Open justice transformations impacting extended reality (XR) environments

ABSTRACT This paper continues the discussion on advanced jurisprudence, outlined in Algorithms, Ethics and Justice [Hadzi, A. 2022. ‘Algorithms, Ethics and Justice’. In Disruptive Technologies in Media, Arts and Design, edited by A. Dingli, A. Pfeiffer, A. Serada, M. Bugeja, and S. Bezzina, 121–138. Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-93780-5_9], where restorative justice was proposed for the mitigation of artificial intelligence (AI) crimes. Algorithms, Ethics and Justice proposed an alternative approach to the current legal system by looking into restorative justice for AI crimes, and how the ethics of care could be applied to AI technologies. This paper will expand the notion of cyber crimes from AI crimes to extended reality (XR) crimes, given the rise of the metaverse [Anderson, J., and L. Rainie. 2022. The Metaverse in 2040. Pew Research Center; Chohan, 2022], and the future scenario of bio-metrical data of EEG capable headsets (Graham, 2022) being misused by rogue companies and/or criminals [Jaber, T. A. 2022. ‘Security Risks of the Metaverse World’. International Journal of Interactive Mobile Technologies 16 (13); Nair, V., G. M. Garrido, and D. Song. 2022. Exploring the Unprecedented Privacy Risks of the Metaverse (arXiv:2207.13176). arXiv. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2207.13176; Zhao, R., Y. Zhang, Y. Zhu, R. Lan, and Z. Hua. 2022. Metaverse: Security and Privacy Concerns (arXiv:2203.03854). arXiv. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2203.03854].

open justice in extended realities (XR), and then by continuing the discussion around the right to be forgotten and the freedom of the press versus privacy, through a comparative analysis between the legal situation in the EU and that of the USA.The paper concludes by reviewing possible international open justice scenarios for XR criminals.
A legally well-regulated metaverse (Ravenscraft 2022;Warin and Reinhardt 2022), and in a wider sense a well-regulated social media environment, could be seen as a potential democratic tool allowing metaverse users freedom of expression (UNESCO 2011) and freedom of information access (Wagner 2022), through an advanced form of jurisprudence.Nevertheless, social media users, including metaverse users, should also consider that those rights come with responsibilities, namely legal restrictions on infringing other users' privacy rights (Hartshorne 2010, 69).
One can discuss Mill's consequentialist utilitarianism, outlined in On Liberty (Mill 1978), in a contemporary context juxtaposing social media users' freedoms against other users' right to privacy.On Liberty can be used in the metaverse context where there is the potential for 'super users', such as influencers, or a 'tyranny of the masses', to harm the rights of individual users.Mill followed Bentham in his discussion on utilitarianism (Capaldi 2004).The protection of minorities' and individuals' rights is central to Mill's On Liberty (Crisp 1997).Bentham discussed jurisprudence in regard to the happiness of such minorities or individuals (Brink 2007).Bentham writes that 'publicity is the very soul of justice.It is the keenest spur to exertion and the surest of all guards against improbity.It keeps the judge himself while trying under trial' (in Smartt 2014, 19).Bentham defended open justice in order for the public to be able to follow court trials and to check if judgments are enforced in a fair manner.One might say that in the past, court hearings were the social media of society.Many people attended court hearings, sometimes also only for entertainment (Rodrick 2014, 131).Nowadays the public can still attend court hearings, though interest has vanished, and the public relies today on social media posts and news to be informed about ongoing trials.This paper will also discuss Mill's notion of preventing 'harm to others' (Mill 1978, 9)basically, the concept of a protection of the individual user against harmful action(s) of the masses and/or of other users, grounded on the claim that 'the individual is sovereign' (Mill 1978, 9).As there is a whole range of harm, this paper focuses on the protection of individual users' privacy rights, the users' sovereignty over mind and body, as also discussed by Berlin (2002), especially in light of the planned use of EEG headsets on the metaverse (Graham 2022).

On liberty
Mill's argumentation for the social benefits of the freedom of an individual can be translated into the contemporary context of social media and metaverse usersbasically freedom of speech (Barendt 2005) and the protection of an individual user against bullying and 'mobbing'.Applying Mill's line of thought in On Liberty to modern conditions, the public sphere offers judgments about social media influencers' posts and metaverse users' behaviours (Wang et al. 2022).The general public will judge behaviours and social media publications as being 'fake' or true.Following Mill, in the case of true social media posts, a public discussion would offer a sound judgment.Furthermore, Mill's position would be strongly against majorities' pre-conceptions and biases being intrusive on individual users' 'social graces' (i.e.aspects of personal and social identity such as gender, religion, ability, class, ethnicity or sexuality [Burnham 2018]).It is in the public interest to establish truth.In case of a false, or uncertain, social media post a position following Mill would be that there should still be a discourse within public space, as the truth will prevail, allowing for democracy to flourish.Of course reading On Liberty today one needs to be clear that Mill did not have the social media users (and today's concept of 'shit storms') versus individual users in mind.Nevertheless, On Liberty can be referred to when discussing theories of 'social media' freedom of expression (Donner 1992).One can then go on to discuss the violence and abuse certain social media posts can inflict on parties with the metaverse.For Mill: No one pretends that actions should be as free as opinions.On the contrary, even opinions lose their immunity when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act.An opinion that corn dealers are starvers of the poor, or that private property is robbery, ought to be unmolested when simply circulated through the press, but may justly incur punishment when delivered orally to an excited mob assembled before the house of a corn dealer, or when handed about among the same mob in the form of a placard.Acts, of whatever kind, which without justifiable cause do harm to others may be, and in the more important cases absolutely require to be, controlled by the unfavourable sentiments, and, when needful, by the active interference of mankind.(Mill 1978, 41) But how to deal with today's flood of fake social media posts?In a metaverse, a social media environment dominated and molded by powerful companies (Wieshofer 2022), e.g. the metaverse by Meta (formerly known as Facebook)?Mill's reply might not be in the realm of jurisprudence, but, confronted with false social media posts Mill might argue that it is free and open social media which will allow for the establishing of truth through fact finding and public discourse, analysing the false social media posts in question (Parialò 2022).Mill probably would argue for an open public social media environment, allowing for an analytical, judicious public discourse, as we, as social media users: have a right, also, in various ways, to act upon our unfavourable opinion of anyone, not to the oppression of his individuality, but in the exercise of ours.We are not bound, for example, to seek his society; we have a right to avoid it (though not to parade the avoidance), for we have a right to choose the society most acceptable to us.We have a right, and it may be our duty, to caution others against him if we think his example or conversation likely to have a pernicious effect on those with whom he associates.We may give others a preference over him in optional good offices, except those which tend to his improvement.In these various modes a person may suffer very severe penalties at the hands of others for faults which directly concern only himself; but he suffers these penalties only in so far as they are the natural and, as it were, the spontaneous consequences of the faults themselves, not because they are purposely inflicted on him for the sake of punishment.(Mill 1978, 57) The right to be forgotten Nevertheless, a retrospective reading of Mill's On Liberty concerning social media platforms, XR environments, and metaverse users' right to freedom of expression versus individual metaverse users' right to privacy cannot be fully investigated within Mill's historical context.We shall thus move on to contemporary case studies around freedom of expression, the right to privacy, and the right to be forgotten, in order to discuss the notion of open justice within XR environments such as the metaverse, starting with discussing the concept of 'habeas data' (Farivar 2018), Latin for 'you have the data', the right to collect data (Corrales Compagnucci et al. 2022) and the freedom to delete it.Within digital networks and data centres data of individual users is being stored, possibly forever, making it difficult for XR crime offenders to ever rehabilitate their image.This right was entrenched in EU legislation by the European Union Court of Justice as the 'right to be forgotten' in May 2014 (Google Inc. v Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD) 2014).The Court of Justice of the European Union press release states that if, following a search made on the basis of a person's name, the list of results displays a link to a web page which contains information on the person in question, that data subject may approach the operator directly and, where the operator does not grant his request, bring the matter before the competent authorities in order to obtain, under certain conditions, the removal of that link from the list of results.(Court of Justice of the European Union 2014a) The 'right to be forgotten' (Court of Justice of the European Union 2014b) is a significant right for metaverse users, and not only a 'get away' right for XR criminals, considering the vast amount of data which is separated by data processors from the users, and especially the amount of data created, often unwillingly, by users, having to share updates about their private affairs on these platforms.Basically the company Meta, running the metaverse (Lee et al. 2022), under the 'right to be forgotten', is regarded as both a controller of data and a processor of data, and thus has to give metaverse users the right for their data to be removed from the metaverse, as already established in the EU 1995 Data Protection Directive (European Data Protection Supervisor 1995), due to Meta's recording of personal data, as well as making it available to other (public) metaverse users.The legislation applies to any company or data processing operator that '[has] a branch or subsidiary in a Member State which promotes the selling of advertising space' (Venice Commission 2014, 3).In article 12, the European Court of Justice instructs every member state to secure users' rights to obtain from the data processor 'as appropriate the rectification, erasure or blocking of data the processing of which does not comply with the provisions of this Directive, in particular because of the incomplete or inaccurate nature of the data' (European Data Protection Supervisor 1995).Through the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) the 'right to be forgotten' now also applies to XR environments, such as the metaverse, though now referred to as 'right to erasure' in article 17 of the GDPR (Logemann 2018).One also needs to highlight that the GDPR changed from the notion that data belongs to the data processors (and users have to opt-out of data sharing) to data belonging to the users (and users can opt-in to data sharing), meaning that Meta now has to ask for the permission of its users to store personal data of its users in the metaverse.

Data ethics
Thus metaverse users should consider what it means to preserve and manage fair ethical treatment with 'data ethics' (Fernandez and Hui 2022) and information sharing.The public interest and freedom of expression, key to 'open justice' with respect to XR crimes, are balanced against the right to privacy, and other human rights (Bayer 2022), in European Union member states' courts.The Human Rights Act (European Convention on Human Rights 1998), powerfully impacted European Union jurisdiction, notably in the abovementioned balancing act between the right to privacy (article eight of the Human Rights Act) and freedom of expression (article ten of the Human Rights Act), as well as the right to life (article two of the Human Rights Act).The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe reaffirmed (Tugendhat and Christie 2002, 619-620) 'the importance of every person's right to privacy, and of the right to freedom of expression, as fundamental to a democratic society.These rights are neither absolute nor in any hierarchical order, since they are of equal value' (Parliamentary Assembly 1998).Freedom of expression, on the other hand, allows for an open justice system, through which public interest is safeguarded and fair XR crime trials can be conducted.Nevertheless, certain XR criminals may need protection from extrajudicial attacks, due to the nature of their XR crime.It has been argued that the balancing act of European Courts has led to a decline of open justice, due to freedom of expression being 'pitched' against privacy rights and the right to a fair trial (Goodale et al. 1993), as well as the right to life.In this connection, a famous case, which upheld the right to privacy (Hall and Dyer 2002), serving as a reference for privacy rights for XR crimes in the metaverse, was Naomi Campbell's court case against the Daily Mirror (Campbell (Apellant) v. MGN Limited (Respondents), 2004), who pictured her in front of a drug rehabilitation facility.The court granted Campbell right to privacy overriding the newspaper's right to freedom of expression.With respect to the protection of privacy, the court noted: … the fundamental importance of protecting private life from the point of view of the development of every human being's personality.That protection … extends beyond the private family circle and also includes a social dimension.The Court considers that anyone, even if they are known to the general public, must be able to enjoy a 'legitimate expectation' of protection of and respect for their private life.(Campbell (Apellant) The court's ruling meant that freedom of expression was circumscribed.Lord Steyn, in a case relating to restrictions on publication, stated, referring to articles 8 and 10 of the Human Rights Act, that first, neither article has precedence as such over the other.Secondly, where the values under the two articles are in conflict, an intense focus on the comparative importance of the specific rights being claimed in the individual case is necessary.Thirdly, the justification for interfering with each right must be taken into account.Finally, the proportionality test must be applied to each.For convenience I will call this the ultimate balance test.
Lord Nicholls continued the argumentation in the Campbell case, stating that freedom of expression has been stressed often and eloquently, the importance of privacy less so.But it, too, lies at the heart of liberty in a modern state.A proper degree of privacy is essential for the well-being and development of an individual.And restraints imposed on government to pry into the lives of the citizen go to the essence of a democratic state.(Campbell (Apellant) v. MGN Limited (Respondents), 2004) In the case of an XR crime (Ewulum and Bede Chigbogu 2022) metaverse users could claim 'public interest' in order to report on private matters.Nevertheless, Foster points out that 'between a judge and the general public there is little common ground over what public interest actually meansand any publication will be wise to look hard at the differences' (Foster 2007).Likewise what right to privacy actually means in the metaverse is also not clear cut.In the case Von Hannover v Germany the European Court of Justice ruled that privacy includes 'a person's name, photo or physical and moral integrity' (Global Freedom of Expression 2004).Moreover, the European Court of Human Rights, referencing article eight, stated 'the Court considers that the notion of personal autonomy is an important principle underlying the interpretation of its guarantees' (Pretty v. the United Kingdom 2002).Interestingly for metaverse users, the notion of reputation was included in article eight of the European Convention on Human Rights (Feldman 1997), as according to Zelezny 'reputation is what a person is seen to be in the eyes of othersthe individual's projection of self within a society' (Zelezny 2010, 116).According to Justice Stewart The right of a man to the protection of his own reputation from unjustified invasion and wrongful hurt reflects no more than the basic concept of the essential dignity and worth of every human being; a concept at the root of any decent system of ordered liberty (Henry 2021), to which Justice Erickson adds 'Defamatory statements are so egregious and intolerable because the statement destroys an individual's reputation; a characteristic which cannot be bought, and one that, once lost, is extremely difficult to restore' (Henry 2021).

Freedom of expression vs. privacy
In order to limit freedom of expression in the metaverse there must be concrete proof for a damage of reputation of a single user.Metaverse users, e.g.influencers, often publish without thinking, mainly motivated by likes and profits, and generally not by finding the truth.Metaverse users can harm other users, in the form of XR crimes, attacking one's privacy and reputation.However, Judge Hoffmann argues that no freedom is without cost and … the judiciary should not whittle away freedom of speech with ad hoc exceptions.The principle that the press is free from both government and judicial control is more important than the particular case/ (R (Mrs) v Central Independent Television Plc, 1994) Following articles 8 and 10 of the Human Rights Act require courts subject to this legislation to strike a balance between the rights to privacy and to self expression respectively.The decision of the Court of Appeal in A v B Plc and Another in 2002 reflected on this state of affairs: The manner in which the two articles operate is entirely different.Article 8 operates so as to extend the areas in which an action for breach of confidence can provide protection for privacy.It requires a generous approach to the situations in which privacy is to be protected.Article 10 operates in the opposite direction.This is because it protects freedom of expression and to achieve this it is necessary to restrict the area in which remedies are available for breaches of confidence.There is a tension between the two articles which requires the court to hold the balance between the conflicting interests they are designed to protect.This is not an easy task but it can be achieved by the courts if, when holding the balance, they attach proper weight to the important rights both articles are designed to protect.Each article is qualified expressly in a way which allows the interests under the other article to be taken into account.(A v B Plc and Another 2002) Such a 'balancing act' would be required for XR criminals who, once they have served their 'punishment', ideally should be rehabilitated.This rehabilitation, however, may involve certain limitations, for example by curtailing freedom of expression, especially if mental health issues are involved, as metaverse users may be disseminating hate speech, causing harm to individual users.Undoubtedly metaverse users have the right to discuss any matter of public interest in the public sphere; however when the right to freedom of expression is misused to spread hate and false stories (Ricardo 2022) in the pursuit of likes and subscriptions, that right should be restricted and regulated.An example for such need of protection is that of the Maxine Carr 'witch hunt' (Carr v News Group Newspapers Ltd & Others 2004), documented in the First Cut TV series entitled Being Maxine Carr (Ginnane 2008).The film shows how women who have been mistaken for Maxine Carr were attacked violently, with some women even having to abandon their homes and neighbourhoods.For XR criminals, once they have served their penalty, they should be allowed to return back to society, where, under the rule of law, they have the right to privacy and to be left alone.If this proves to be impossible, due to attacks from the public, a controversial 'contra mundum' injunction may be enacted, giving the XR criminal a new identity, undermining open justice principles.Understandably the public may be afraid of anonymous XR criminals moving into their communities.Those communities may turn to vigilante selfdefence justice, taking the law into their own hands, committing a crime themselves.
Compared with the EU, the situation in the USA is very different for the company Meta, and the metaverse.In the USA, freedom of expression is a constitutional right that overwrites all other rights.There is no balancing act to be performed between the right to privacy and the right to freedom of expression, of the kind faced by judges in the EU.Thus public interest, and the content published on the metaverse, is defined by users themselves, as manifested in the case Richmond Newspapers, Inc v Virginia (Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia 1980).The First Amendment in the USA protects freedom of speech, and with it guarantees an open justice system in the USA for XR users.With social media turning towards extended realities (XR) by creating platforms such as the metaverse, a pseudo public space is being created offering a platform for public discourse (Balkin 2005).
Freedom of expression and open justice are crucial tools for a healthy democracy (Huq 2022).If freedom of speech/freedom of the press is curtailed societies risk developing into autocracies.Following this line of argumentation it is notable that already in 1787, the third president of the USA, Thomas Jefferson stated that: The people are the only censors of their governors; and even their errors will tend to keep those to the true principles of their institution … The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people, is to give them full information of their affairs through the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people.The basis of our government being the opinion of the people the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate to prefer the latter.(in: Bajracharya 2018; Cole 1982) After the World War II Meiklejohn continued the line of argumentation, in regard to selfgovernance, that the First Amendment is not, primarily, a device for the winning of new truth, though that is very important.It is a device for the sharing of whatever truth has been won.Its purpose is to give to every voting member of the body politic the fullest possible participation in the understanding of those problems with which the citizens of a self-governing society must deal.(Meiklejohn 1948) Freedom of speech is an essential tool for investigative reporting, as well as strengthening the liberty of individuals in society.For Siebert this 'theory of sovereignty, freedom of the press, became one of the natural rights of man' (Siebert 1952).Judge Black also defended freedom of speech against the security interests of a government, arguing for 'security' to be a broad, 'vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment.The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic' (New York Times v USA 1971).In the age of social media (Rodríguez-Vázquez, Sixto-García, and Ordóñez 2022) it will be very easy to humiliate users in the metaverse in the pursuit of attention or profit, although the lines are blurred within the metaverse as to what may constitute a for-profit dissemination and what may be a news update.In the USA judges in the case Yath v. Fairview Clinics ruled that the posting of private medical information on social media 'is sufficient for the 'publicity' prong of the invasion of privacy test, no matter how limited the site or webpage may be' (Yath v. Fairview Clinics, N.P. 2009), and Kulesza states in International Internet Law that 'it is most certainly because of the global phenomenon of the Internet that such concepts as freedom of speech or protection of privacy have taken on a whole new dimension and created the urge for a new, international consensus on the cyber-arena' (Kulesza 2012, 45).Kulesza goes on to highlight the issue of censorship: The current approach to regulating electronic content is filtering.Since practically no state allows freedom of speech to be exercised without any limitations, state authorities attempt to exercise their legislative restrictions also over online forms of expression.Therefore, most of them perform some sort of censorship ('Internet filtering') for different social, political or security reasons, which results in limiting access to certain Internet content.The list of 'filtering' countries is growing day-by-day … However, next to the filtering policies that clearly violate the present human rights standards of free speech by excessively restricting access to certain content, there are those forms of filtering that leave much more room for controversy.The scope of Internet censorship is growing not only in countries recognized as autocratic, but also in model democracies.(Kulesza 2012, 45-46)

Open justice transformations
In order to counter such censorship open justice principle need strengthening, as democracies rely on fair criminal justice systems.In this respect social media has strengthened free speech, and the right of public interest, by allowing for instant updates on XR criminal proceedings.The Judicial Studies Board, established in the UK, in order to protect judicial independence, advises, as a general rule on reporting, which could include social media posts, that the administration of justice must be done in public.If the court is asked to exclude the media or prevent them from reporting anything, however informally, do not agree to do so without first checking whether the law permits the court to do so … [T]he prime concern is the interests of justice.(Judicial Studies Board 2009, 18) The courts may consider not allowing social media reporters to report about the proceedings, deciding on a case-to-case basis, according to the balancing act (article eight vs. article ten) as set out by the European Convention on Human Rights.Bohlander opines that 'open court proceedings and the publicity given to criminal trials are vital to the deterrent purpose behind criminal justice.Any departure from the open justice principle must be necessary in order to be justified' (Bohlander 2010, 322), as anonymity might allow for XR criminals, especially given the Metaverse environment, to 'use anonymity to act scandalously or perpetuate skull duggery, and yet others are drawn to the light of celebrity-hood' (Berryman 2014, 26), even, according to Rodgers, allowing for XR criminals to '[cast] a shadow over entire communities' (Whitehead and Gardham 2010).The practising of open justice becomes more and more cumbersome in the contemporary world of social media influencers, who are often not clear on whether they are posting for profit, or with a genuine motivation in supporting open justice.For Bohlander 'the debate has been too much about terminological facades in many judicial fora, up to the European Court of Human Rights, for far too long' (Bohlander 2010, 327), and for Crook 'reporting of trials inevitably involves an exploitation of the infotainment dimension of journalistic narrative' (Crook 2009, 263-264).This is where XR criminals are protected through article six of the Human Rights Act, the right to a fair trail, in order to avoid trial by social media.For Abromovsky it 'is ironic … that while a jury is repeatedly admonished in all cases to consider only the evidence and exhibits which emanate from the witness stand, they are subjected to a barrage of often inflammatory and irrelevant information prior to their impanelment' (Goodale et al. 1993, 293), while Feintuck argues that the centrality 'of the media to democracy, as the primary information source, cannot be overemphasised, and the very fact that democracy (Cheng 2022) requires citizens to be informed if they are to act effectively as citizens, serves as a prima facie justification for regulation within a democratic context' (Feintuck and Varney 2006, 5).
Public interest, according to McQuail, can be understood as conventions, 'laws and evaluative claims which surface in public debate according to local circumstance' (in Peruško 2009, 7).The balancing act between the different rights proves to be difficult, as an XR criminal might be exposed to 'significant risk of injury or death … and that failure to protect her from that risk would amount to a breach of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights (protection of right to life)' (Dougan 2005, 302).European Union courts, due to focusing more and more on the right to privacy, are limiting open justice, compared to the USA, which implies limiting what one is allowed to publish on social media, in our case the metaverse.This can lead to a censoring, or even self-censoring, of metaverse users, who do not take up their right to freedom of speech, despite being protected through article ten (freedom of expression) in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (Council of Europe 2022), as discussed above.One can ask why 'contra mundum' anonymity is being granted at all?And how this will impact on open justice in the EU (compared to the USA where freedom of speech trumps privacy rights)?By discussing these questions this paper will conclude that there is indeed an impact, some may say a negative impact, on open justice, but that freedom of speech remains significantly protected through the EU.
The Court has a concomitant need for the press, because through the press the Court receives the tacit and accumulated experience of the nation, andbecause the judgments of the Court ought also to instruct and to inspirethe Court needs the medium of the press to fulfill this task.(Brennan 1980) US Supreme Court Judge Brennan referred to (social) media to support courts in practising open justice.Social media posts do not cover all court hearings, but select what is in the public interest.Here often courts and (social) media reporters clash on what counts as 'public interest'.Social media user feel entitled to report on what they deem to be of importance, while judges have the duty to protect XR criminals to guarantee a fair trial, which for social media users represents a form of censorship and a curtailing of open justice principles.According to Roderick 'Research in the United Kingdom and the United States suggests that, more often than not, the [social] media report extraordinary, newsworthy proceedings and tend to ignore ordinary, routine cases that may have educative value' (Rodrick 2014, 135).Social media users are under pressure to gain subscribers for their feeds against their competitors, and thus chase the more sensationalist court hearings, often neglecting rigorous fact checking, meaning that the process of justice is often neglected in favour of reporting on thrilling situations instead.It seems that social media users are solely focusing on seeking attention and profits.Through the Human Rights Act 1998, European Union courts, and Strasbourg jurisprudence, have become inclined to favour the right to privacy over the right to freedom of expression.Naomi Campbell, as discussed above, was photographed in public space, when leaving the rehabilitation centre, still the judge decided in her favour, overriding the Daily Mail's right to freedom of expression with Campbell's right to privacy.This ruling is unique to the European Union, because in the USA freedom of speech would triumph, and a judge would never rule against freedom of expression.In the USA social media users can choose what to report on, and what is in the public interest.It becomes more of an ethical decision for social media users in the USA what to report on.Likewise the above discussed 'contra mundum' injunctions for XR criminals, due to potential attacks of members of the general public against XR criminals, hinder the general public in forgiving those convicted XR criminals.If the public does not accept XR criminals, once having served their punishment, society becomes stymied with an archaic criminal justice system.Thus open justice is an important tool allowing for society to have certainty that XR criminals are being successfully punished and, more importantly, rehabilitated and re-integrated into society.Freedom of expression and freedom of speech allow for this to happen in a democratic civilisation, which can only happen in a progressive society.Freedom of speech also allows for harmful speech, which often infringes on the individual users' right to privacy and the right to be left alone.Deloire, from Reporters Without Borders, states that 'any movement towards state control would be seen as detrimental to a … free press and would send out the wrong message to authoritarian governments' (Deloire 2012).It is plausible to restrain abuse of power through the public interest defence.Nevertheless if the definition of such public interest is in the hands of state powers, and the jurisdiction itself, then society moves towards diminishing open justice systems.
In an ideal world, XR users would have a balanced discussion on political issues in the public sphere, such as the metaverse.Rather than following such an idealistic vision it might be more compelling and adequate to create a media plurality within the metaverse.That said, there are certainly also metaverse users who will never breach an ethical code, but those same users might also never risk sharing controversial views, basically conducting self-censorship.This might very well be the new tendency metaverse users see themselves following through future XR criminal court proceedings.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
Dr. Adnan Hadziselimovic is currently working as resident researcher at the University of Malta.Currently Adnan is a participant researcher in the Erasmus XR strategic partnership research collaboration with the Immersive Lab University of Malta project.Adnan's documentary film work tracks artist pranksters The Yes Men and net provocatours Bitnik Collective.Bitnik's practice expands from the digital to affect physical spaces, often intentionally applying loss of control to challenge established structures and mechanisms, formulating fundamental questions concerning contemporary issues.