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"1 in 4 children are sexually abused by the internet."

Is that physically possible?

I recommend you take a look at the classic (and timeless) "A Rape in Cyberspace" by Julian Dibbell http://www.juliandibbell.com/text/bungle.html More than ten years old, but containing a core of truth none-the-less.

It is just as impossible to rape them, or cut a single hair from their heads.

I recommend you take a look at the classic (and timeless) "A Rape in Cyberspace" by Julian Dibbell http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html More than ten years old, but containing a core of truth none-the-less.

A Rape in Cyberspace
(Or TINYSOCIETY, and How to Make One)
Chapter One of Julian Dibbell's My Tiny Life, 1998

http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html

http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html

A long list of prior art, relevant to something they call "chatrooms" without closely specifying the underlying technology, here.

There will be also a plethora of precedents where the link layer was not based on the Internet, but on classified personal ads, telephone, and snail-mail. Not even mentioning the in-between step, the BBS systems. But some people still think that addition of TCP/IP means some fundamental, radical change.

One very tangentially relevant case from 1993, occurring purely in the cyberspace, here (with a condensed summary here).

I am seeing activism on the grass roots level against MySpace like I haven't seen since the early 90's (the kind of awareness that laid the groundwork for all the online child protection legislation).

I see just yet another moral panic.

If the "good" community spaces are smart, they will toss MySpace out into the snow with extreme prejudice then circle the wagons before the Clintons and the Liebermans and all the other politicos up for re-election start painting them with the same brush they are currently tarring-up for MySpace.

How? What is a "good" and a "bad" community space?

Right or Wrong, there is a BIG RECKONING coming, and it WILL be impacting business models throughout the 'Net.

It may lead into healthy decentralization and move off the model of umbrella corporations shielding the communities. P2P, anyone? Or the Next Big Thing will be stationed on servers in India or Brazil, out of reach of rabid packs of attorneys. Because this lawsuit is a combination of a routine mishap, big wealthy corporation tangentially involved, and a greedy lawyer.

My Prediction, based on historical precedent? MySpace goes the way of GeoCities (socially un-cool and retro), and the kids all start gravitating to their own (and de-centralized) unique TLDs, just like their neo-adult blogging counterparts.

May quite well happen. Today hot, tomorrow not.

I often wonder about that. In the real world, we have a set of laws to protect us, but what protects people from abuse online? There's no internet constitution - certainly we have some laws, but those laws always stop before the point of telling moderators how they can treat users.

Certainly, it's possible to say "well, it's not your server, if you don't like it go somewhere else - it's only the internet", but surely any place where you can meet people and form relationships is a real place, not some figment of the imagination that you can dispel on a whim. I'd feel uncomfortable being forced to leave an internet community just as I would a real-world one.

On the other hand, though, losing my real-world identity would be much more devastating to me than losing my internet equivalent, but why is that so? Just because it's more closely tied to my physical form, or because I'm more used to it? I wonder if my answer would be the same if most of my friends were in WoW.

It's something to think about, anyway. I stumbled across a couple of excellent pieces of writing about this a while back as part of a Guardian article called "Ten unmissable examples of New Games Journalism". The latter, in particular, made me think for a long time.

A Rape in Cyberspace
Posessing Barbie

A Rape in Cyberspace

Possessing Barbie

Dreaming in an empty room: a defense of Metal Gear Solid 2

Shoot Club: Saving Private Donny

ZangbandTK: Confessions of a Dungeon Hack

The Great Scam

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Going Planetside

Red Eye #114

The valid question does arise, though, how far can you go bringing in real world storylines without crossing the line between entertaining and rubbing salt into wounds? Now as a game developer it is impossible to not upset anyone at all and still have compelling content... A character that commits suicide can be completely gripping to one person and too painful to bear for another. But on the other hand there are certain morays that should not be crossed. The Sims 2 will allow you to have homosexual relationships, as that has become basically accepted in society, but it won't let you sleep with your kids. If Malakai The Molester of Children came through ATITD, players would be rightfully outraged. Child molestation is a Moray in this country, and games should only in the most ginger of terms or ways cross any of those lines. Likewise, sexism and racism is a moray to a lot of people, and should be treated as such.

Negative, dangerous, or damaging experiences are a part of a good RPG, but there are fundamental differences between having your virtual town stomped by a dragon, and having your character raped by another character. Encountering sexism wherever you find it is still sexism, be it in a game or in real life, and it has very real negative emotional consequences. To have this not only condoned, but acted by the GM is greatly stepping over the line, and is likely to bring in the undesired emotion of basic outrage.

I can understand how someone crafting the game from a high level could make such a stupid mistake, but that doesn't change the fact that it was a terribly stupid mistake. Put your players in uncomfortable situations, yes, make them face choices that they rather would not want to make. But don't bring people out of the game by doing the kinds of bad emotional things they are attempting to escape and call it entertainment. You could cause discomfort amongst the players by deleting all of their characters, but it would be a stupid thing to do.

That the ATITD community ejected the cad the way they did says more (IMHO) about the game than that he was inserted into the plot.

Now the community is (rightfully) trying to eject the cad that inserted that into the plot... an effort I would totally agree with, if I wasn't so forgiving.

As for the "societal implications of this behavior" This territory has been covered before, years ago. The analysis done, the poor quality undergrad papers written (by me), its done.

As an in-game device to create tension and conflict; awesome. Job well done.

I've known about this site for close to a year now.
If watching the competition between EQ (a 3D game) and Ultima Online (primarily old school 2D) has told me anything, it's that the time of the MMORPG has not truly arrived, and won't until the Internet develops into the kind of environment that William Gibson wrote about.

Anyone who's interested really ought to consider giving this book a serious read where this topic is concerned. I first read it close to ten years ago, and even back then it predicted the idea that the net or certain regions of it would basically become their own geopolitical entities in the full sense of the word, complete with all the economic implications that entails. Castranova doesn't realise just how right he is.

Although there are a few wily early birds, such as this guy for instance and some others who are already scratching a reasonable living out of it, virtual tourism and commodity speculation isn't going to truly hit the mainstream radar for a while yet.

Once it does though, it doesn't need mentioning that a lot of the rules most people take for granted will change. One of the main reasons why I'm suspecting that this will be so big when the technology gets here is actually because of the terrorism problem. With environmental degredation reaching fever pitch in some places, most governments in the developed world rapidly moving towards an Orwellian wet dream, and meatspace being as dangerous as it is in general these days, 3 days in Norrath is going to end up being the only way most of us who get afflicted with the travel bug will be able to scratch our itch. You could also eventually hear about such things as newlyweds spending a honeymoon at a resort on Britannia's Magincia Beach. ;-)

What does it need to get to this point, however? It needs the Matrix, boys and girls...not necessarily Keanu's, either, in the photorealistic sense...but definitely in the Shadowrun/Gibson sense. Some fringe dwellers play text-based MUDS, sure...but just as there's talk at times about how "Linux isn't ready for the desktop," so we have a scenario where Joe Sixpack is going to insist on full-blown VR before he'll even bother...mainly because although some of us do, he doesn't have the imagination to parse text and create an evironment from that in his head. The addiction problems associated with EQ and its initial explosive popularity tell me what I've always suspected...that the net ain't really going to *be* the net in any sense that's genuinely worth talking about until networked VR gets here.

UO/EQ are great for getting our feet wet...but it's worth remembering that nobody yet has created a real swimming pool. That I think is also why they're losing popularity...the novelty has worn off, and people want more...but the technology isn't quite here yet to give it to them.

http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/blacksnow.html It's already been tried - see link above. Some enterprising guy ran a China Everquest sweatshop where the employees played Everquest all day, and whatever they collected was sold for profit.

As someone who teaches cyberlaw, I find this case interesting but not unique. After all, what we're really talking about is intangible property--essentially, a contractual right to do certain things in a certain context. Almost like a license. In other words, the company set up the game to allow the player to do X, then messed up its security so that the player was prevented from doing X. Player didn't get the benefit of his agreement to use the game.

What would have been more interesting would be if the game had included a virtual "court," the player had won in that "court," and a real-world court had been used to enforce the "judgment." I'm sure that's coming one of these days. It's a logical outgrowth of situations such as that described by Julian Dibbell in "A Rape In Cyberspace," which I assign to my students each semester. {Professor Ezor}

This is the same Julian Dibbell who wrote the incredible "A Rape in Cyberspace," first published in the Village Voice. I use it as a text in my Cyberlaw class. It's no surprise, then, that he's exploring even more real-world equivalents in the online universe. {Jonathan}

Check out this essay he wrote in 1993. This guy has been thinking about social life in cyberspace for a while.

This makes it sound like Julian Dibbell isn't what he is, a hack writer who mines the online communities he can find for grist. His article on MUDs (which he later expanded into a book was a complete smear job, a non-insightful overview of the MUD world intended to turn a small little molehill into enough of a mountain to get his paycheck. He writes self-indulgent overviews of his online comings and goings, each one crafted as if he has expertly stumbled into a forbidden cave of insight and perspective. No doubt this current project is the most recent seed for whatever next article or tome he will lure a credulous publisher into foisting on us. Take a pass, friends.

This makes it sound like Julian Dibbell isn't what he is, a hack writer who mines the online communities he can find for grist. His article on MUDs (which he later expanded into a book was a complete smear job, a non-insightful overview of the MUD world intended to turn a small little molehill into enough of a mountain to get his paycheck. He writes self-indulgent overviews of his online comings and goings, each one crafted as if he has expertly stumbled into a forbidden cave of insight and perspective. No doubt this current project is the most recent seed for whatever next article or tome he will lure a credulous publisher into foisting on us. Take a pass, friends.

This makes it sound like Julian Dibbell isn't what he is, a hack writer who mines the online communities he can find for grist. His article on MUDs (which he later expanded into a book was a complete smear job, a non-insightful overview of the MUD world intended to turn a small little molehill into enough of a mountain to get his paycheck. He writes self-indulgent overviews of his online comings and goings, each one crafted as if he has expertly stumbled into a forbidden cave of insight and perspective. No doubt this current project is the most recent seed for whatever next article or tome he will lure a credulous publisher into foisting on us. Take a pass, friends.

I've been following his blog since he wrote "The Unreal Estate Boom" for Wired.

I haven't even played Everquest but it still makes for interesting reading.

There's also a couple of sites where you can play games like Beyond Castle Wolfenstein against other players for cash. And Worldwinner.com and some rivals let you play things like Tetris, Minesweeper, Solitaire, etc. for cash. Woo.

Me, I'd rather keep *making* the games for money. And our game has been free since 1996, this is old news to me!

I always said I was going to teach a bunch of Chinese people to play Ultima Online, pay them $10/day, and sell items on ebay.

Too late, only they did it in Tijuana: http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/blacksnow.html

For those who don't know...

A bit of relevant history! Social justice, if you will.

DISCUSS!
-Professor B.

Whether virtual threats constitute a real threat. Is it moral to threaten someone's persona online?

Search for ethics and MUDs, or MOO's.

Specifically, Julian Dibbell's A Rape In Cyberspace is a great topic.