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Is Virtual Rape a Crime?
cyberianpan writes "Wired is carrying commentary on the story that Brussels police have begun an investigation into a citizen's allegations of rape in Second Life. For reasons of civil liberty & clarity we'd like to confine criminal law to physical offenses rather than thought crimes but already threats, menace & conspiracy count as crimes. Could we see a situation where our laws extend?"
virtual rape is not a crime.
if you are being virtually raped you should log off.
there. that's fixed.
This
I don't even understand how you could ask yourself the question. Of course it isn't.
As someone who spends a lot of time online, I'm usually the one pointing out that despite the fact a conversation takes place over the internet, human emotion is still involed. One shouldn't assume that their actions have no social consequences.
However, in the realms of RPG, one should come to expect that there are people who seek to disrupt the experience for everyone else and move on.
I also disagree with the suggestion that threats are unjustly illegal.
Rape is literally penetration. If there is none, it's battery, harassment or assault. So no, there is no online rape.
Does winning a match of CounterStrike make you a mass murderer?
Everything about TFA is ridiculous.
It is just script-abuse. You can report the user for it, but that's it.
If you don't like script-abuse, stay in areas that don't allow script execution.
Your physical body was not violated, so rape was not committed.
If there's any trauma, it's because someone has over-personified their online avatar. Imagine someone totally into those "choose your own adventure" books and really identifies with the character. Someone takes their book and where it says "A large woman shoves a sandwich in your pocket and sends you on your way" and they cross out and replace a few words so it now says "A large woman shoves a large stick in your ass and sends you on your way". Is that sodomy?
At any rate, online "crimes" in a game should not be dealt with in real life. There should be an in-game mechanism just like there's an in-life mechanism. Have an in-game jail or just simply ban the offender -- this should be decided by the community.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
This is not a court case. It's not a first-hand account. It's not an outraged person.
It's a blog.
Not even a blog by someone it happened to. Just a blog trying to gain attention.
Rape in online games is almost impossible to pull off. You have to Get the person to stand still for it, not report you, and not log off. Even assuming that you are camping the Sword of Killing and you've been sitting there for 5 hours, it's hard to believe you'd let something happen that scars your very soul to get it.
That's what rape is. A scar that's so deep it marks your soul.
No, what they're really talking about is simply harassment. Calling it rape is an insult to anyone who has ever been raped. Someone saying naughty words to you in a video game, or even having their character make nasty gestures, is NOT on the same level as rape.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
This kind of "crime" should be covered under the TOS of the service. The only time this should get escalated is if it meets the criteria of real world criminal code covering harassment via electronic means, such as phone calls, email, etc.
This should not ever be considered an analogue to real world rape. That would be a mockery of the real world crime.
I love hearing about stories like this. It's always nice to know that our hard-earned tax dollars are being well-spent in truly making society better.
sigh...
I don't see how the laws can help but extend to the virtual world. While the crime isn't directly equivalent to the crime in the real world, at the very least harassment has been committed. Depending on the laws of the countries in question, it's probably a real world crime. And regardless of the persons ability to log out at any time, a "crime" was committed against them.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
...there should be virtual punishment.
And that is all.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
One of the definitions coming back from the Google search 'define: rape' is this:
The crime of sexual intercourse without consent and accomplished through force, threat of violence or intimidation (such as a threat to harm a child, husband or boyfriend) (emphasis mine).
I argue that at least force, and probably threats of violence, cannot be considered immediate and real when transmitted across the internet. If in some dark future you were blocked from logging out, walking away from the PC, or whatever then I'd say you could be raped online. Today, I say you cannot.
You are awash in a sea of fiercely stated opinions. Obvious exits are: 'File->Quit', 'Reply', and 'Page Down'.
Like the Corn Field?
So... when I play Counterstrike it's virtual murder? What about when I over-power a base in Red Alert 3? Can I be taken to the Haugue and tried for war crimes on the charge of "unprovoked attack on a virtual state?"
To equate virtual rape to rape that takes place in the real-world only serves to cheapen the ordeal of real women are who subjected to this awful crime.
It's a fucking game, ladies and gentlemen. If you had to behave responsibly and legally, it wouldn't be much fun now would it?
Simon
A rape can be simulated in SL just fine, but it's stupid to compare it to the real thing. It's most definitely a reason to ban somebody, but for a lawsuit?
In SL, people can make your avatar execute an animation if you give consent. Things that involve animating both avatars, such as a hug for instance, are initiated by one of them, and the other must click "ok" to accept the offer.
Of course they could make it be misleading by presenting it as something harmless and then make the actual thing be nasty, but you can always teleport away, and reset all animations in progress (it's an option in the tools menu). It's not really possible to do something to somebody that they'd be unable to stop.
Funny, but true. If some people don't like the "violence" that's happening in SL then they could just become virtual police and investigate or she could just hire another SL player to teach the guy a lesson. Don't waste my tax money on investigating "crimes" in games.
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
Here, let's try an experiment.
Compare being raped by someone from an hour with not being able to go to the pizza place on the corner for an hour. Damn. And you really wanted pizza.
Maybe you should get a grip on reality.
Virtual rape is a ridiculous notion and the author of that wired article really has me shaking my head. "There is no question that forced online sexual activity -- whether through text, animation, malicious scripts or other means -- is real; and is a traumatic experience that can have a profound and unpleasant aftermath, shaking your faith in yourself, in the community, in the platform, even in sex itself." If you are that 'emotional displaced' by a goddamn video game you need some help since you have forgotten that real life and virtual life are two entirely different things. Raped in a video game, WGAF, raped in real life...now THATS traumatic. To insinuate that 'virtual victims' have endured any of the same stress of victims in real life is a disservice to the latter.
I'm glad someone online has a memory. "A Rape in Cyberspace" is nearly 15 years old and pretty much on the syllabus for every class that mentions the internet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_in_Cyberspace
Whether or not this event was legally a rape, the person may feel victimized just the same.
I rather than ask whether or not this is a crime perhaps we should ask what kind of person would think it would be fun to harass someone online.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
In SecondLife (which is apparently what the article was about), you have the ban tools available on your own character. You can literally ban people from entering your land and there is not a lot they can do about it. If they try real hard to harass you anyway, then you can involve the Lindens and have them sent to the cornfield, but that measure is almost never necessary since the regular ban tools are generally enough to get the point across.
The whole article reads like this to me: The proper response was a slap to the face, not a 2000 word post on your blog about the atrocities of "mental rape".
I read the internet for the articles.
May be using virtual laws supported by virtual evidence, heard by a virtual judge ...
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It's a shitty thing to do to someone. But it's not a crime.
What is and isn't a crime changes based on the norms of acceptable behavior in a society. Consider the U.S.:
Slavery used to not be a crime, now it is.
Sodomy between consenting adults used to be a crime, now it isn't. (In most states)
IANAL, but my guess is that virtual rape is not a crime . . . yet.
Will it be a crime tomorrow? That is the real interesting question to arise from this article.
Read any good sonnets lately?
So a better example would be ...
... of some kind ... right?
Compare being raped for an hour
to
not being able to go to the pizza place on the corner because there's some guy there that the management refuses to kick out who will scream obscenities at you.
Yeah, yeah, I know. That's the place where you were supposed to meet a new client. So it has to be a crime
Which is why we have "civil cases" and "criminal cases". Not everything that happens to you is a crime.
Unlike reality, Second Life allows you to, for example: log off, teleport, take a screen shot of the incident to report it to admins (as opposed to "his word against yours" type situations), DENY an animation script if you believe said person is being abusive (mind you it may say it's a "hug" script and turn out to be something else).
This didn't happen in real life. This needs to be delt with on an administrative level. The most said person should be charged with is harassment if it continues after admins have banned him.
Pancakes. Oh I blew it.
I am being victimized by pixels! Someone do something! Think of the children!
Yeesh. Crap like this is pushing me to believe in therapy culture. Here's a hint, folks. If you see the word virtual, replace it with pretend. Then you'll have your perspective about right. Pretend rape can only hurt you if you let it hurt you. Sure, your would be pretend rapist may be a jackass, but it's just pretend. Unlike the real world, there aren't any power differences. He can't hold a knife to your throat and coerce you into jack shit. It's your imagination. Nothing says you have to go along with the pixels on the screen. You always have the ability to terminate the encounter, by, if nothing else, turning off the computer. Modern virtual communities have numerous tools to allow you to screen out the griefers. And hell, since it's your imagination, you can pretend castrate him when he tries to pretend rape you. Bottom line - take some goddamn responsibility for your feelings and imagination. This isn't the real world where someone can literally overpower you and coerce you into things. This is the virtual world where you have unlimited control over your pretend person.
This piece is known in the academic world as "A Rape in Cyberspace" (http://loki.stockton.edu/~kinsellt/stuff/dibbelra peincyberspace.html) - if you can filter out the early-90s cyberhype hipness of the piece, it does have some good thoughts which are sadly again relevant. Saying that you can solve virtual rape by logging off is just the updated digital version of a former Tx gubernatorial candidate's suggestion that you should just lay back and enjoy it. Your avatar is your creation and possession, and to have it unwillingly misused is not always acceptable.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
You'll probably be modded down soon, and rightly so. But I'll add this anyway: yes, there are numerous false rape accusations (by some estimates, as much as 40% of all rape reports are baseless). But rape does happen, so we shouldn't be so callous to make statements like yours.
Gotta love the world we live in.
Police investigate "rape" on in a freaking computer game.
Police investigate/arrest someone for making a Counterstrike(another freaking computer game) map.
So, to avoid getting arrested, may I recommend going out for a nice walk on the VTech campus?
No, wait, depending on the timing, that suggestion would get you killed.
I'm going to go hide in a cave.
Lets ask a real rape victim what they think... see if they think that something virtual compares remotely with a real attack. Otherwise there are rules in place regarding disrespectful and inappropriate behavior, they are called the TOS. Also how exactly can an avatar virtually force action of another avatar without their consent? Also i think anyone who cannot seperate a virtual attack (that does not include a threat against their physical person) needs to re-evaluate whether they should be participating in these online communities. After all i kill a few hundred people every month in Battlefield 2142 and have never even been arraigned on murder or attempted murder or harassment.
Running from the law definitely wasnt as easy as they made it look on the Dukes of Hazzard --Joy, My Name is Earl (2006
I think that these sort of cases border very strongly on entrapment. By bordering, I mean that if the person has already gone to the trouble of cybering a (to them) 12-year-old, often replete with webcam pictures and/or nasty photos, it might not quite cross that very thin line. This would mean that the officer misrepresented his/her identity, however if they have not acted lasciviously or asked for nude photos, then the actual point at which the perp arrives is just the pick-up and crime(s) have already been committed. However, I believe that the chances are in favour that somewhere in there the officer crossed the line into enticement/entrapment.
As far as the underage person not actually existing, well it's still a crime to fully plan out a murder, it doesn't depend on successful execution, and you don't have to actually get to the point of killing somebody before they can stop and arrest you. Sometimes these cases too get muddled, but it's the same concept.Many people might lead this into thought-crime, but as soon as you start putting the idea "out there" it's no longer a thought but a plan. The real hard part comes on discrimination between an off-remark like "somebody should toss him off the bridge in concrete boots" VS actually planning to pick somebody up and attach them weighted on the bottom of a lake
To throw a similar-context analogy, if somebody plants a bomb that doesn't work (or the parts turn out to be fake), then that person is still guilty of having tried to commit the act as to his knowledge he was going to blow something up, knowingly committing an illegal act. By the same count, the people in question are in their own minds are in fact committing an illegal act, it's only circumstances beyond their knowledge that prevented it... not much different from pulling the trigger on somebody without realizing the gun was out-of-ammo.
Again, the big line is what crosses into entrapment, and whether authorities have in their own actions encourage the illegal act. Entrapment at times often seems to be a case of "were the authorities aiding and abetting"... and would the crime or a similar crime ever have occurred without their involvement.
Now in this case, it's not an issue of entrapment but rather more one of intent and damage done. Would a reasonable person have suffered harm in this event, and does it equate to a similar crime in the physical world. In this case, no, as virtual rape is in no way a comparable violation to real rape. Depending on how often it happens, the real-world equivalent law might fall more under harassment or stalking (if the player persisted in attempting to engage the "victim" despite obvious unwillingness).
"There is no question that forced online sexual activity -- whether through text, animation, malicious scripts or other means -- is real;"
No, it isn't; it's virtual. There is no such thing as 'forced online sexual activity' since you can't be forced to be or to remain online. Calling this 'rape' is an insult to all real rape-victims. At any moment of that so called 'online rape' you can decide to ban the culprit or even go offline, thereby ending the 'rape'; I would like to see that oportunity to real rape-victims. If this is deemed to be equal to rape, then I guess when I kill someone in a second-life-like world, I can be prosecuted for murder too. Meh.
"Our laws say that an adult subjecting a teenager or child to sexual words, images or suggestions on the internet is preying on their mental and emotional state in a sexual way. Even if you never try to meet the minor in person, and even if you never touch them or expose your naked self to them, it is a crime to attempt to engage sexually with a minor. If it is a criminal offense to sexually abuse a child on the internet, how can we say it is not possible to rape an adult online?"
Well, she has a point there, but only because those laws too aren't really all that logical to begin with. The reason why it is deemed illegal is because it is deemed the adult IS preying on them, not because of the images or words themselves. If it were, then it wouldn't matter whether or not an adult send them, would it? I mean, some people seem to be unaware of how teenagers themselves talk about sex in chatrooms; and it's not that they do not engages in 'sexual words, images and or suggestions'. Sometimes I think I'm living on another planet where prudes think their wishes are real. So, logically, it is untainable that the words or images themselves are harmful, otherwise kids would go in prison for saying sexual things to eachother too (mind you, the USA makes a valiant try in doing so). What is the difference between two 14 years olds sending 'dirty pics' to eachother and one 14 year old and one adult pretending to be a 14y old showing exactly the same pics? Certainly not the pics, which are supposedly doing the damage.
So there is definitely something illogical about this, because, if it's the fact that the other party is an adult, then how can it harm if it isn't noticed he's an adult? The only thing that makes sense is the preying/forcing itself...but then we come back to the first paragraph, and the fact that being forced online or forced in real life is a totally different thing.
"That's not to say I dismiss the trauma a person suffers after being raped online."
Huh? I must be on another planet again. Is the writer from the USA, mayhaps? It's at most a nuisance; ban him or complain to the moderators, and that's that. For gods' sake, if you're traumatised by something that virtually happend to your avatar online, there is something wrong with you to begin with.
"A virtual rape is by definition sudden, explicit and often devastating. If you've never immersed yourself in online life, you might not realize the emotional availability it takes to be a regular member of an internet community. The psychological aspects of relating are magnified because the physical aspects are (mostly) removed."
And here we come to the crux of the matter: people complaining about 'rape' online have a borderline syndrome, where they are unable to see a distinction anymore between their real selves and their online avatars. They have effectively substituted real life for Second Life, and that's why they think rape in Second Life is equal to rape in real life. It's rather pathetic. The only reason why a person would think it is 'devastating' is because he/she can't differentiate anymore between her real life and her avatar. People should get a grip; getting 'raped' or 'killed' online is annoying at most, but it's not happening to you; *you* have not been raped or murdered.
"But in a game, you don't want to lose the long-term investment you've made
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
What is a game?
/me rapes CowboyNeal
In second life, virtual rape could be rewarded. I am sure a 'rape tag' game would go down a storm on the Internets.
Inside the mechanism of the game, a switch is flicked, and a script is run, and the character_animation_state is set to 5
What does that mean? you have been raped?
Perhaps I record a taunting pose, you mistake it for a rape pose, and suddenly you ***determine*** that you have been raped.
Does virtual rape only exist when a message 'you have been raped' shows up?
Can you rape someone on irc using:
Did I just break some law? Wait, perhaps CowboyNeal needs to be here, and hear me say it. What is different about the way in which this would happen in SecondLife?
While you all recover from that, I will just say that what ***determines*** something is important. In games, the game engine itself decides if the hit actually hit. Broken box models in some quake mods meant that on certain frames in a jump a railgun shot to the head actually missed the collision box. In SecondLife there isn't a ***rape box*** that can determine in the game if you have been raped.
we don't need to have two arms and legs. secondlife people don't have genetalia. They can't reproduce. They can have polygons bulging in the right place, and scripts can create more polygons, that can start small, and require regular feeding, but it is all merely narrativium.
Nothing real exists, there are no consequences. I played on SecondLife and found it quite easy to grief newbies by building toroid prisons around them, and boxing them in. This grows old and I was just curious as to how much freedom you can have in a world where everyone can be all powerful with the right knowledge.
SecondLife to a programmer is being neo in the matrix. even though newbs can fly, run scripts, you are free to work within a framework of mutual experience, and chance what others perceive inside the game.
At the end of the day, its socializing, circa '90s IRC chatting, combined with weak graphics, and the ability to change what is happening on the screen. a decent enough code must go into enforcing an economy where you can have > 1 mona lisa, and still have the balls to link this to 'real money' although they don't actually.
SecondLife is overblown, and it is stories like this that help that. I like the ganking story where a guy got beat up for ganking another guys wife on WOW. I only wish he had published both their names so everyone else could beat the virtual shit out of the ones who would inflict others for enjoying antagonizing others in a game.
There is nothing wrong with playing bad in games. Nothing wrong with TK and PK. If the game wants to enforce rules, then that itself changes the game theory.
playing the game and assuming social order and rules that are not in effect of the game machine adds a new dimension, trust and insecurity perhaps. Knowing that nobody on your team in AA will shoot you might make it more closer to the truth, and eradicate some really annoying moments, but you do loose a real sense of paranoia and uncertainty.
Even in AA you can kill opponents who give accidental friendly fire on previous rounds, and not be too harshly penalized in the game, so for enjoyment factor, the game theory permits some petty team killing.
That is all I have got to say, i am not going onto AA and going to virtually rape a couple of people.
Good day.
PS: Take it as read that I rape everyone who replies to this thread, and all parents to this thread. yey.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com