Slashdot Mirror
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.
Was she virtually asking for it?
Don't flame me, I know it's awful.
Does winning a match of CounterStrike make you a mass murderer?
Everything about TFA is ridiculous.
You could get sent to virtual prison.
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.
"Hey! What the hell are you doing to my character>!?!?!"
"You said you'd f*ck me! It's in the chat logs! It's consensual! You have nothing on me!! HAHAHAHAHAHA"
Teabagging after a good round of pwnage will be illegal now.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
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.
One thing that I learned from the Duke Lacrosse case is that in most US jurisdictions, and possibly elsewhere, Rape is legally defined as including penile penetration. Thus when the accuser changed her story and said that she thought she might only have been penetrated by an object, the DA was forced to drop the rape charges to sexual assault. Online, penetration with anything is impossible, although abuse and assault have much broader definitions which certainly could include online speech and actions.
If being raped in Second Life is a crime, then we need to invent new punishments for what happened to me on Furrymuck.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
"In other news, ScuttleMonkey Industries reported that their profits were at an all-time high thanks to continued graft payments from the creators of Second Life to continue greenlighting stories about their company on Slashdot..."
Crow T. Trollbot
...there should be virtual punishment.
And that is all.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
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.
It ain't rape, but it ain't right.
You can't take the sky from me...
Actually, there has been a case like the one you describe..you can read about it right here
(i am so getting modded down for this)
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
These people aren't in public. This is HBO not PBS. If they have a problem with obscenities they shouldn't be there. That said, cyber 'rape' is no better or worse than having any asshole annoying your online.
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.
I agree. "Virtual rape" can be part of a campaign of harassment and intimidation, but it's ridiculous to equate it to the real life crime. I bet those who've suffered the real thing wish they could have just pushed a button to escape their attacker.
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.
Virtual rape is a crime as much as stealing a car in GTA is a felony and as much as killing an MMORPG character in PVE is a murder.
Seriously, are we all suddenly a bunch of pussies? If someone starts calling us names online, we can't have the sense to block them on our messenger of email or forums or wherever else they're bothering us? Are we that fucking mushy and pudgy and brainless and spineless that all we can do is sit there and take the supposed "abuse" until some heroic legislator shows up on a white horse to save us from this life-changing and horrifying crime?
Here, let's try another experiment:
Someone writes "I am inserting my penis into your unwilling vagina" to you via instant messenger and you click "block this person" and never hear from them again.
Or . . .
Someone lures you into a private room at a party and then forcibly rapes and violates you. You try to cover yourself enough to escape the party afterward, go home and sit in a shower and bleed while inspecting the bruises that were left on your body and then when you go back to your group of friends, you feel compelled to pretend that nothing ever happened and even be civil to that person around them, because you somehow feel guilty for what they did to you and you spend the rest of your life being affected by the physical attack and it impacts your every thought and action - especially with the opposite sex - for the next forty years.
Yes, I can see how the two are alike.
Sentence them to Virtual time in a Virtual prison.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
But, the article brings up an interesting point, one that I didn't really know:
"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 this is in fact, the case, then apparently sexual content in a virtual setting, already IS a crime...which to me is a slippery slope. It seems strange to me, that if you have not committed or tried to commit a physical crime...that just insinuating and talking about it online, can be a crime. To me that borders on thought crime.
In the case of the quoted part about sexual 'preying' on minors, while disgusting...and I'm talking more about plain text, I'm not sure how it can be illegal? How could the person on the other end know it really was or was not a minor? If it was not a minor they were talking to (but, instead a cop), then what crime was commited since no minor was exposed to the content?
To stretch it out further. Murder is a crime. Is it a crime to write about an explicit murder of a real person, and post it online, if in fact no threat to actually carry it out are given? What about other illegal activity...illegal sexual activity...is it against the law to write about it and publish it?
I dunno...I'm having a hard time with something done in a 'virtual' world...where no physical activity has been commited or even threatened, can be criminal. Not pleasant? Sure...but, a prosecutable offense? I don't think so.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Seriously, are we all suddenly a bunch of pussies?
Yes.
Do you read the news and see what people are whining and complaing about?
So... yes, it certainly seems that way.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Happens all the time though. Plenty of "Pedophiles" set up dates with "Teenage Girls" and end up meeting FBI agents and going to jail. On the intent to have sex with someone who didn't exist in the first place, and was just a persona of an above the of age of consent FBI agent. Stew on that for a while. "Terrorism" and "Think of the Children!" are a very, very effective Denial of Service on our civil liberties.
Yes, you're right. This is clearly an insult to victims of FIRST LIFE (ie, real life) rape. 'VIRTUAL RAPE' is just another term coined by 'SHITTY LAWERS' who need to make more money. Nobody felt violated and physically hurt by this action. If anybody else think otherwise, they should get a REAL LIFE and stop being so bloody stupid. I dare anybody with an IQ higher that 60 to challenge me on this.
My god. If I changed my .sig to "I'm inserting my virtual penis into your unwilling virtual vagina", would I become the worlds most prolific serial virtual rapist? That would be virtually awesome!
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
i dont know. i think the real problem here is that the "victim" is taking the virtual world too seriously. the last thing we need is something to make the virtual world even more realistic.
However, it would be totally appropriate for Linden virtual justice system to order virtual incarceration complete with virtual prison showers. Or even virtually lethal injection whereupon your virtual assets are given to the victim and you are never allowed to apply for another account.
> Sentence them to Virtual time in a Virtual prison.
With Virtual assrape!
There is no way you can get "raped" in Second Life, not even virtually. People can't hold or imprison you against your will; you can always teleport out with no consequence to your avatar. People can't even remove your clothes; you always have to undress yourself. You don't "lose your investment in your avatar" or anything else, and you don't need to change your identity.
So, if you don't want to have sex in Second Life, just keep your clothes on. If nudity offends you, stay out of areas where people run around nude. Simple enough?
This is slashdot. Perhaps you meant "I'm inserting my virtual penis into your unwilling virtual mangina".
Loose lips lose spit.
Or Linden can just make it so it's impossible to do things to someone else's character without their approval.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
*COUGH* *COUGH* *COUGH*
OK now that someone has explained how rape could be punished in second life.
Can someone please explain to me how the hell one character can rape another in second life?
What did they do?
Walk off for a coffee came back to find three guys going to town on their their second life character?
Having never played the game, my limited knowledge of the game's dynamics tells me "rape" as I know it is a little hard to accomplish in second life.
You can write scripts that take control of other people's avatars. I didn't play for long before getting bored with SL, but usually this is used so people can click on objects and then their avatars interact with them. E.g., if you click on a chair you'll sit in the chair, if you click a bed you'll lie down, if you click a swing set you'll start swinging.
There are certain situations where your avatar can get "stuck" -- I got stuck between a hammock and a wall once and it took me about 5 minutes to extricate myself. Another time, I got stuck in a "dancing" script after clicking a button and then losing track of where it was, and couldn't stop dancing until I found the "off" button for the dance.
Usually, it's all fun, but scripts have a high potential for abuse if you make them hard to turn off.