In more virtual crime news, a Tokyo woman was jailed for "murdering" her ex-husband. Well, kinda. The 43-year-old logged in to the man's Maple Story account and killed his avatar. From the AP:
Previously on BB:
• Teens convicted of virtual theft
She has not yet been formally charged. If convicted, she could face up to five years in prison or a fine up to $5,000...Woman jailed after 'killing' virtual husband
When bad deeds lead to criminal charges, prosecutors have found a real-world activity to cite – as in this case, in which the woman was charged with inappropriate computer access.
Previously on BB:
• Teens convicted of virtual theft
It’s just a game.
I love that they use the word ‘murdered’ and ‘killed’ over and over, and never once say ‘deleted’ which must be what actually happened. Most MMO customer service departments can just restore a character in cases like this.
If this is murder, does that make the “hacking” of Palin’s e-mail account kidnapping?
Maple Story, eh? I’d say she did him a favor. I played a bit of the US beta of that game, and it was fun for a while, but quickly turned into a tedious grindfest with nothing new to offer in sight. Yes, all similar MMO games have their share of grinding, but this was an incredible amount, and when you leveled you barely noticed any change unless it was one of the milestone levels where you upgraded your job.
It sounds like she knew the password, or guessed it. The reaction is just mind staggeringly silly.
May a little bit of a linguistic nit-pick, but it seems the analogy to real life is more manslaughter and/or 3rd degree murder, judging from the punishment of 5 years (I’m basing this on what I know of American law, though I’m not really familiar with Japanese law, and I may be wrong anyway.)
@4
Actually, the charge she’s facing is unauthorized computer access. The “murder” part is just what she did after committing the real-life crime.
#4 – Foolster41, the article says the woman got the password from the ‘victim’ himself, back when they were still together.
She’s being charged with “illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data”, not murder or manslaughter. Again, from the full article.
I don’t see anything in the article about the authorities in Japan treating this as “murder” in any way. Instead, it looks like the media having a good giggle over the situation.
It appears that it was more a “virtual husband” rather than a real husband being attacked by deleting his characters.
What happens if you die in the matrix?
NOW PAY ATTENTION
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/10/2388118.htm
politicians hate the web. They want to shut you up.
Pay close attention to the legal precedents being set and the direction they wish to go. The iPatriot Act still looms, an “emergency” can be easily fabricated.
Hey, at least she didn’t kill him in real life like old school.
So much for PvP servers.
It seems to me that there are only two relevant real-world charges to bring in this instance:
Inappropriate computer access is one mentioned, another would be property damage/destruction. After all, while a given MMO avatar is probably the property of the game & server, it represents an investment of time by the RL owner which is either completely lost (unrecoverable deletion), or added cost of time (for recoverable deletion, denied use of avatar during the interim).
Hardly felony conviction stuff, unless an avatar attains the commerical & personal value of a car.
You mean she can’t be charged with “making her ex look like a total LOSER on the international news?”
Man, that’s going to cramp my style with the ladies.
–Charlie
#11: So much for PvP servers.
Did you even read the article?
This has nothing to do with any sort of “correct” use of the game – PVP combat and dedicated PVP realms make it part of the game rules. What was being addressed in court here was action outside the game – much like if you and I were playing monopoly and I shredded your monopoly money and deeds while you were in the bathroom.
Hardly felony conviction stuff, unless an avatar attains the commerical & personal value of a car.
The value of the avatar has nothing to do with it – it’s illegally accessing his account that she might be charged with.
Personally I think he’s a bit of an idiot for sharing his account details with someone, and the prosecutor may decide not to actually go ahead with the case because of the “husband’s” poor judgment.
Depending on what the law is like in Japan, there may not be anything to charge her with, because he basically gave her free permission to do whatever with his account by giving her his username and password, and if he wanted to revoke that permission all he had to do was change the password.
Depending on what the law is like in Japan, there may not be anything to charge her with
I think in Japan, once formal charges have been made by the prosecutor the odds are she’s busted. Japanese prosecutors have incredibly high conviction rates (like, 99%. Seriously.).
Imagine if the article had been about a divorced woman logging into her husband’s paypal account and doing something with the money there. This is really no different. The fact that it’s a video game seems to change things only because we seem to have collectively decided to discriminate against people who enjoy having a video game hobby.
As to why it’s news, I have no idea. I assume all sorts of nastiness is fairly commonplace amongst divorcees. If the woman had burned his valuable stamp collection, I doubt we’d be hearing about it.
As to the whole “it’s his fault for sharing a password” thing- yes, it would have been smarter for him to have kept it to himself, or changed it after the divorce. However, people are prone to trusting each other, and that’s not entirely a bad thing. If I give my girlfriend the key to my apartment, and she robs me- is it my fault for failing to take proper security measures? No- even if I leave the front door to my house wide open, it is still illegal for you to walk inside and take my stereo, and if you do so- you are liable to prosecution.
The penalty described is ridiculously harsh though- especially because I am sure his character was restored. I don’t know what police usually do when recently divorced couples try to mess with each other, but this should just be treated as any other offense of that scale.
#17 Allen – just to clarify, they weren’t actually married. They were “virtually married” as in, married in the game only, which consists of declaring yourself so and thus it being so. It doesn’t excuse the account break in, but it is a good warning to other: if you’re going to dump your virtual girlfriend, to whom you’ve given your account login info, you may want to change your password before doing so =)
#17 Allen,
Paypal money is realworld money. I think that’s a big difference.
And speaking of realworld money, as a tax-paying resident of Japan, I’m rolling my eyes and cursing the idiot whiner who went to the police because someone destroyed his game piece, AFTER he gave the login away. I can’t believe the police have hauled this woman all the way up to Sapporo from Miyazaki, the length of the main island chain to face charges. Perhaps there were some other activities, not reported, that warranted such action. Simply logging in with previously shared details and eliminating a game avatar does not rate free travel for custodial police officers in my book.
This seems like the perfect time for a “Internet: Serious Business” post.