Reader Roundtable: “Virtual Rape” Claim Brings Belgian Police to Second Life
April 24th, 2007 by Benjamin Duranske
Belgian newspapers De Morgen and Het Laatste Nieuws reported Friday that “the Brussels public prosecutor has asked patrol detectives of the Federal Computer Crime Unit to go on Second Life” to investigate a “virtual rape” involving a Belgian user of Second Life. (Translations from FreeTranslation.com’s web page translator.)
Website WTFsrsly (that’s “what the f***, seriously,” for readers who don’t speak “l33t”), appears to have first reported the story outside of Belgium, and makes the following point:
Those who know Second Life a bit probably wonder how this was possible though. Sure there are modifications that you can make to your Second Life character in order to be able to rape other characters (these modifications can actually be purchased in-game from other players who develop them), but normally such modifications require consent from the other player. In other words: you can only get raped if you want to.
WTFsrsly is (while sort of crass) technically correct, which raises some interesting questions — most importantly, what is “virtual rape” anyway?
The question isn’t as simple as it might seem — and it is at the heart of what makes virtual worlds different from other forms of interaction.
Many would argue that sexually-oriented harassment that takes place in a virtual world is not “virtual rape.” In other words, if someone causes his avatar ‘Bad Max’ to regularly say sexually explicit things to his avatar’s neighbor ‘Jane Nicegirl’ he’s definitely a contemptible sleazeball, he’s almost certainly in violation of the Terms of Service of his virtual world, he’s probably guilty of several harassment and stalking crimes, and he might be liable in civil court for intentional infliction of emotional distress. But, some would argue, no matter what the user has ‘Bad Max’ say to ‘Jane Nicegirl,’ it doesn’t really make sense to call that “rape.”
On the other hand, there are objects (it’s all code, of course, but “objects” are how that code gets represented) within some virtual worlds that give one user control over another user’s avatar. In early text-based virtual worlds, such objects were known as “voodoo dolls,” and they have been used to perpetrate something that many would call “virtual rape.”
The most famous case of involving a voodoo doll took place in LamdaMOO, a text-based multi-user environment, and was brilliantly covered by Julian Dibble. The Dibble piece is well worth reading in its entirety, but in sum, a voodoo doll was employed by one user to make it appear that several other users were participating in explicit, violent sexual acts in an extremely public part of the environment.
Voodoo doll-type objects exist in modern virtual worlds too. In Second Life, for example, scripted collars that allow one user to take control of another user’s avatar are regularly used by the BDSM crowd in purely consensual online relationships and encounters. The code that makes these devices work, however, could be built into anything from a teacup to a tennis bracelet. And in theory, at least, these objects could then be given to an unsuspecting avatar as virtual roofies.
Although software controls in Second Life are supposed to require that an object obtain permission before animating an avatar, it is not difficult to imagine a situation where a combination of skillful scripting and social engineering could lead to one user’s control of another (unwilling) user’s avatar, particularly if the victim is new to virtual worlds and unfamiliar with the often bewildering array of controls, dialog boxes, and objects.
It is not known what occurred here that lead to the Belgian investigation (and it may well never be) but the questions that are raised by the allegation are certain to arise again.
Reader Roundtable
What is “virtual rape?” Does it even make internal sense as a term? Is it control of an avatar against a user’s will, a textual or graphical depiction of a forced sexual act, or something else completely?
Can virtual rape occur without even the appearance (in a graphical world) or description (in a text-based world) of physical contact, or is that “just” harassment — essentially the equivalent of an obscene phone call?
How should crimes perpetrated only in a virtual space be punished? Is it just harassment (of the user), no matter what the crime (against the avatar)?
Should there be a sliding scale of punishments — where virtual rape would likely be punished more severely than other types of virtual assault?
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30 Responses to “Reader Roundtable: “Virtual Rape” Claim Brings Belgian Police to Second Life”
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Granted someone can’t be animated against their will in SL if you’re an ethical coder (For over half my Second Life I’ve worn a collar and if I really don’t want to be animated through it any more I can take it off after all) and taking off all attachments will stop this ever happening to you (you can add them 1 by one, rez to floor to check they’re not unexpectedly scripted and things too) I’d expect just about any accusation of rape to fail in some terms. On the other hand, “No means NO” applies here too. *I* happily and willingly consent to give (some) control away, but retain the right to say “No” and expect to have that respected. Continuing past that ending of consent - I’d be inclined to the virtual rape end of the response situation, although I’d wonder why quit wasn’t invoked, and although virtual rape I strongly suspect could be violently emotionally and mentally disturbing, it’s not as nasty as the real thing.
For point 2… IRL if I were to sexual harrass you, or be sexual harrassed by you, there would be no consent (that’s why it’s harrassment) and in most circumstances little or no contact. Contact would let us addititional charges. Rape is a whole level of severity further. Surely that same escalation of severity makes sense? Being chatted up by inept newbies is borderline harrassment, but unless they really persist most of us cope with it, as we cope (or coped when younger and prettier) with some level of “lechery” from those around us. Rape is worse than that, virtual rape too for my money.
I *have* been stalked in SL. It was deeply, deeply disturbing and unpleasant. I’ve never been stalked IRL, but would say it is unlikely to be more disturbing whilst they remain a stalker and not a home-invader, assaulter etc. To that extent I’d say virtual rape is a bigger crime, and deserving of a bigger punishment, even though I can’t define more precisely than “carrying on past clear refusal of consent” as what makes rape.
It is no more possible to rape somebody in SecondLife as it is possible to murder somebody. Whist it is feasible to set an object such that one’s avatar is positioned in relation to another’s avatar, and animated such, as it appears that the avatars are copulating, even if one of the avatars’ owners has done nothing to consent to it, the first life legal consequences must always follow the effect on the human controlling the avatar, not the avatar itself, and that effect is the effect of sexual harassment, not of rape, the latter of which is many orders of magnitude more serious.
The problem some jurisdictions have with “virtual rape” may be similar to problems with “virtual child pornograpy” or extreme depictations of bondage. Even if the act is not a crime, the visual and textual basis of it could be considered obscene and illegal. There are legislators and prosecutors who have tried to ban extreme pornography, involving violent rape, improper use of bodily functions or other extreme fetishes, even if the presented acts are simulated, based on their content. “Virtual Rape” being prohibited could fall under a category of banned expression as opposed to being similar to a physical rape.
Of course, I am not knowledgable about Belgian law as I am a US law student. But if there were a RL justification for banning “Virtual Rape”, that would be it.
This is completely rediculous. So I guess players who kill other players in MMOG’s are guilty of murder and should be charged? How idiotic is this? I fear for our society when I see how many peopel think this is a real issue. Turn off the computer and reaquaint yourself with reality.
Let’s put the whole thing on a level we might be able to imagine better:
We have two children, one child playing with puppet Barbie, the other child playing with puppet Ken.
Suddenly the child playing the Ken puppet throws his puppet on top of the Barbie puppet ans simulates a copulation, of course without the consent of the child playing the Barbie puppet, this child is protesting loudly!
Now what happened? I would say nothing! The worst one might call this is sexual harassment, but that is it. Nothing more.
So stop taking everything too serious, calling for courts and judicial measures. In reality nothing happened!
Alt-F4. Virtual rape averted.
[...] [via: gulli.com/…2007-05-04/] [related Link: wired.com/…/sexdrive_0504] [related Link: virtuallyblind.com/…second-life] [...]
An avatar is a fictional character. The law does not protect fictional game characters, only the actual human users.
It is logistically impossible for a SL user to *force* another SL *user* to do anything. If the “victim” doesn’t like what’s going on, there is not a single moment when she is not able to put down the mouse and turn off the computer.
Furthermore, since nobody is being forced to do anything, and rape is — by definition — forced, there is no rape. The “perpetrator” may or may not have run afoul of the SL terms of service, but there is no crime.
[...] Things like these happened before as stated in this article about a similar event that took place in a older text based mmorpg. It was discussed at the time but no real action was taken. Well this time police was involved as you can find on the second citizen forum and in all the others articles covering the story. [...]
[...] Things like these happened before as stated in this article about a similar event that took place in an older text based mmorpg. It was discussed at the time but no real action was taken. Well this time police was involved as you can find on the second citizen forum and in all the others articles covering the story. [...]
[...] Yet it has prompted several threads of discussion, from a legal analysis to four pages of commentary at the Second Citizen forums. [...]
I’ve noticed a few responses here about the fact that the user could merely have turned off the computer, and due to this ability to escape, it means that the “sex” was optional and thus that no rape occurred. Firstly, date rape is an example of sex that is technically avoidable, yet due to socially constructed psychological issues, the victim is often unable to escape the situation. The victim may be too emotionally destablised by the inital attack to be able to respond appropriately, or, prior to attempting escape, the victim tries a number of escape methods which fail to work. Inability to effect an appropriate escape hardly neutralises the term of “rape” in this instance. Secondly, other criticism has noted that the victims of online rape cannot consider it rape because the characters are virtual, and have no bearing on the real world. Rape differs from sex beyond the basics of the physical struggle: it is also a mental issue which is primarily marked by a masculine domination through force, and subjectation of the victim. It is the psychological effects that are the most brutal. Understanding this, the post-human issue of embodied consciousness is important. Embodied consciousness is where a human consciousness becomes so naturalised in an environment - whether it is performing repetitive tasks, operating an online character, typing on a keyboard, or any other technological interaction with an environment - that they have extended their consciousness to the point where the technology acts as a mental extention of their body. As such, a person can become incredibly involved with their online equivalents, to the point where they suffer real emotional damage from an unfair exploitation of their character. All this, however, circumvents the fact that there is a person out there who will have - regardless of the victim’s reaction - considered themselves as having successfully raped someone online and congratulated themselves for it. This is an idea I, and hopefully many others, find incredibly disgusting.
[...] She links to some interesting articles, notably one from Virtually Blind, on virtual law, where the question of “What is ‘virtual rape?’ Does it even make internal sense as a term? Is it control of an avatar against a user’s will, a textual or graphical depiction of a forced sexual act, or something else completely?” is asked. [...]
I think existing laws cover this well enough. Sexual Harassment + EULA Violation + Other. Let’s just not forget that no matter how attached you are to your avatar, this isn’t even the same order of magnitude as physical rape.
This is ridiculous. Second Life is ridiculous.
[...] Discussion, and a fair amount of FUGing of the issue has spread through the blogosphere and mailing lists: Virtually Blind attempts to consider the legalities of it [...]
[...] Yet it has prompted several threads of discussion, from a legal analysis to four pages of commentary at the Second Citizen forums. [...]
[...] Sebbene la definizione di un reato di questo tipo sfugga ancora ad una definizione precisa, gli sviluppatori di Second Life stanno pensando di correre ai ripari: verrà probabilmente istituita una verifica sull’età del videogiocatore per permettere la realizzazione di aree riservate ai minorenni, e di altre pensate per gli adulti in cerca di sensazioni forti. [...]
[...] Yet it has prompted several threads of discussion, from a legal analysis to four pages of commentary at the Second Citizen forums. [...]
[...] Things like these happened before as stated in this article about a similar event that took place in an older text based mmorpg. It was discussed at the time but no real action was taken. Well this time police was involved as you can find on the second citizen forum and in all the others articles covering the story. [...]
I happened to see a humorous and harmless instance of the social engineering aspect of this.
It was a avatar (shape and skin plus some scripts ) that makes the user look like a puppy. You can then let people “pet” you. This pops up a dialog asking the target to grant permission to animate them. Since they expect to be animated to “pet the puppy”, they will say yes.
What actually gets animated is the puppy humping the targets leg.
[...] http://virtuallyblind.com/2007/04/24/open-roundtable-allegations-of-virtual-rape-bring-belgian-police-to-second-life http://www.wtfsrsly.com/sl.php [...]
[...] if you are not with me in this, humour me for a moment. Take recent discussions of an alleged case of SL rape on Virtually Blind for instance. In this matter, SL and RL oddly clash on the question of wether [...]
this is so useless. this is avatars having moving up and down on a stupid animation not real people having sex. go after pedophiles who try and get kids nude in front of the webcam instead of after whiners who want to get attention yelling: MY AVATAR GOT RAPED
in secondlife everyone is equally strong women can teleport out just as men can if someone is harrasing you send in an abuse report just like with any griefer
this is not real this is a game with toon avatars do you know how many people get killed in games every day?
your supposed to be over 18 when you enter the game so you shouldnt be stupid and go whine when your avatar does an animation that you dont want. if your so mentally instable that you cannot bear seeing your avatar do an wrong animation you shouldnt be in this game but go to a psychiatrist
Calling this rape is a disgrace to all REAL rape victims. Please for their sake don’t even try comparing it. It was at worst sexual harassment, not rape, not sexual assault… there was no assault taking place.
What is wrong with some of you people? Seriously, as already suggested, get mental help if you think a pretend world is real life. I sure as hell don’t want your type around my kids IRL, i.e. the world where you have to eat drink and breathe to survive.
Expect a lot more irrationality like this when women gain an upper hand in the legislature and legal professions.
I hope I am dead by then…
[...] investigated allegations that paedophiles are using SL for virtual sex with children, and a case of virtual rape has been opened by Brussels police. There is an ongoing debate if virtual sex with minors, virtual [...]
Did anything ever come of this? The original reports in Dutch don’t seem to be online anymore, and I can’t find anything to confirm any of the basic facts of this case. Yet, it is being used as a reason not to use SL in K-12 education, so maybe we should find out if it really happened or not, and what the result of the police investigation (if it happened) was.
[...] *NOTE: I couldn’t find the story Garfield was referring to, but the following story (from 2007) is equally fucked up: Belgian newspapers De Morgen and Het Laatste Nieuws reported Friday that “the Brussels public prosecutor has asked patrol detectives of the Federal Computer Crime Unit to go on Second Life” to investigate a “virtual rape” involving a Belgian user of Second Life. More [...]