Can real world crimes occur in a virtual world?

I’m not into virtual games and virtual worlds, but I’ve ran across a couple of stories in the news the past few days where a crime was created in a virtual world (like Second Life) and then people were charged by the real police for a crime in the real world.

• In the Netherlands two kids were convicted of theft in a Dutch court for stealing a virtual amulet in the game Runescape. The details are pretty scarce, but apparently the two kids “coerced” another kid to hand over the items, and to the court that’s as good as theft.
• The AP ran a story over the wire about a Japanese lady being arrested after killing her virtual husband after he quickly divorced her in the virtual world. She was charged with illegal access onto a computer and manipulating electronic data because she stole the guys password and logged into the computer.

Virtual worlds run the way they are programmed to run. If there’s a problem with something that occurs in a virtual world, then the programmer who controls the game should fix the problem rather than the real world police.

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