With Disney Announcing "Our Own Metaverse", Prepare for an IP Bloodbath Across Competing Platforms

Above: Dozens among the hundreds of user-made ROBLOX worlds using Disney IP

I'm not surprised at all by this announcement, but I'm somewhat surprised that no one at Disney explained to company leadership what a Metaverse actually is:

Disney CEO Bob Chapek is preparing the company to blend its physical and digital assets in the metaverse. “The Walt Disney Company has a long track record as an early adopter in the use of technology to enhance the entertainment experience,” Chapek said Wednesday during the company’s quarterly earnings call. “Our efforts to date are merely a prologue to a time when we’ll be able to connect the physical and digital worlds even more closely, allowing for storytelling without boundaries in our own Disney metaverse, and we look forward to creating unparalleled opportunities for consumers to experience everything Disney has to offer across our products and platforms, wherever the consumer may be.”

For one thing, saying "our own Metaverse" is functionally equivalent to saying "our own Internet". For another -- and this is key -- a Metaverse by definition is an immersive experience that is editable and expandable by all its users.

Which in very practical terms in this context, means: Millions and millions of users creating and engaging with content that lifts and incorporates Disney intellectual property, in all kinds of infringing and unauthorized ways. 

That's plainly obvious to anyone personally involved in metaverse platforms, and even evident after just a few minutes of online searching. ROBLOX, the largest self-styled Metaverse, has hundreds if not thousands of user-created worlds that use infringing Disney IP (see above). And Disney is famously (and very litigiously) protective of its intellectual property. Again, from just a few minutes of searching, you find stories like this:

Above: Dozens of fan-made worlds in VRChat using Disney IP

The [Star Wars action figure] image had quickly spread through social media—and just as fast, Lucasfilm, its owner Disney, and at least one third-party content policing company have blanketed the Internet with Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices.

Carvalho's husband replaced the Facebook post with a note telling her followers the images must be kept off her site.

For the most part, major IP holders like Disney do look the other way when it comes to fan-made game mods, machinima, and other UGC based on their property -- for one thing, they don't want to alienate consumers by filing DMCAs against their most passionate fans. However, this dynamic will likely change when that fan-made content goes in direct competition with Disney's own corporate plans. What do you suppose happens when Disney realizes "our own metaverse" is effectively competing against fan-made knockoffs of its own IP on platforms like ROBLOX, VRChat etc.?

I'd prepare for an IP/DMCA bloodbath, myself.

I was just writing about the lessons from Second Life that Facebook/Meta would be well to learn, and this one applies to Disney as well: IP rights on Metaverse platforms with user-generated content are an incredibly thorny problem still yet to be fully solved.

Comments

[Joey1058]

How is it that those using Disney IP seem to be oblivious to the implications up ahead? Viacom is brutal in anything related to the Star Trek franchise, alone. This makes me wonder how Meta is going to deal with these thorny issues up the road.

[camilia fid3lis nee Patchouli Woollahra]

They're going to force the 29 different takes on the Haunted House in SL to shutter in favor of their proprietary blend served up in their own metaversal theme park. Betcha on that. It would be wise for Theme park owners in SL to start planning and designing their own unique properties instead of adapting EPCOT or Disneyland, however stage-accurate those adaptations are.