Virtual Crimes May Bring Real-Life Consequences

A court in the Netherlands has convicted two teenagers for stealing a classmate's virtual items in the online game, Runescape. The court held that under Dutch law, virtual goods are still goods, and therefore stealing virtual goods amounts to theft. In another case of virtual crime, a woman was arrested in Japan in real life for "murdering" her online husband in the virtual game, MapleStory. After a virtual divorce, the woman logged into her online ex-husband's account and deleted his account data. If convicted, she could face a prison term of up to five years or a fine for illegally accessing and manipulating electronic data. These are two of a handful of cases from around the world indicating that virtual crimes may garner real-life punishments. While the punishable action in each case is essentially the abuse of someone else's data, it is interesting to note the conceptual distinction between the reasons for punishment of each case. In the latter case in Japan, the charge was based on the actual manipulation of data, while the former case in the Netherlands equated theft of a virtual good with a physical good. For the virtual theft story, visit the web site of the London Telegraph: http://tinyurl.com/68w786 For the virtual murder story, follow this link to the Telegraph site: http://tinyurl.com/6la6r7 Summary by: Cheryl Cheung