[Online Gaming] - Real crimes in virtual worlds

Read some interesting news today. Apparently police in Belgium has been assigned a case of virtual rape in the MMO Second Life. So let me get this clear, somebody’s avatar got “raped” by someone elses avatar. How is this possible? And does it even constitute as a crime? Well atleast the police in Belgium thinks so. The history of rape in games actually goes back a bit and is done by something called voodoo dolls. These objects allows a person to control the avatar that has the doll in it’s possession. These “dolls” (they can actually take the form of whatever object the owner wishes) has been used frequently by a community of BDSM players in SL but as of now they have been reported to have been used to rape avatars against their players will. This is quite a bizarre situation. The real world phenomenons are crossing over to the virtual world. How should we react to this? I don’t believe the psychological trauma can really compare to the real world rapes but clearly some sort of punishment is appropriate. Is the banning of the player commiting the crime enough? Tough questions these, especially since the game in question has a real currency and people, more so than in other games, rely on it for a stable real life income. It is a documented fact that raped people in real life in many cases are frozen out and isolated by other people. Should this be a factor when considering the punishment? I can’t decide for myself, the situation are just to weird to grasp. Clearly we are facing more crossovers between virtual worlds and the real one in the future. Might aswell brace ourselves...

Virtually Blind article