Tech & Biz

Thought crimes, FBI in Second Life, Bully Gangs Steal Game Loot

by biverson | June 2, 2007 at 07:23 am

1714 views | 19 Recommendations | 4 comments

These alternative realms are testing the long-held notions of what is criminal and whether law enforcement should patrol the digital frontier.

Rape is cyberspace has been around since before we could see each other, in the days of MOOs and MUDs. In the late 90's an artist who used photoshop to create seemingly life-like images of naked young men brought the issue of whether an image can be pornography if it looks real, but came from the imagination.

In Chicago, we have the work of Henry Darger, disturbing but somehow riveting, as an "Ur" example of when what one person is thinking seems like a crime to others.

WaPo reporter Alan Sipress discusses the evergreen questions of where fantasy and reality collide in this interesting story. From Second Life, with islands that cater to various sex predilictions, to gangs storming around World of Warcraft stealing player's game booty to sell on the choppy seas of Internet commerce for real money, he recounts how the FBI has even gotten into the game, literally,

Federal investigators created their own avatars and toured the site, he said.

So, the question lingers, are people in Second Life citizens of a new place or just travelers bound by the laws of their home countries.

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Jordan Yerman

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 08:56 on June 2nd, 2007

Good work. Though Second Life is a virtual place, the interactors are real people, hence that murky legal area... the issue of thought-crime, though, has very deep ramifications, not just in terms of virtual interactions: at what point does one become a criminal? I would argue that a crime would actually have to take place first.