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?"

Rape must include penetration

[garbletext]

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.

Re:No

[jandrese]

Heck, this appears to be talking about SecondLife, you don't even have to log off. All you have to do (assuming it's your own land) is simply ban the guy from your land. It's like 2 clicks, it certainly would be faster than spewing out 2000 words of blog post about it. People online are dicks, don't let them get to you. That is the rule of the internet.

Re:Much ado about nothing

[Remus Shepherd]

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.

Eh...in Second Life it's a little different. Users can create customized animations that can be very detailed and last a long time, and their environment is a working physics simulation. You can use that physics to harass others -- knocking people into orbit is a common form of griefing on SL. Or you can trick someone into accepting and running your animation -- all it takes is for them to click on an object you control once. If they do that, you gain the ability to make their avatar do anything you want, as if you installed a rootkit on their avatar. So 'standing still' isn't a problem. You can be tricked into cooperating.

As the article mentions, 'logging off' isn't always an answer, especially if you're doing business on SL. Logging off then means closing up shop, and that's a bad solution.

The good solutions are reporting it to Linden and getting a (hopefully) swift response, or using common sense and anti-griefer tools to protect yourself. I think this is all going to boil down to 'should we protect people with bad judgement online?' And I think the correct answer is, 'If they're adults, then No.'

Re:Lame

[geek]

Seeing as how I volunteer at a womens center in my off time, counseling battered and raped women, I'd say I do actually. Look the laws up yourself. Rape is penetration, whether it be penile or with an object. Everything else is battery, assault or harassment.

All about consent

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

The reason why some online interaction with kids is a crime in some places is because society has decided to not recognise the consent of people under a certain age. If the kid sticks around, it's because they consent to the interaction, and that consent is not recognised.

The same thing cannot be true for adults, because if they stick around (consent to the interaction), we recognise that consent.

The only reason the two situations aren't the same is because it is possible for kids to consent to stuff without that consent being legally recognised. Since that's not true of adults, the same situation cannot occur.

Re:Much ado about nothing

[blackbearnh]

Or you can trick someone into accepting and running your animation -- all it takes is for them to click on an object you control once. If they do that, you gain the ability to make their avatar do anything you want, as if you installed a rootkit on their avatar. So 'standing still' isn't a problem. You can be tricked into cooperating.

Actually, it takes more than that. In order to run llStartAnimation on someone, you first need to do an llGetPermissions on them, which brings up a popup window asking permission to run animations. The only exception to this is if you "sit" an object (right-click it and select Sit), in which case the script still has to run llGetPermission, but it returns immediately because sitting on something is implicit permission to be animated, that's how poseballs work.

However, even if you somehow got into a situation when (either by sitting or granting permission) you were running an animation you didn't want to, Tools->Stop All Animations will turn off anything you didn't want to do.

Re:Lame

[radarjd]

No word has an immutable definition. Words are defined by usage, and as the GP pointed the word 'rape' has different usages in various parts of the world.

Crimes, however, do have fixed definitions. For example, in the state of Indiana, rape is defined by IC 35-42-4-1 [in.gov]. It says
(a) Except as provided in subsection (b), a person who knowingly or intentionally has sexual intercourse with a member of the opposite sex when:
(1) the other person is compelled by force or imminent threat of force;
(2) the other person is unaware that the sexual intercourse is occurring; or
(3) the other person is so mentally disabled or deficient that consent to sexual intercourse cannot be given;
commits rape

The law likely similarly defines rape in other states, as this tracks fairly closely with common law.

Re:Think about that.

[PhilipMckrack]

I am pretty sure the terms of service for Second Life are you must be an adult to create a character. There is a Teen Second Life for teens to use. Unless someone falsified their age somewhere this shouldn't be an issue.

Re:Think about that.

[Reziac]

I think this works, but haven't tried it myself: if you mark someone as a foe, then auto-downmod foes to -1, theoretically they vanish from your ken. Unless, of course, you read at -1.

Re:Think about that.

[Grishnakh]

What's funny is that this case is in Belgium, not the USA which is far better known for ridiculous litigiousness. We have some pretty ridiculous stuff happen in our courtrooms, but I think we are a better country for speech-type issues like this; this would probably be laughed at by police and thrown out of court if it ever got there.

Of course, Belgium is also the country where gangs of Muslim men in their teens and 20s are known to beat bus drivers to death while other adults just walk away and don't bother to call police. And the Europeans think we're weird for allowing private citizens to carry firearms.

you can't get "raped" in Second Life

[nanosquid]

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?

Re:Agreed

[hkmarks]

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.