Woman cuffed for deleting virtual husband A 43-year-old Japanese woman has been jailed for "killing" her virtual husband to revenge an unexpected in-game divorce. The unhappy couple's characters had been "married" in the side-scrolling Korean massive multiplayer game, MapleStory. Not in real life, mind you, just within the game. But e-vows were too soon discarded, …
If convicted (and in Japan convictions rates are very high thanks in no small part to the use of various forms of torture to extract confessions, which are then considered to be irrefutable evidence) are they going to put her in a virtual prison, with virtual counselling? Inquiring minds need to know.
He *SHARED* his password???
Pretty much ANY gaming or social site I have ever seen has in it's terms and conditions that this is something you don't do. So for starters he is in breach of his terms and conditions right there.
If she legitimately had his password, then how is it an unauthorised access?
Even Paris knows not to share passwords.
You give out your password, you are essentially giving co-ownership. That person can play your characters, and modify your characters, and do whatever they want... so why shouldn't that be extended to deleting them?
I can understand if she hacked his account, but he GAVE her the password. I think they should ask him why he did that - the answer has to be to share accounts.
He got sharing and everything that came with it.
This is why you should never ever share accounts with anyone. I've been running a mud for over ten years and I have seen hundreds of incidents where one sharer decided to strip an account dry, even between married couples during stressful times in their relationship. You share, too bad is the policy a lot of MMORPGs have.
Paris because she made the same mistake with her videos.
This post has been deleted by its author
Oh, sweet friggin' Jayzus.
Just when I thought Americans were the nuttiest, most fucked-up people on the planet -- here come the goddamn' Japanese again.
Too bad nobody over there's designed a male version of their "companion" lifelike robot. Coulda' saved that lady a world of hurt.
Paris, for the sheer stupidity of it.
Our descent into lunacy is complete. Ive never played one of these online games, so I feel like i'm watching strange events unfold in a goldfish bowl every time I see one of these stories. Are they really that captivating and important? Im starting to feel like I must be missing something, but the realy world is still great for me. I originally thought lonely people played these games to get away from the traumas of the real world, but now it seems there is murder, divorce and all that in the virtual world as well.
Oh sod it. Get a life you nutjobs, or stop wasting oxygen that the rest of us could be breathing.
Losers. Massive losers.
Surely this can't possibly be real???? What the heck is going on and, more importantly, how low must the crime rate in this area be if the police can spend time and resources on something so utterly unimportant? Up to 5 years for this? I shudder to think what real murderers get in that country!!
Virtual Priest says: "I now pronounce you man and wife"
Virtula Priest says: "What you just killed your husband?"
Virtual Priest says: "OFFICER ARREST HER"
Virtual Cop says: "Ma'am your coming with me. Your under the arrest for....umm say WHAT??"
Just me or is he virtual world starting to become more and more real for some then the real world is?
/Dumb ass broad. . .Point made
You have organised crime running free and police actually telling you that they don't want to get involved if you have a problem with the Yakuza (first hand experience) but they have time to waste on this kind of stuff.
Of course arresting a 33 year old women is a lot less dangerous than investigating a yakuza.
anonymous for obvious reasons
like a Woman spurned! >:-)
Still seems a bit fecked'up to toss her in the slammer though when we still have other Hackers on the loose (causing more unrest) sniffing 'round our Politicians dirty knickers though.
I don't know how to close this segment so I'll just pay my final respects to the dearly departed...
Having read the story in the Japanese papers, it should be stated that she's not being arrested for deleting the character, but for illegally accessing the guy's account.
It's unlikely she'll see time, though because the idiot voluntarily gave her his login info and then brilliantly neglected to change it after the "divorce". Real bright guy, that.
A plea to all people who get imersed in virtual worlds.
Please please please, open your front door and step outside. Yes, there is financial meltdown, injustice, cruelty, war and diesease out there, but just look beyond these.
See the delicate majesty of sunlight glinting on raindrops caught on a spider web, or the haunting beauty of early morning mist rolling across a field.
This world is a devistastingly beautiful place, get out there and enjoy it, don't waste your life in some electronic hell.
OK Friday morning philosphy over with.
HAHAHAHAAAA!!!
What a joke - Shouldn't she be virtually arrested if at all?
Standard security policies in companies over here are that you don't, under any circumstances, share your credentials/passwords.
Idiots, the pair of them. Chuck in the rest of these people who live in a second world instead of just having a non-committal game now and then and you have the new breed of geeks and freaks.
Sad.
First, if he gave her his password I don't think she should be charged with anything. The act clearly implies that he is giving her access to his account - he has to accept the consequences of that.
Second, and admittedly based on my first point, why are law enforcement agencies getting involved in this crap. Just glad it isn't happening in the UK, at least it isn't my taxes being burned up over this trivial, haha, affair.
Paris. She can rub me out anytime ;-)))
As a real wife would of deleted the contents of his bank balance. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned and all that, Anyway he was the stupid one to have given out his username and password so what did he expect to happen!
Muppet
Pass me coat luv I am heading to the boozer.
So she didn't hack the system at all then, she just used the password that this guy gave her, presumably so that she could access his account at her convenience without bothering him first. If she used her new found influence over virtual hubby's mindset to have him, oh, I dunno - kill himself, the surely that's all fine and dandy...
It's a virtual game dear boy, and if you give someone control of your account, then unpredictabe things might happen - particularly when you introduce a recently ditched and somewhat miffed e-wifey into the equation. If you divorced in real life, you'd want her keys to your home back, wouldn't you? Same thing here - should have changed his password...
And reporting this to the police? I mean, WHY? They should both be taken out back, a bit of a slapping administered, and advised to grow up and get a life...
Nice to see that their plod took the time to investigate this though - contrasts rather with the City Of London police's stance on Phorm, doesn't it?
Martin
Paris, coz she's been painfully split a time or two herself...
Haven't the police got anything better to do with their time?
Over here she probably wouldn't get 5 years for breaking in to his house, stealing everything and trashing the whole join. What's so bad about using his account which he gave her access too.
Surely the most she should be punished with is paying some operator at the games company for a couple of minutes to restore the stupid blokes account.
"Surely this can't possibly be real????"
I think we have a Rumsfeld problem here that needs clarification. We have real reals. That's things that really happen in the real world. We have unreal reals. That's unreal things that happen in the real world. We have real unreals. That's things that really happen in the unreal world. Finally we have unreal unreals. That's unreal things that happen in the unreal world.
I think that this is a classic example of an unreal unreal causing a real unreal and having an outcome of an unreal real.
Does it make sense now?
I'd ask for my coat, but I now not only don't know where I left it but I'm not sure if I ever really had one in the first place.
Let me put this into perspective:
"Err hello officer, yeah I was playing Jet Set Willy on my ZX Spectrum and this nasty guys came out of nowhere and took all my lives I want them called to book, right now!"
Bunch of losers, they should all be locked up for the sanity of everyone else!
..if this were a case against someone who'd (for example) gained access to sensitive data locally, or retreived data etc etc - the prosecution would be laughed out of court because they had given the defendant access information freely and willingly
Why doesn't that apply here?
IT with a question mark because "nobody understands" *sniff sniff*
This seems to be another case of technology surpassing law. I have a number of characters I've created (note the word created) and I pay to futher their develop on a monthly basis. These are my property, how they look and what they have is down to the time, money and effort I have dedicated to this hobby. If someone hacked into my account (even after I had taken every measure to make sure it was secure) then I would expect the company who runs it to step in and resolve the issue, if they couldn't I would consider whether I could take it further.
In reality it probably wouldn't get anywhere with our fuzz as they don't undertand that these virtual figures are creative property that has had in some/most cases money invested in them.
I agree with previous posters though, you give your password away and your case is severally weakened. Whether the sentence is fair for the crime is down to the Japanese justice system, if 5yrs is what they usually give to cases of damage to property which is all they could possibly boil it down to.
I think there will be a growing increase in these stories, hence why the law needs to catch up with these issues.
are not real crimes in japan that they can spend so much police effort on chasing such ridiculus virtual crimes?
alhough i can see the need to protect virtual property, we talking of a case that the password was given FREELY, probably something agaisnt the EULA of the game.
..good RPGers learn how to properly keep IC stuff IC and OOC stuff OOC.
To the 'get a life', 'just a game' and 'WTF' brigade; Do you really advocate a legal system where the decision whether or not to arrest, investigate, prosecute and punish comes down to "Do we approve of the victim's hobby?".
Feel free to substitute 'hobby' for 'religeon', 'race', 'gender', 'age' or any other discriminatory attribute.
A fair legal system has to avoid bias based on such prejudices and concentrate on whether or not a crime has been committed, whether it can be proven and how it should be punished.
In this case the questions are (roughly, IANAL) 'did she illegally access a computer system with malicious intent?' and 'did she alter computer data with malicious intent'. If the answer to these is proven to be 'yes' the next question will be 'how much harm did she do and what is a proportionate punishment'. That last question, of course, is the trickiest to answer in an unbiased and fair fashion.
Personally I'd go for making her pay for the time required for the game's admins to recover the guy's data from backup and restore his character to the game. Maybe add a month's subscription costs to compensate him for time wasted.
Of course, after restoring the character data the game admin should lock the guy's account and block his IP address for breaking the game's T&Cs by sharing his password.
And so justice would be served because the law has to be fair but game admins can be as BOFHish as they want :-)
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