Hello.

My name is Beldar, and I am a (recovering) EverQuest addict { http://www.beldar.org/beldarblog/2003/08/besides_a_curmu.html }.

Massively multiplayer online roleplaying games are indeed immersive and compelling. Two other lawyers I work with, along with one of their spouses, have been bitten by the bug even as I gave it up cold-turkey. (They promptly scavenged my characters' extremely valuable possessions, albeit with my blessings. Ghouls.) The online community is passionate and highly inter-connected both in and out of the games, and segments of that community are quite lively and intelligent.

Before moving to EverCrack -- errrrr, EverQuest, I played another roleplaying game in which one of my characters was the prosecutor in a day-long jury trial in which one of the gods (a GM, "game master") of that realm was eventually convicted of murdering his goddess-wife. That was great fun.

But I'm very, very skeptical about drawing many "RL" (real-life) conclusions from anything that happens in EQ or other such games. To the extent meaningful lessons can be drawn, they're almost always based on accidental confluences of circumstances. In EverQuest, for example, the game engine and in-game economy are so rich and multilayered and detailed that the programmers no longer can predict how their changes will affect the game with any reasonable degree of accuracy. The Law of Unintended Consequences and the Laws of Chaos Theory reign.

And by the way, if anyone is interested in "purchasing" a technically nonassignable EQ account (Sony Online Entertainment turns a blind eye to small scale-traffic in such accounts) that contains a godly level 65 rogue and a near-godly level 62 bard, I may can make you a deal -- but in US$, not EQ platinum pieces!

The idea of the government rolling around prosecuting virtual crimes within a game would be absolutely devestating.

Imagine all of the virtual evidence that a corrupt official could manufacture to convict real-life people and send them
to prison/ pad their resume.

I have a better idea. Have the government pay for virtual cops and virtual prosecutors that will convict the virtual
characters and lock them away (bore the real life player until he gets a new character) or terminate the character
and force the real-life player to start anew.

Anything else would be absurd. Could you imagine a New York Court: "You are charged with using a teleportation ring
to rob Beldar the Wicked's Death Potion spell!" I mean really, in the Lord of the Rings the virtual character Bilbo
Baggins (the burglar) would be liable to Smog the Dragon for all sorts of torts. Are we to posthumously convict
J.R.R. Tolkien for creating criminal, victim, and crime? Hey, just because his virtual reality is on paper doesn't
make it less virtual.

The line of reasoning supporting making virtual acts liable in reality are really a new incarnation of "Though-crimes"
infringing on fantasy. Just another way to use new technology to scare up another witchhunt....

Ronin