Real trouble in virtual worlds

Posted on 11 Mar 2008 at 16:43

Certain legal boundaries are more clearly defined even within the virtual realm. Take computer-generated imagery that depicts children involved in sexual activity, something that's illegal in the UK. However, following a Supreme Court ruling in 2002 that said no real children are harmed by the making of such virtual pornography, these images remain within the law in the US.

Some mistakenly think this provides a defence where the virtual world is hosted on US-based servers, but if you view such images your web browser has to "download" them onto your computer, which is based in the UK, and you're then at the mercy of British law. Section 1 of the 1978 Protection of Children Act makes it an offence to make, distribute, show or advertise indecent pseudo-photographs, and the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 makes it an offence to possess them. Although a pseudo-photograph is defined by the 1978 act as being an image (whether made by computer graphics or otherwise) that appears to be a photograph and includes data stored on a computer, the law has yet to be tested as far as avatars are concerned. However, that test must surely come soon with the growing interest in virtual sexual perversion.

German law-enforcement agencies have already investigated acts of simulated sex between adult and child avatars within Second Life, although no arrests have been made. A German TV station claimed to have downloaded real child porn images from within Second Life, which the authorities are also investigating. Belgian police have gone so far as having detectives from the Federal Computer Crime Unit patrol the virtual environment to interview potential witnesses following an allegation of avatar rape.

Even in the unlikely event that the police catch the perpetrators, surely the real question is can an avatar be raped at all? To perform a sexual act in Second Life, for example, both avatars have to consent to the animation being activated, that even includes the "rape kit" animations you can purchase as avatar add-ons. Indeed, does a virtual representation of an individual within a virtual world have any legal rights? Vincent Scheurer, a qualified barrister renowned for his legal work within the computer games industry, claims "the law of the land will apply to the real world only, not the virtual world". Scheurer goes on to explain that he can't see how rape could apply to avatars as they aren't human beings. However, "a simulated rape of an avatar may," depending on the detail, "constitute an obscene publication in the real world," which could be illegal, depending upon jurisdiction.

Courts have enough trouble agreeing on jurisdiction in the real world, let alone throwing international servers and domains into the works. Take the example of someone living in the UK who publishes something that's illegal in Canada on a website hosted in Singapore; does that person have to answer for breaking a law in another country when breaking none in their own? The short answer is no, unless the crime committed was extraditable and an extradition treaty exists between the countries concerned. Even then, the law as it stands doesn't allow for a virtual extradition treaty. If the crime was a fraud or hacking offence online, extradition may apply to any country whose citizens were affected by it, but not for a "crime" contained within a virtual world that only affects a virtual, and therefore borderless, population.