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The Technology Craze has hit a new ceiling in the form of “Metaverse” which is an attempt to create a “Digital Game” and give it “Legal approval”.

In pursuance of this craze, it has been reported that the first meta verse wedding has taken place in India when one Mr Abhijeet Goel, a tech entrepreneur married Dr Sansriti, a dentist. Abhijeet is located in Bhopal.  The wedding is reported to have taken place on Youg Metaverse, a made in India metaverse platform. The wedding was held on 5th February 2022 between 8.00 pm and 9.00 pm. The digital avatars of the couple appeared to have participated in the wedding process.

The following link provides more information about the way the metaverse wedding took place.

Link: Article in Rediff.com

You can see parts of the wedding videos here.

It appears that the wedding was hosted as a 3D platform and probably we should treat it as a version of the Meta Verse similar to the secondlife.com, as compared to the Meta Verse instances which may require a special VR goggles to participate.

500 registered participants attended the wedding set in a beach environment.

From the sketchy reports available at present, it appears that the wedding was held in the physical space in front of limited family members at a proper muhurtham. Subsequently it appears that the marriage game has been hosted on the Yug Metaverse platform where the registered participants were able to create their own avatars and interact with each other.

It was therefore like a webcasting of the reception to which you could attend virtually. The couple were also present in their “Virtual Avatar” to  receive the greetings.

Naavi had discussed the implications of “Cyber Marriage” way back in 2005.

The article “Should Cyber Marriages be Banned”

 was published on May 1, 2005 discussing the legal implications of Cyber Marriages. This article was prompted at that time by a Cyber Crime complaint in Chennai. One person had filed a complaint with the Police that he was married to a lady through Internet and the family of the girl was preventing the girl to move to the bride’s home. The marriage was claimed to have been consummated in a Chat room”.

At that time it was pointed out that if a marriage can be consummated by a “Contract”, it is possible to consummate such marriages and it was not desirable. Hindu marriage however is not a contract marriage and requires “Saptapadi” as an essential part of the marriage though “Tying the Mangala Sutra” or “Opening of the Antarpata” is considered as also specific events during the marriage to determine the completion of marriage.

Considering the possibility of “Chat room “conversations being treated as “Marriages” and girls being subject to harassment, it was suggested that a specific amendment could be made to Section 1(4) of ITA 2000 to place “Contract Marriage” outside the scope of recognition under ITA 2000.

P.S: I have suggested the same kind of amendment to Section 1(4) to de-recognize Crypto currencies as valid electronic documents. This would be the simplest way of banning Crypto Currencies. (See the article: Regulate Bitcoins through ITA 2000 notifications under Section 1(4) and 69/69A/69B)

The Abhijeet marriage is not really a “Cyber Marriage” and hence there should be no legal issue about the validity of the marriage.

However, in future, some other persons may be tempted to use a pure Meta Verse marriage by two digital avatars present in different places tying a virtual Mangala sutra and claiming marriage.

It is found that UTAH has an official online wedding scheme .

The UTAH online wedding requires email request to be sent to the registrar with identity documents and selfies with a payment of a license fee of US $145 (for international couples and $ 70 for local couples).

We are aware that there have been several instances of Cyber Crimes being committed on secondlife.com like platforms where the digital avatar commits a crime against another digital avatar or the platform owner and the matter has been referred to the physical Courts for resolution.

(Please note that the website zone-h.org continues to be blocked by Meity for reasons that has been discussed in detail in the past on this website. It is time MeitY reviews this decision and removes the block. Even the Supreme Court is at fault in causing this blocking of Zone-h.org)

The Virtual marriages including Meta Verse marriages as well as UTAH online marriages tomorrow come up in family courts for divorce and settlements. Then the Courts will be scrambling for identifying the legal basis for marriage, divorce and property related issues.

It is therefore necessary for us to make necessary laws to regulate the Meta Verse marriages soon to avoid problems in future.

Naavi

Related Articles:

What has happened to the Zone-H.org case?

Now Government has to lift the ban on Zone H.org

E2labs project Ethan Dissected…

Following is an copy of the email sent to the RBI Governor today

To

The Governor
RBI
Mumbai

Dear Sir

Mr Yashasvi Yadav, an IPS officer in Maharashtra has published a very informative article on Darknet in TOI. The article  is available here.

The essence of the article is that “Dark Net” and “Dark Web” are posing a mortal risk to the society and needs to be fire walled.

Many technologists will immediately jump in to say that “Technology” and “Innovation” cannot be curbed. It needs to be promoted. The same argument  is being made for promoting Private sector crypto currencies which had led to our Finance Minister providing a sense of recognition through Crypto Tax proposal.

As Mr Yadav has indicated, there are many journalists and non criminals who are also browsing the dark net through Tor browser. This is the classic case of good people supporting the bad people for their own selfish reasons.

We must understand that Darknet and Crypto currencies are bad and any form of support must be avoided.

Mr Yadav suggests that we need to ban Tor browser and block all Tor traffic.

I fully endorse this suggestion along with the banning of all private crypto currencies so that the fuel that runs the darknet is dried up.

While Mr Yadav as a representative of the law enforcement  has expressed his views clearly and flagged the risk of technology, it is unfortunate that the Finance Minister through her budgetary proposal on Crypto currencies is working on strengthening the hands of the criminals by legitimizing the currency of the criminals. Her proposal to bring  Crypto currencies under the tax bracket and whitewash it as “Digital Assets” and simultaneously withdrawing the bill on “Banning of Crypto currencies”, is a big boost to the dark net activities.

The finance minister is trying to hoodwink the public by saying that she is generating tax revenue for the Government by taxing the Crypto transactions and has not recognized Private Crypto currencies. She has also effectively tricked even the Prime Minister Mr Modi to give a statement that the budgetary proposal on Crypto including the proposal for Digital Rupee will be an impetus to the  economy.

This is far from the truth.

The budgetary proposal on Crypto taxes will destroy the country and the Digital Rupee proposal is only a fig leaf to cover the criminal nature of private crypto currencies. The Digital Rupee server will be prone to a serious security risk and criminals will be able to directly hack into the server and issue any amount of fake Digital Rupee to render the system infructuous in no time.

As it is, the Darknet is a threat to the country. But the FM is adding further strength to the dark net through her proposal.

Will Mrs Nirmala Sitharaman wake up from her slumber?

If Mrs Nirmala Sitharaman goes through the proposal to recognize Crypto Currencies without banning of the Crypto Currencies, she should be given a special recognition for having destroyed the legacy currency system in India and causing the death of the world economic order.

Naavi

P.S: While the country is debating on the Hijab Controversy, professionals are refraining from joining the debate because any discussion could be mis-construed as “Political” or “Religious”. However, since the controversy is being debated in the Courts on the basis of the provisions of Indian Constitution, if the professionals remain outside the debate, they will fail to put across their views when it is required.  Hence this small piece.

Hijab Vs Uniform

The Hijab Controversy in Karnataka has now reached the Courts. If the Courts want,  the immediate controversy of “Hijab” in schools can be settled quickly as a need to keep religion out of the education institutions and making uniforms mandatory to ensure a sense of equality of students in a student group.

However, if the Courts want to allow the controversy to be taken to a debate of “Right to Practice Religion”, they will be opening a pandora’s box.

This should be avoided.

Right to Hijab Vs Right to Privacy

However, we should debate the  controversy from a professional perspective and pick up the thread whether the “Right to Hijab” is connected with the “Right to Privacy” as being argued in the Courts.

As we know, “Right to Privacy” was not defined in the KS Puttaswamy Judgement and it stopped at saying that Right to Privacy is part of the Right to life and liberty under constitution (Article 21) and like other fundamental rights is subject to reasonable restrictions to protect other rights of the third parties.

Justice Chelmeshwar went on an argument that Right to privacy includes what we eat, where we go etc., but Justice Chandrachud was clear that “Right to Privacy” is understood as the “Right to be left alone” and it is a mental state of a person to “Feel that he is left alone”. The judgement subsequently focussed more on “Information Privacy” which was the “Right to exercise a choice of how an individual’s personal information can be used by the society”. This was however subject to the “Reasonable Exceptions”.

Right to privacy is not a “Right to anonymity” where one would like to hide his/her identity and interact with other members of the society. It is unacceptable that a person will say I will enter into a transaction with you but I would not like to reveal my identity. This leads to the situation where the right of privacy of one person affects the right to security of another person.

The first level of trust in  human interactions starts with the identity of the other person. Identity is declared by the persons by saying “I am so and so”. But this spoken word is re-inforced by the two people seeing each other, so that there is a “Facial Recognition”.

Any method by which a person will put a veil on his face defeats the requirement of two transacting persons identifying each other and develop “Trust” for conducting a transaction.

A “Transaction” is not always a transaction of “Sexual intentions” and the Court cannot uphold the principle that when a man sees a women, it is always with a bad intention. If this is the basis of Hijab then Courts have to come down heavily against this “Deemed” perception even if it is written down in religious texts.

“Facial Identity” is the essence of building trust and the full body burqa covering the face is therefore not acceptable for a person when interacting with the public. It ceases to be a freedom of choice to dress as it impacts the other persons in the society.

Since Right to Privacy cannot be considered as “Right to hide identity”,  there appears to be no fundamental right to hide identity while trying to involve another person in a transaction. To the extent the head to toe coverage can hide criminals in public place, it is a security concern and hence the head to toe coverage has a public security issue.

Hence any Hijab that covers the face should be considered as unacceptable to the society.

Short Hijab Vs the Burqa

The short hijab covering parts of the hair and chest is different as it does not affect the facial identity.

The short hijab however will continue to be treated as display of religious identity and if this is allowed against the concept of “Uniform” then the Court will have to also allow “Saffron Shawls” or “Saffron headgear” to be worn by others.

It is difficult to see how the Courts can uphold the right to hijab without holding the right to Safforn shawls and hence the decision of the Court in this direction would only take the controversy to higher levels of division of the society and will be a law and order issue.

Hindu Woman vs Muslim Woman

I would like the Court to remember that if they uphold Hijab for this religious consideration that it is meant to protect the modesty of women, it should extend it to even the Hindu women also. It will be illogical to say that protection of the modesty is required only for Muslim women and not Hindu women.

Court Dress Code

If the court is inclined to take a decision to uphold the hijab as a religious right but denounce the Saffron shawl as a Hindutva mischief then it would be an unfortunate decision.

In that case, a question should be asked if the Court is prepared to change the dress code in Courts  and allow all women lawyers and judges cover their faces so that evil eyes cannot fall on them…or  at least allow Muslim women lawyers and Judges to come in burqas to the Court.

I wish the Courts will take the right decision without being hypocritical or religiously diplomatic.

Naavi

With due respects as a person to Mrs Nirmala Sitharaman, I would like to draw her attention to the working of private crypto currencies and why not banning them is a big mistake.

I am worried that she is making statements as if she has not done anything wrong and only taxed Crypto transactions without recognizing them. The whole world believes differently and Madam, you are the lone person who is clutching to this idea that taxation of an asset does not provide any legitimacy. I am sure that even Courts will not agree with your view when referred.

To understand why traditional Bankers like us consider Private Crypto Currencies as the death knell for the legacy Banking system is that they are basically created with the objective of killing all Banks. Hence “Anonymity” is the basis of such cryptos. We can keep referring to Bitcoin as a representation of such private cryptos. Since all these private crypto currencies are fungible, it is immaterial if a person acquires Bitcoin or Ripple or Monero or Ethereum. All are currencies which can be used for transactions across the world in replacement of dollars or other legacy currencies.

The Digital Rupee will not fall into this category since it does not provide anonymity and hence it is not going to attract any investment from the current Crypto investors. According to one estimate there is a holding of about Rs 30,000/- crores in Bitcoins etc in India with about 50 lakh investors. The figure may actually be much more since all political parties must be having their own stock of bitcoins as part of their digital black wealth.

Please understand that Bitcoin wallets can be opened outside India just like opening an email account in Yahoo or Gmail. Only if the wallet account is opened in India with the Indian exchanges, there could be a question of KYC. Otherwise there is no KYC. One can always provide an anonymous email and anonymous mobile number to open a bitcoin wallet account.

I request you to contact some honest techie adviser to know if this is possible or not.

Once a wallet account is opened, there are various ways of using it if required with onion routing or garlic routing to make it impossible for any law enforcement agency to trace the transactions.

Please check with a reliable techie advisor if this is true.

Donot believe the version of those who have made you believe that Bitcoin is not recognized, Bitcoin is a technology to be retained and supporting bitcoin will lead to a boom in tax collection etc.

There is a need for you to understand that once the crypto currency is legitimized, there will be many service providers who will hand hold investors to get accounts opened outside India and send all their wealth to the foreign wallet accounts. They can be brought in to India when required or kept outside. There will be flight of capital and money laundering through these accounts. Some of these will be sleeping cells of terrorists. With the use of “Ripple” network even the international transactions will be routed outside the international central banking system. This will encourage exporters to park their earnings outside India.

You donot have to take my word for all this. Please consult your techie friends and get the confirmation.

However at any point in future donot pretend that you were not aware of these intricacies.

I hope you will take my advice to understand how Bitcoins can be used for money laundering and why your taxation proposal will not be able to prevent this.

Naavi

Indian Physicists at Raman Research Institute and ISRO have demonstrated the quantum computer principle of “Entanglement” for the first time in India.

Report in DH: Report in ET:  Report in BS:

It had been reported by DH in 2021 that a research team in Raman Research Institute, Bangalore had been able to achieve a communication  using Quantum Entanglement where data such as a “Cryptographic Key” could be safely transmitted in such a manner that no person can interfere with the communication.

Now it is reported that last week that the technology has been further tested by ISRO at the Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad.

Essentially, “Entanglement” is a property exhibited at the level of atoms and molecules where two particles at a physical distance can be paired in such a manner that if the spin status of one of them is changed, the other gets automatically changed.

Accordingly, if there exists a paired set of Quantum Bits, (Qbit), then programming one set into a Crypto graphic key will automatically set the other pair to the same status. In other words, the information gets transmitted without the digital information flowing from one computer to another through some kind of a network. This is like a “Deemed Transmission” of data.

(This description is slightly different from what has been explained in the news reports.)

According to  the ISRO press release 

“On 27 January 2022, scientists from the two premier laboratories of Department of Space (DOS), viz. Space Applications Centre (SAC) and Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), both from the city of Ahmedabad, have jointly demonstrated quantum entanglement based real time Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) over 300m atmospheric channel along with quantum-secure text, image transmission and quantum-assisted two-way video calling. The demonstration was conducted at SAC, Ahmedabad, between two buildings separated by a distance of 300 m. “

It is known that China has earlier announced that it might have achieved the transmission of such data across a longer distance of 12 Kms. However this achievement of the Indian scientists is a land mark achievement.

We have discussed Quantum Computing on this site earlier and some of the articles are available here.

The Vast and Far Reaching Applications of Quantum Computing
In the wonderland of Quantum Cyber Law, Physics is part of Law specialization
Preparing for Security disruption through Quantum Computing

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The concept of “Super positioning” and “Entanglement” are two interesting properties demonstrated by Quantum Computing technology that has the ability to bring a large scale disruption to the way we manage security of information. 

We hope that Indian scientists will continue to record more achievements in this regard.

Naavi

Related Article on Quantum Computing

Another article on entanglement