Slides of 'Virtual Criminality: Rights and Wrongs' presented by Kim Barker at BILETA 2012, Centre for Life, Newcastle. Email: kjb09@aber.ac.uk

1. Kim Barker

2. Virtual Criminality
 Criminal law is well developed – although not without
its flaws / weaknesses / controversies
 Cyberspace has no such ‘law’
 ‘the value in cyberspace lies in its ability to resist singular
interpretation and it would be a mistake to try to impose
one’ (Chaterjee)
 Cyberspace works in a different way...
Applying our non-virtual law to cyber wrongs is
problematic. But why?

3. Cyber crime or Cybercrime?
 Cyber crime is a term used to generically describe a range
of criminal offences
 Only some of these relate to computers!
 However, legislation refers to Cybercrime
 Australian Cybercrime Act (2001)
 Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime
 Smith, Graborsky and Urbas suggest there is a
distinction between cyber crime and cybercrime

4. Online Games & Virtual Worlds
 What are online games (MMORPGs) and Virtual
Worlds?
 What do they have to do with cybercrime?
 Bell (2008):
“A synchronous, persistent network of people, represented as
avatars, facilitated by networked computers”
 Online games and virtual worlds are massively
multiplayer and interactive spaces
 They encourage creativity and trade of game items

5. What ‘crime’?
 The classifications of cyber crime focus predominantly
on similar classifications adopted by criminal law in
the physical world
 In Online Games and Virtual Worlds, there are
different types of ‘crime’
 The definitions and categorisations of cybercrime do not
take into account games and gaming activities
 E.g. Nerfing and Griefing

6. The Connection?
 Online games and virtual worlds do not give rise to
proprietary rights for users
 But they do encourage ideas of ‘ownership’
 There are opportunities for:
 Virtual theft / robbery
 Virtual ‘murder’ and offences against the person
 Cyberstalking
 Cyber prostitution
 Cyber sex offences
 Virtual fraud and deception
ALL within virtual spaces and gaming platforms...why do these
not fall within the categorisations?

7. Criminality & Wrongs 1
 There are multiple uses for online games and virtual
worlds; socialising, trade, income generation,
escapism!
 In games, rules set out what users can and cannot do
within a particular environment – EULA regulation
 E.g. In some games for example, it is acceptable to
actively seek to kill other avatars and steal their items
 In others, such activities are prohibited and are known
as griefing!

8. Criminality and Wrongs 2
 Theft of virtual items e.g. Swords, gold, costumes
 Habbo case
 Zynga hacker
 Final Fantasy player Geoff Lurrs claimed theft of $4000 – no help
 Bragg v Linden Lab
 Volkov v John Doe – Second Life sex bed theft
 Murder
 Second Life wife ‘murders husband’
 Money laundering
 In 2008 a Korean group were arrested after laundering $38m into
China from virtual currencies
 GBH (of an avatar!)
 Virtual sex offences
 LambdaMOO and Bungle

9. Regulatory Systems?
 VWs and MMORPGs are regulated by End User
License Agreements
 Everything is regulated at least in part by a contractual
agreement
 Usually also includes Codes of Conduct, Rules of Play
etc e.g. The Habbo Way
 Social Norms also play a part e.g. LambdaMOO or
Second Life (to an extent)

10.  No virtual police force
 Many police forces do not consider things happening
within virtual worlds or games to be their concern
 South Korea is one example of this being the opposite
– they have their own dedicated police team for
dealing with issues in virtual worlds
 BUT none of this is in-game or in-world
 Second Life have a reporting system, World of Warcraft
and EVE Online have GameMasters

11. Cyber Wrongs?
 The UK Fraud Advisory Panel called for the government to
extend laws into virtual worlds in 2007
 The current classifications and examinations of cyber
crimes do not take into account the specifics of criminality
in virtual worlds
 There are difficulties in using the same models of criminal
law in virtual spaces – how do you determine the actus reus
and mens rea of an avatar?
 Cyber crime could be better addressed as cyber wrongs in
virtual spaces
 Cyber space users could therefore have greater cyber rights
because they will be protected from cyber wrongs!

12. Questions?
Thank You
kjb09@aber.ac.uk
Kim Barker