Entering 2016, Augmented and Virtual Reality still in legal soup in India: Gaurav Sharma, IDC

The value proposition of Augmented and Virtual Reality are very unique. These technology aims at transforming the way end customers perceive products and brands, but at this point of time these technologies are buried under a lot of external barriers like cost and connectivity.

According to Gaurav Sharma, research manager, enterprise computing, IDC India, in India essentially and worldwide, the cost of AR and VR technologies have been a deterrent factor towards their true mass adoption. “The availability of a consistent 3G or 4G network is expected to be a hurdle once we achieve economies of scale, also it is not your ‘traditional build, buy and integrate approach’ we have in India,” Sharma says.

AR and VR being at their novice stage, it can be said that providers of these technologies themselves are in a fix as to how to go about building and selling such solutions.

Sharma claims that most of the vendors are evolving with business value but perhaps they are stuck in the traditional I/O methods of camera or screen and legal issues and that they need a new approach towards these technologies. He adds that AR and VR are expected to bring the workplace, sourcing and operating models transformation amongst others moving forward.

Legalities definitely is a major challenge that is being associated with AR. If just by scanning over a person’s image we get to know almost everything about him or her, then indeed such technology is somewhat scary. There definitely should be a proper demarcation between what can be revealed and what stays private.

“Legal issues pertaining to AR & VR can be looked upon in light of its architecture, input (information collection), output (viewing of the information, analysis) and services. While architecture or design can raise issues about patents, innovation techniques and security, information collection mechanisms can lead to massive privacy breaches, intellectual property and copyright issues,” Sharma added.

There are a lot of things that come into play once information is collected. There needs to be guidelines as to how does one present the information and what kind of legal penalties must an enterprise or a person should attract if it is presented in the wrong light.

Sharma added that through AR or VR, information may knowingly or unknowingly be used by the masses to take certain decisions affecting their wellbeing and hence a new set of laws should be written to look into things like decision making, analysis and representation. “Laws should be there to tackle false, misleading or incomplete attempts at AR & VR,” Sharma says.