not yet deeply embedded into virtual platforms, leaving most users as passive consumers with limited say in the rules governing them. Piloting multi-stakeholder governance bodies at the EU level, involving regulators, civil society, industry, and academia, will foster legitimacy and accountability. These bodies can co-develop policy recommendations, provide platform accountability metrics, and ensure VW are more responsive to societal needs and diverse user input.

Problem Definition and Research Gap: Despite the success of participatory foresight mechanisms like the European Citizens’ Panel on VW, such mechanisms are not yet embedded into virtual platforms, leaving most users as passive consumers with little say in the rules that govern them. Even in decentralised platforms, participation often skews toward wealthy or tech-savvy users, risking new forms of exclusion. There is a research gap in designing and piloting multi-stakeholder governance bodies at the EU level that are inclusive, scalable, and legitimate. This includes exploring different compositions (e.g., rotating councils, "governance observatories," permanent advisory boards) and governance models, and assessing their impact on platform behaviour and public trust to ensure effective and balanced rulemaking in VW.

Research and Innovation Objectives:

• Fund testbeds that bring together regulators, civil society, industry, and academia in advisory or oversight roles for VW.
• Explore different compositions and governance models (e.g., rotating councils, “governance observatories,” or permanent advisory boards) and assess their impact on platform behaviour and public trust.

3b.7 Participatory governance tools and civic technology

To ensure democratic legitimacy and enhance trust in VW governance, users need structured ways to participate in decision-making processes. Currently, most users remain passive, and existing decentralised governance models can still lead to exclusion. Developing inclusive, scalable, and legitimate participatory governance tools and civic tech specifically for VR environments will empower users, increase their understanding of rules, and foster a stronger sense of ownership and social cohesion within virtual spaces. This will make VW more responsive to societal needs and increase rule compliance.

Problem Definition and Research Gap: Currently, users of VW often lack structured ways to participate in decision-making processes, from community guidelines to governance reforms, remaining largely passive consumers. Even in decentralised platforms using voting systems, participation can be skewed, risking new forms of exclusion. There is a research gap in developing virtual democratic mechanisms that are inclusive, scalable, and legitimate for immersive environments. This includes exploring how civic tech methods such as digital sortition, participatory budgeting, and co-design workshops can be effectively translated into VR environments, and assessing their usability, inclusiveness, and representativeness to ensure that governance is truly responsive to societal needs.

Research and Innovation Objectives:

• Develop virtual democratic mechanisms (e.g., avatar-based deliberation spaces, voting tools, participatory budgeting systems, VR-based citizen juries).
• Assess the usability, inclusiveness, and representativeness of these tools.
• Adapt and extend methods from digital democracy and civic tech into immersive environments.

3b.8 Establish indicators and benchmarks to evaluate governance practices

Effective governance requires objective measurement to assess its quality and impact. Currently, there is a lack of defined and operationalised indicators for governance quality in Virtual Environments, making it difficult to evaluate transparency, fairness, accessibility, responsiveness, and inclusivity. Establishing robust indicators and benchmarks will provide crucial metrics for certification schemes or benchmarking tools, empowering users to make informed choices and incentivising platforms to continuously improve their governance practices. This objective will enhance accountability and build public trust in VW operations.

Problem Definition and Research Gap: Effective governance in VW currently lacks robust measurement. There is a significant research gap in defining and operationalising indicators for governance quality in virtual environments, such as transparency, fairness, accessibility, responsiveness to user complaints, and inclusivity. These metrics are essential for establishing certification schemes or benchmarking tools that could empower users and incentivise platforms to improve governance practices. Furthermore, research is needed to explore how to effectively collect and validate these data in the complex, real-time settings of immersive environments, ensuring that the evaluation frameworks are accurate and reliable.

Research and Innovation Objectives:

• Define and operationalise indicators for governance quality in virtual environments, such as transparency, fairness, accessibility, responsiveness to user complaints, and inclusivity.
• Form the basis for certification schemes or benchmarking tools that empower users and incentivise platforms to improve governance practices.
• Explore how to collect and validate these data in immersive, real-time settings.

3b.9 Strengthen global coordination on governance frameworks

VW are inherently global, meaning a fragmented approach to governance risks regulatory arbitrage and hinders broad adoption. Europe must play a proactive role in aligning governance frameworks internationally by participating in key fora like the ITU’s metaverse working groups, UNESCO’s digital ethics programs, and WSIS+20. Strengthening global coordination will support the development of shared principles, interoperability agreements, and mutual recognition mechanisms across jurisdictions, ensuring that VW develop as consistent, fair, and trustworthy global spaces, aligning with European values on an international stage.

Problem Definition and Research Gap: VW are inherently global, and the lack of coordinated governance frameworks internationally invites regulatory arbitrage and hinders broad adoption of shared principles. There is a need for Europe to play a proactive role in aligning governance frameworks internationally, but this requires supporting research that maps the positions of key global actors and develops effective diplomatic and policy instruments for cross-border cooperation. A specific research gap lies in identifying the most effective mechanisms for developing shared principles, interoperability agreements, and mutual recognition across diverse jurisdictions to ensure a globally consistent and ethically sound VW ecosystem.

Research and Innovation Objectives:

• Support the development of shared principles, interoperability agreements, and mutual recognition mechanisms across jurisdictions.
• Map the positions of key global actors and develop diplomatic and policy instruments for cross border cooperation.

3b.10 Civic literacy and capacity-building for user governance

For governance mechanisms in VW to be truly effective and inclusive, users must possess a foundational understanding of their rights and roles. Currently, many users lack this civic and digital literacy, limiting their ability to engage meaningfully with governance processes. Supporting civic literacy and capacity building programmes will empower citizens to actively participate, enhance accountability, and strengthen social cohesion within virtual spaces, ensuring that VW evolve as truly democratic and user centric environments rather than opaque private fiefdoms.

Problem Definition and Research Gap: For governance mechanisms in VW to be effective and inclusive, a significant research gap exists in creating tools and programmes that build civic and digital literacy among users. Currently, many users lack a comprehensive understanding of their rights and roles within these new digital environments, which hinders their capacity to engage effectively in governance. There is a need to develop accessible educational campaigns, explainer materials, and capacity-building initiatives tailored for marginalized communities and civil society groups. Without such efforts, even well-designed governance tools risk being underutilised or misunderstood, thus limiting their impact on accountability and social cohesion in virtual spaces.

Research and Innovation Objectives:

• Create tools and programs that build civic and digital literacy in the context of VW.
• Include in-world education campaigns, accessible explainer materials, capacity-building for marginalized communities, and toolkits for civil society groups.

Foundations for law enforcement

VW are immersive and complex environments that pose novel risks for misconduct and crime. As these spaces become sites of real psychological, social, and economic harm, ranging from cyber harassment to fraud, traditional law enforcement must evolve to address these emerging threats. The real-time, embodied nature of virtual interactions enables illicit acts to result in immediate psychological and economic harm. However, the global, complex and dynamic nature of virtual spaces challenges current legal frameworks and traditional law enforcement. Conventional legal and forensic tools often fall short. As a result, law enforcement must adopt new methods and digital tools tailored to virtual settings. This digital transformation not only extends the reach of policing but also reshapes its daily practice. Nonetheless, such new practices demand a reevaluation of rights and safeguards in the virtual context. As VW evolve, a proactive, research-driven approach is needed to develop law enforcement models that are effective, fundamental rights-preserving, and adapted to these novel environments. Ensuring accountability while protecting fundamental rights requires innovative, rights-preserving enforcement strategies. As a result, this section identifies key research areas for enabling effective and rights preserving law enforcement in VW. Main challenges include regulating new crime types such as cyberbullying and cyberstalking, cross-border jurisdiction, crime prediction and its limits in VW the design of digital evidence standards for virtual spaces and deep fake detection.

Research topics for law enforcement

3b.11 Investigation Methods in Virtual Worlds

Real-time interventions are critical in VW, where harassment or abuse can escalate quickly. Existing intervention approaches, which often depend on delayed victim reports, fail to provide the responsiveness required to maintain safety and trust. Therefore, new investigative methods are essential to effectively detect, prevent, and respond to misconduct in these dynamic environments.

Problem Definition and Research Gap: The main challenge for law enforcement is developing investigative tools that are technically robust, operationally responsive, and normatively grounded. AI tools designed to detect and forecast crime are often unreliable in real-time, high-variability environments, leading to hallucinations, false positives, or discriminatory outcomes. Moreover, the legal and ethical foundations for using such tools remain underdeveloped: due process, transparency, and proportionality are difficult to guarantee in systems that rely on opaque algorithms and pseudonymous interactions. There is a pressing need to design new methods that enhance the effectiveness of digital policing while embedding technical safeguards to prevent misuse, minimise algorithmic bias, and ensure full compliance with legal and ethical standards.

Research and Innovation Objectives:

• Develop real-time avatar-based policing systems, involving verified human or AI agents capable of providing visible intervention and immediate support in virtual spaces.
• Advance predictive analytics and AI-based crime detection techniques tailored to immersive interactions, while embedding safeguards to minimise hallucinations, bias, and wrongful attribution.
• Integrate privacy-by-design and accountability measures into all new investigative technologies, ensuring that tools are transparent, explainable, and aligned with constitutional rights.
• Establish legal frameworks for regulating immersive investigative powers, clarifying conditions for evidence collection, real-time surveillance, and lawful intervention.

3b.12 Jurisdictional complexity of immersive crimes

Immersive crimes occurring in VW frequently transcend national borders, creating complex jurisdictional dilemmas. In many cases, the victim may reside in one country, the perpetrator in another, and the platform hosting the interaction in yet a third jurisdiction. In the absence of clear legal frameworks governing such transnational digital spaces, perpetrators may exploit legal ambiguities to evade accountability. Establishing coherent jurisdictional rules is therefore essential to ensure that criminal acts committed do not go unaddressed. Legal clarity in this domain enhances users’ trust, facilitates enforcement, and promotes consistency in the application of justice across digital environments.

Problem Definition and Research Gap: Traditional legal systems are based on geographically defined jurisdictions, where physical territory typically determines legal authority. However, VW lack a stable spatial anchoring, complicating the assignment of jurisdiction for offences that occur within them. Existing legal systems do not offer adequate criteria for determining which state has the authority to investigate and prosecute immersive crimes, especially when elements of the offence span multiple national boundaries. Divergent national legal standards further exacerbate the problem, often resulting in jurisdictional paralysis or contradictory rulings. Without targeted reform, immersive crimes risk falling into enforcement gaps, thereby weakening the rule of law in digital contexts.

Research and Innovation Objectives:

• Analyse cross-border VR crime scenarios to expose legal conflicts and enforcement voids.
• Develop new legal doctrines and models for establishing jurisdiction in VW (e.g. by harm location or asset use).
• Support the reform and harmonisation of national legal systems to explicitly extend jurisdiction to immersive misconduct.

3b.13 Capturing and analysing spatial digital evidence

Investigating crimes in VW requires capturing not just messages, but movement, proximity, and embodied interaction. Establishing reliable methods to log and reconstruct 3D events ensures that immersive crimes can be proven in court. This creates accountability, deters misconduct, and ensures digital environments are not evidence-free zones.

Problem Definition and Research Gap: Existing forensic tools are not designed to handle the complexity of VW, where interactions occur across multiple sensory and spatial modalities. There is no standardisation for logging immersive behaviour and for formats of storing and reconstructing events. Furthermore, there is a need for a common legal framework for treating such data as admissible evidence. Moreover, privacy rules may limit what can be collected or shared. Without interoperable formats, legal standards, or tools to interpret immersive data, investigations remain piecemeal and inconclusive.

Research and Innovation Objectives:

• Develop forensic capture tools to log avatar movement, voice, and object states securely.
• Create analytic software to reconstruct VR incidents from multi-source spatial data.
• Define standards and legal protocols for the admissibility of immersive evidence.
• Establishment of secure data storage, chain-of-custody mechanisms, and audit trails.
• Harmonisation of forensic standards across different jurisdictions to ensure interoperability.

3b.14 Safeguarding rights during immersive investigations

The application of law enforcement in VW raises critical questions about privacy, data protection, due process, and freedom of expression. Without embedded rights protections, immersive policing risks undermining trust in law enforcement and violating fundamental rights. Ensuring transparency and legal compliance prevents abuse, protects civil liberties, and legitimises VR policing in democratic societies.

Problem Definition and Research Gap: There is a need for clear rules on how law enforcement can operate in immersive environments while respecting fundamental rights. Practices such as digital search and seizure, behavioural monitoring, and the use of biometric data lack safeguards and legal grounding. Current models risk over-collection, accidental surveillance of bystanders, or a lack of legal basis. The balance between proactive safety and user rights remains unresolved, leaving enforcement either overreaching or paralysed by legal uncertainty.

Research and Innovation Objectives:

• Embed privacy-by-design into all VR investigation tools and protocols.
• Define virtual search and seizure procedures aligned with constitutional rights.
• Create oversight systems to audit and review immersive policing activities.

3b.15 Traceability in pseudonymous worlds

In VW, users frequently operate under pseudonymous or anonymous identities. Selective traceability mechanisms may allow the lawful identification of individuals engaged in criminal behaviour, without resorting to indiscriminate surveillance or compromising the privacy of regular users. By enabling targeted enforcement actions within a rights-respecting framework, selective traceability can facilitate accountability and uphold the rule of law in immersive digital environments.

Problem Definition and Research Gap: Avatars are often not directly linked to verifiable real-world identities. Practices such as identity spoofing, the creation of multiple accounts for malicious purposes, and the exploitation of cross-platform anonymity significantly impede law enforcement investigations. While biometric and behavioural identification techniques offer potential solutions, they introduce substantial privacy and ethical concerns. Moreover, legal procedures for accessing identity-related data held by platforms remain fragmented, inconsistent, and often slow. The lack of scalable, privacy preserving traceability mechanisms not only hampers enforcement capabilities but also fosters a climate of impunity in immersive environments.

Research and Innovation Objectives:

• Design and validate AI tools for behavioural pattern attribution that can reliably detect repeat offenders across platforms, with built-in safeguards to prevent misuse or profiling.
• Establish clear legal and technical protocols for cooperation between VW platforms and law enforcement agencies to enable identity unmasking in compliance with due process and data protection standards.

3b.16 Cross-Border Legal Frameworks for Immersive Misconduct

Criminals exploit legal fragmentation across jurisdictions. An international framework for VR crime would close enforcement gaps, streamline cooperation, and ensure that immersive misconduct is addressed consistently. Harmonised laws improve justice delivery and platform accountability globally.

Problem Definition and Research Gap: Existing treaties (e.g. Budapest Convention) tackle cyber-crimes yet still lack certain rules to regulate immersive contexts. It does not per se allow common legal definitions or procedures for all VR-specific offences. Despite international efforts, legal cooperation proves to remain slow and inconsistent. Hence, without more comprehensive international collaborations, virtual crimes may remain unprosecuted or lead to conflicting legal outcomes.

Research and Innovation Objectives:

• Define common legal terms for immersive offenses (e.g. “virtual assault”, ’cyberstalking’’).
• Propose protocols for enhancing VR crime cooperation.
• Design further standards for cross-border evidence sharing, aligned with privacy law.