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Sunday, July 20, 2008

Is Crime Invading Second Life?

By Amanda Schoenberg
Journal Staff Writer
       Thousands of smiling Bill Cosby replicas wreaking havoc on someone's land. Designs for a raunchy new furniture line stolen and sold for profit. Abusive neighbors.
    In Second Life, just about anything goes, including what some say is real crime in the booming virtual world.
    Second Life is a three-dimensional virtual world created by the Silicon Valley company Linden Lab in 2003.
    To join the free site, "residents" set up fake avatars that can wander around and correspond with other residents. Anything else, like buying land or clothing, costs Linden dollars, which can be exchanged for U.S. currency at a rate of $10 for 2,560 Linden.
    But what constitutes a crime on Second Life? Ask 10 people and you'll get as many answers.
    As millions of people log onto virtual worlds like Second Life for business, education and pleasure, they join new societies where murky lines that define harassment, abuse and stolen property are constantly being redefined. Experts suggest the law is still catching up.
    To understand crime on Second Life, you need to first understand "griefing," or the practice of aggravating other virtual world participants.
    According to Wagner James Au, a journalist who spent three years embedded in Second Life and author of "The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World," griefing is largely driven by "antisocial young dudes" who do things like strap massive genitalia to their heads and walk into Second Life's public welcome area.
    A subset of griefers goes further.
    They have hacked into private land with self-replicating objects that march across screens — known as grey goo — to crash the site or just make a mess. Eventually the servers can't handle the new objects and they collapse.
    The phenomenon was prevalent before last year when Second Life added security measures to prevent interruptions, Au said.
    But with 14 million registered residents, 1.2 million of whom logged onto Second Life in the past month, those who want to be annoying have nearly free rein.
    "If you want to be a griefer, at the moment there's no immediate way to be punished," Au said. "You're going to have a recurring occurrence of jerks that want to do this."
    A massive departure
    Grey goo may be the least of the Second Life crimes.
    Alleged sexual abuse, bank thefts and gambling have all come under fire.
    After a virtual banking scam erupted last year, Linden Lab banned banks and ATM machines that don't exist in the real world.
    After a German television station aired a segment alleging sexual abuse between an adult and child-like avatar, Linden Lab also banned "age-related sex play."
    According to Linden Lab's community standards, "real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of sexual or lewd acts involving or appearing to involve children or minors are not allowed within Second Life."
    If they appear, accounts can be terminated and land removed.
    The policy reminds members that some countries, like Germany, may impose penalties for "graphics, drawings or anime that resemble child pornography, even where no children have been involved."
    Banning avatars from doing whatever they want to do on Second Life is a massive departure for Linden Lab, according to intellectual property attorney Benjamin Duranske, author of "Virtual Law: Navigating the Legal Landscape of Virtual Worlds."
    "For the first four years, they did literally nothing in terms of governance," Duranske said.
    The legal realm of a virtual world like Second Life is a fuzzy one. According to Duranske, who runs the Virtually Blind Web site, most Second Life residents hail from outside the United States.
    He added that international law sometimes conflicts with U.S. law in the virtual world. For example, online gambling is illegal in the U.S. but legal in many other countries. Linden Labs also banned gambling on Second Life last year.
    According to Duranske, many acts that seem like crimes on Second Life may not be crimes.
    Some griefing is just annoying, he said.
    But a creative prosecutor could make the argument that attacking someone else's computer script could constitute a "denial of service attack."
    Harassment is difficult to prove in a virtual world in which avatars can simply transport away from attackers, Duranske said. But as people become more attached to their avatar persona, harassing someone in the virtual world may eventually be considered real world harassment.
    Stealing ideas
    The most contentious crime on Second Life is intellectual property infringement.
    Stolen content made headlines when Kevin Alderman of Florida, whose muscle-bound avatar Stroker Serpentine runs an erotic business in Second Life, sued other avatars for copying designs for a product.
    But when Alderman sued, he only knew his copycat's avatar, not his real identity.
    His lawyer, Francis Taney, subpoenaed Linden Lab to find the avatar's Internet Protocol address, which eventually led to 19-year-old Robert Leatherwood in Texas.
    The case settled with a judgment against Leatherwood, who promised not to copy other designs. Alderman and five others also won a judgment against New Yorker Thomas Simon, who had to hand over the $525 he made selling their designs.
    To counteract copycat crimes, Second Life residents have organized protests and boycotts. The virtual Content Creators Association also works with Second Life residents to make sure they know their rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act passed by Congress in 1998.
    A new class of superheroes has also emerged to combat griefers.
    The Green Lantern Core, which Au described as "an unofficial vigilante force," patrols the virtual world and files abuse reports with Linden Lab.
    In the real world, Albuquerque-based FBI spokesman Darrin Jones said the agency has received complaints about Second Life but doesn't regularly monitor the site.
    According to Mike Geier, a commander with the Albuquerque Police Department's violent crimes unit, officers monitor Facebook and MySpace for gangs, illegal drugs and underage drinking. Although they don't use Second Life, Geier said he sees the potential for child exploitation or other abuse to move from the virtual to the real world.
    Some experts aren't surprised about real crime in a virtual world.
    According to computer security expert Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer of British Telecom, criminals go where the people and the money end up. As Second Life and other virtual worlds grow, so will crime.
    Experts predict virtual worlds will only get bigger. Five years ago, Second Life was a niche community with 2,000 active users. Now a giant fashion community, corporations like IBM and institutions like the University of New Mexico all reside there.
    As virtual worlds expand, many expect new legal hurdles.
    Taney said he expects to see more "avatar versus avatar" lawsuits soon.
    As more people develop virtual worlds from free open source software, the rules for who controls content will also be up for discussion, he said.
    An unscrupulous company, for example, could shut down a virtual world without warning after individuals have spent time and money to create their designs.
    Some partners at his Philadelphia law firm, Buchanan, Ingersol and Rooney, laugh at his predictions, Taney said.
    "Yeah, you're right, it'll never amount to anything," he responds. "Just like that Internet thing."