Virtual Worlds: Real-World Laws?

How much value to place on your Second Life experience? If it’s like many SL users, it’s probably a lot. And that could be the very reason that some people are pushing to have more real-life laws brought into Second Life even though SL isn’t a tangible world. Because the number of virtual world users is increasing—Second Life or any other—the “importance” of these worlds as being community meeting places is growing. That might mean more laws, even if they don’t make any sense in a virtual world.

In the new issue of Scientific American, Michael Tennesen takes a look at how the possibility for tangible-world (RL) laws making their way into the pixelated-world (SL) is increasing.

Tennesen offers these as examples of how some people have put value on their virtual-world experiences and how they’ve entered the legal world:

• In 1993—before the Internet was what it is today—a text-based community called LamdaMOO had a situation in which a user hijacked other uses’ accounts and then wrote that they “describe[d] violent, explicit acts.”¹

• In 2005, Qiu Chengwei from China stabbed Zhu Caoyuan to death because Caoyuan sold Chengwei’s virtual sword from the game Legend of Mir 3 without Chengwei’s permission. (Chengwei received a life sentence in a real-world prison.)²

• In 2007, a Belgian prosecutor asked Belgian police to log into Second Life to investigate a “virtual rape.”³

I’m going to cut to the chase with my opinion on this and say that it’s absolutely asinine for any legal scholar to suggest. Let’s just go through some of the reasons why:

1.) Avatars aren’t real people—they’re pixels on a screen. If you see a pixelated cock, it’s not a real cock; if you see a pixelated vagina, it’s not a real vagina. They’re images on a screen.

2.) “Rape” in SL—since it was mentioned specifically in relation to Second Life—is consensual. No one forces an avatar onto a rape pose-ball. If someone wants you to get on a rape pose-ball and you don’t want to, you don’t have to. If that other person is annoying you about it, you have the ability to mute them. If they annoy you in other ways, or if they bother you in other ways, you can file an abuse report.

Yes, there will always be morons in this world who attempt to equate everything with everything else. On the Virtually Blind site on this topic, for instance, a reader named “Robbie” actually has the nerve to equate consensual “virtual rape” with nonconsensual real-world date-rape. He uses a lot of big words (e.g., “embodied consciousness”) hoping that his ludicrous analogy will carry water, but in the end one fact remains: you can’t polish a turd.

3.) You can’t collect “evidence” for virtual crimes unless we’re talking machinima or screenshots. If a “virtual rape” occurs, you have no DNA; you have no bruising. So then, what do you have? Pictures of a pixelated character and maybe a chat history? Is that what would be taken into the courtroom to “prove” the charge? How silly would that be?

4.) If a crime is committed in a virtual world that has a direct relationship to real-life situation, that crime is already covered under real-life laws. For example, if a person hacks another person’s account to steal their money, it’s a real-life crime in at least two areas: hacking laws and theft (because Linden dollars can be converted to real-life money).

Because of this, these illegalities can happen in both the real-world and virtual world. Moreover, no consent has been given by the victim.

5.) Finally, let’s consider the precedent that would be set if we criminalized virtual rape in our real-world courts: We’d have to begin locking up every person who has ever played any game in which they’ve “killed” a person or committed a crime of any sort. Given that I was addicted to Grand Theft Auto III when it came out for the PlayStation 2, and given that I “killed” hundreds of people, stole hundreds of cars, and even blew up a cargo freighter (several times), I’d be looking at a real-life life sentence in prison. Many other gamers would, too.

Fortunately, and probably much to the chagrin of people like the aforementioned “Robbie,” United States law tends to shy from dealing with pretend crimes. Other nations, however, do prosecute. Tennesen mentions in his article that South Korean courts view virtual property as real-life property. That, in turn, increases the odds that their real-life laws will cover in a virtual world, no matter the “crime.”

I guess that this means I need to register all the cars that I have in my inventory and have them inspected, otherwise people like Robbie will be calling all the SL “police” to have me cited.