Beam me up Scotty

Technology often runs ahead of legislation, but major advances in what is known as “remote presence” could soon pose challenges to conventional legal systems. A major European Commission project called “Beaming”, named after the teleportation device in the TV series Star Trek, is developing a groundbreaking new remote presence technology that can enable people to “travel” instantaneously to locations elsewhere (see http://beaming-eu.org/). This will allow individuals’ bodies to appear in one or more locations, other than where they are physically present, and to participate in physical exchanges at those locations. While this could revolutionise the way the public uses the internet to travel and interact, aspects of its use could be controversial and raise legal questions that have not been considered before.

The technology

Beaming uses a variety of technologies to influence human senses and emotional states, so users become fully immersed in a new environment and think they are “really there” in another place. However, it differs