How much legal weight should actions in the virtual world carry back in the real one? For most people, the answer might be “none,” but as online communities conduct actual financial transactions and draw in more participants, some legal experts think that it may be time to extend brick-and-mortar jurisprudence into the virtual realm.
By some estimates, about 100 million users worldwide populate online communities. Second Life, the creation of Linden Lab in San Francisco, provides its active-user base of one million with a real-time experience on their personal computer, in which they use digital characters called avatars to wander around castles, deserted islands and other fantastic 3-D environments. Through their avatars, they can meet and talk to thousands of online participants, even cuddle on couches and have simulated sex with them.
Such immersive experiences have led to several reports of online activities triggering real-world conflicts. Last November one woman filed papers for divorce on the grounds that she caught her husband’s avatar being overly affectionate with someone else. (He countered that his wife drove him to virtual infidelity because of her addiction to World of Warcraft.) In fault-based divorce courts, such a claim would be perfectly legitimate, says Greg Lastowka, a professor of law at Rutgers University who is currently writing a book called Virtual Law. But he likens it to complaints such as “my husband plays golf all the time and has no time for me”—grievances that are shy of adultery.
But with the average player spending 20 hours a week in these environments, players often put more weight into virtual affairs than lawmakers do. When Chinese gamer Qiu Chengwei acquired a virtual sword in the online game Legend of Mir 3, only to have a friend borrow it and sell it online for $800, Qiu went to the police. Told that there were no laws to protect virtual property, Qiu actually killed the thief. “If somebody is going to die, and somebody else is going to spend the rest of his life in jail for a virtual crime, then we better take it seriously,” Lastowka remarks.
More nebulous, though, is behavior between avatars that would be criminal in the physical world. One case involved “virtual rape,” according to Benjamin Duranske, a San Francisco attorney and founder of the Second Life Bar Association, which meets once a month in Second Life. In a blog, he recounts a Brussels public prosecutor who had called for an investigation of a rape charge involving a Belgian user of Second Life. The case apparently later died, perhaps because, as Duranske proposes, “most laws prohibiting violence are applied only to real people, not computer characters.”
The case echoes an earlier incidence of virtual rape a decade ago, as described by Julian Dibble for the Village Voice in 1993. This incident took place in LamdaMOO, a text-based virtual community, and concerned a hacker known as Mr. Bungle, who took control of other avatars who were then made to describe violent, explicit acts on the screen. The article spawned a conference at New York University in 1994 where participants discussed the possibility of self-governing on the Internet, which could entail a virtual community limiting or canceling another player’s account. (Cancellation is what happened to Mr. Bungle’s creator.)
Indeed, members of today’s virtual communities must agree to a “terms of service” contract, which enables companies to adjudicate conflicts by, for instance, suspending the offending account. But establishing a new account to create another predatory character is simple enough. And as Lastowka says, “virtual worlds don’t want to police their users. They just want to collect their profits.” (Linden Lab takes a cut from users conducting business in Second Life.) Online communities, he points out, will always have “griefers” and “goon squads” who wait at game portals to kill new avatars or take sexual advantage of someone who has not figured out how to push the “no” button.
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4 Comments
Add CommentThe problem is not the shortcoming of the law itself, but rather the reluctance of the agents of the law to apply it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately, I don't know how effective such laws would be. Users can access the same virtual society from across the globe leaving the question of whose responsibility is it to police such acts. There are some areas which could have realistic legislation, such as the theft case above, which could be prosecuted in similar virtual forums (eg. ebay).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe law doesn't need to be changed. We just need to acknowledge that virtual realities are nothing more than telephones or Web sites with more graphics. If I claimed that I was "raped" over the telephone, you would understand exactly how that didn't apply legally. Sure, assault can be committed over the phone, but rape is a physical crime.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSame goes for regulating business. If I were to buy a product through a web site from a third party, we pretty much understand how to regulate that at this point. If the "web site" is instead Second Life, nothing really changes other than the fact that they're providing tokens for the transaction, but at the end of the day those tokens aren't real money, and the money is realized when you cash them in through LL's Web site.... again, easy to regulate and no new laws are required.
The desire to pass new laws should always be resisted in the face of new technology until it is proven that existing laws are insufficient.
Interaction sites are not telephones with more graphics. They're for ever off the hook, and the whole world-wide neighbourhood can copy and spread things 24/7. Starting false sexual rumours about a teenager can demolish their life as effectively as physical rape can do. Young people are committing suicide when their sexuality is spread across the Web. Take it seriously!
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