NEW OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF THE DIGITAL AGE FOR EUROPEAN UNION COPYRIGHT IN VIRTUAL REALITY: IMPLICATIONS FOR UKRAINE

Abstract

The article is devoted to the latest opportunities and challenges of the digital era that arise in EU copyright law in the field of virtual technologies, as well as their impact on Ukrainian copyright legislation. Purpose is to identify new opportunities and challenges that arise in EU copyright law in the context of the dynamic development of digital technologies and virtual reality technologies. Methods. The optimal methodological basis for research is a complex of general scientific and special methods that can be used to study new opportunities and challenges of the digital age for EU and Ukrainian copyright. The methods of dialectics, analysis, synthesis, terminological, hermeneutic-legal and comparativelegal methods were used. Results. The article analyzes new opportunities and challenges facing EU copyright in the field of virtual technologies in the context of digitalization, their impact on Ukrainian legislation in the field of copyright. The author notes that today virtual technologies have penetrated into all spheres of human life, including science, education, art, design, entertainment and even the military sphere. This multi-vector development of virtual reality technologies provides both new opportunities and leads to the emergence of a number of challenges in all spheres of social life. Among the possibilities, it should be noted: the development of virtual art and creativity, which allows you to create objects that are subject to EU copyright protection; the possibility of holding virtual exhibitions using a number of advantages of the virtual world and its tools is confirmed. Challenges: unauthorized use of author’s works by users of virtual networks; the need to establish mechanisms for detecting copyright violations in virtual networks and bringing guilty parties to justice; the problem of securing copyright for objects created using virtual reality technologies. Conclusions. Virtual reality technologies are equally important and threatening for the development of copyright and its protection. Therefore, the EU should devote more effort to the development of a legal basis for the regulation of copyrights in the field of virtual reality and their protection, despite the presence of a sufficiently strong legal basis in the field of regulation of digital technologies. Ukraine, which is actively unifying and harmonizing its legislation in accordance with EU legislation, should also pay more attention to the legal regulation of copyright in virtual networks.