My mother called me this morning to ask me how a woman could be arrested for a virtual murder, and what was a virtual murder, anyway? My mother is 67 years old, retired to Florida, but because her daughter (that would be me) is a geek, she’s running a hot new laptop with ATT wireless broadband and a decent understanding of how the Internet and her computer are supposed to work.
But virtual worlds are outside of her understanding. So, I had her read me the article, and it turns out a woman was arrested for accessing someone else’s computer and using their password to access information that wasn’t hers to access. Aka, low-level hacking. She wasn’t actually charged with murder.
“Is this like Dungeons and Dragons?” My mother asked.
Well, sort of, I tried to explain. I told her that while I was not involved in any virtual worlds, that there were a lot of such places out there that people participated in, and that the woman was being charged with hacking into her virtual “husband’s” account and virtually “killing” him because he had gotten a virtual “divorce.”
She said that apparently some people didn’t have enough to do. I would have to agree. When a virtual world takes over your real world, and you commit acts of vandalism to further your mission in your virtual world, then you probably need to get a better grip on reality. Whether or not this woman should be prosecuted, I’m not sure. I’d have to do more research on her case before I could make an opinion about that.
But you have to wonder…where does common sense go in these virtual worlds? Or, because it is a virtual world, do people just think that real world rules shouldn’t apply, and they can do anything they want?
Interesting thought.