House Judiciary Chairman Chris Murphy said protections for gay and transgender people could be restored as the legislation heads through the rest of the House or the Senate.
#South struggles root out sexual full#
In January, the Ministry of Science announced a five-year plan to cultivate the fifth-largest metaverse industry in the world by 2026. Meta, formerly Facebook, described South Korea as a top-tier environment for growing the metaverse industry based in part on the people’s receptivity toward the virtual frontier.Padilla-Goodman said the ADL and other advocates would push for the protections to be added back to the bill as it moves to the full House judiciary committee next week.
The need to prevent abuse will only become more urgent as metaverses become South Korea’s favorite new ventures.
The commission promises to find a new “regulatory paradigm” for building fair and trusting digital society on the metaverse. The country’s media regulation agency, the Korea Communications Commission, also launched a council last month. Last month, South Korean lawmaker Kang Sun-woo of the ruling Democratic Party spearheaded the drafting of new amendments to an existing youth protection law, which aims to hold online platform operators more accountable. The government will likely push the industry to take stronger measures. She said it was necessary for South Korean metaverse platforms to strengthen their monitoring levels and develop technologies to prevent such offenses from occurring in the first place. The penalties imposed on users for metaverse transgressions are limited to blocking or deleting their accounts from a platform, said Tacteen Naeil’s Jung. The industry so far has been ineffective in policing itself. Even though it is illegal in South Korea for adults to initiate sexual conversations with minors, “if the offender or the operator is based overseas, it is difficult to roll out the investigation and thus makes it harder to punish the offenders,” he said. Jurisdictional issues in the nationless, borderless internet also complicate law enforcement, Koo said. Koo Tae-on, a lawyer at South Korean law firm Lin, said another problem is that current laws are limited to tackling physical harassment to human beings - pointing out that it is difficult to interpret avatars simulating sexual acts as a crime under the present legal system. This means abusive messages in private chats in the metaverse arguably are not punishable. Seo Ji-hyun, head of the Ministry of Justice’s digital sex crime task force, revealed at a recent debate that verbal sexual violence or abuse is considered criminal only when it takes place in a public space, for example. Legal experts say laws haven’t been adequately crafted to address abuse within virtual and digital realms. South Korea’s Ministry of Gender Equality and Family said in September 2021 that a 14-year-old girl had been coerced into taking off her avatar’s clothes in a metaverse and then told to have her avatar perform sexual acts. Of greater concern potentially are acts that seem like crimes but occur within the metaverse itself. The adult then used the photos to create sexually exploitative content, said the police, without revealing whether a suspect has been charged. The national police disclosed in April 2021 that an adult allegedly induced a minor to send revealing photos in exchange for in-game items in another metaverse. You can easily spot them waiting in the game room,” said Jung Hee-jin, team manager at Tacteen Naeil, a sexual violence counseling center for young people. “Sexually harassing remarks or conversations are very common. Concern is growing in South Korea that minors are being exposed to sexual harassment and assault in metaverses, as these virtual reality worlds where participants play games or even simulate life through avatars become increasingly popular in the country.
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