Virtual Reality: Surreal Worlds, Real Crimes

By Nayeon Kim

Nayeon Kim is a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania.


On March 29, the long-awaited Oculus Rift became available to the general public for purchase. [1] Although the virtual reality headset doesn’t seem to be ready to dominate the market just yet, this release clearly marks a big leap in the technology behind virtual reality in that a high-resolution fully-immersive virtual reality headset was actually made as a product and released to the world. The more significant thing is that Oculus Rift is not simply an interesting gadget introduced without context; it represents a beginning of the budding virtual reality hardware and software industry.  This means that many other companies including Sony and HTC are also trying to develop virtual reality headsets and software.


Virtual reality is clearly a hot topic right now, but what does it have to do with law? The most obvious relationship would be that virtual environments can be used to facilitate real crimes, such as people using computers to steal sensitive personal information. Although these issues need to be addressed further, the more interesting issue is about crimes committed within the virtual space without any intent of causing harm in the real world. Most of the virtual reality headsets coming out today aim to fully immerse their users into a completely new but realistic universe. If a virtual environment is very realistic, a range of crimes happening in the real world can also happen in the virtual world. For example, someone may steal something valuable in a virtual world. Or a criminal may bomb a house in a virtual world and cause virtual damage to its residents. The more a virtual world feels like reality, the more crimes can happen in the virtual world.

Unfortunately, crimes happening in virtual environments are not just wild speculations, but instead are becoming a more common phenomenon. The first recorded case of sexual assault in a virtual environment occurred in 1993, when users used a computer program to force another player’s character act out being raped [2]. Even though this event happened during a virtual congregation that took place in California, the victim felt real psychological damage and wrote an online post demanding revenge.


Moreover, in a system called Second Life, which allows users to create avatars and move them around in a virtual universe, some avatars acted out a scene of an adult engaging in sexual activity with a child. [3] Countries such as Germany began a criminal investigation on individuals engaged in this activity because these countries prohibit  virtual depictions of sex as pornography under law.


More unexpected examples include social unrest in virtual worlds often directed against politicians running for office. For example, a political rally of the French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen was disturbed in Second Life in 2007 by protesters who damaged his posters and generated virtual pigs flying over him. [4]


This trend of virtual reality becoming less virtual and more realistic begs the question of whether we should punish crimes committed in the virtual world to the same extent as we would in the real world. thIntuitively, punishing “virtual crimes” in the virtual world might make sense. Of course, if people use the virtual world as a means of causing harm to the real world (e.g. terrorists using virtual reality to train bombers), they would have to be punished according to the laws of the real world. But it might be that we should not consider the real world when punishing crimes that only concern the virtual world.


However, this way of thinking may be an oversimplified way of looking at crimes. In legalese, crime is defined as an action that causes unjustified harm, and must be prosecuted and punished by a legal authority Whether a crime that happened in a virtual world can cause harm in the real world is not an issue that can be instantly solved.


Following the same definition, a crime in a virtual world would be able to cause real psychological harm often amounting to a trauma given the remarkably realistic nature of the virtual environment. Although today’s virtual worlds give the impression that they are not real, in the future virtual worlds are likely to become more immersive, contributing to the sense that the victim was exposed to a real harm. [5] But when it comes to gauging the amount of harm inflicted by a virtual crime, the issue would become much more complicated because of arguments considering different degrees of reality.


Although virtual crimes are happening now and are likely to become a serious issue in the future, discussions about virtual crimes are largely speculative since the first “real” virtual reality headset came out only a few weeks ago. There are still multiple nontrivial technological hurdles to overcome to deliver a perfectly immersive virtual experience. But we would need to begin discussing ways to regulate criminal activities in virtual environments before criminals could act without restraint in a different world causing realistic harm to everyone else.




[1] Alphr, “Oculus Rift Is Now Shipping: Read a Roundup of the Best Oculus Rift Reviews.” Alphr.com, March 29, 2016. http://www.alphr.com/oculus-rift/1000834/oculus-rift-is-now-shipping-read-a-roundup-of-the-best-oculus-rift-reviews
[2] Sipress, Alan. “Does Virtual Reality Need a Sheriff?” Washington Post, June 2, 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/01/AR2007060102671.html
[3] Sipress, Alan. “Does Virtual Reality Need a Sheriff?” Washington Post, June 2, 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/01/AR2007060102671.html
[4] Burkeman, Oliver. “Exploding Pigs and Volleys of Gunfire as Le Pen Opens HQ in Virtual World.” The Guardian, January 19, 2007. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/jan/20/news.france
[5] Goodman, Marc. “Crime and Policing in Virtual Worlds: On the Ever-Evolving Nature of Cybercrime.” Freedom from Fear Magazine, July 2010. http://f3magazine.unicri.it/?p=360
Photo Credit: Flickr User Nicolas Nova



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