Police and Virtual Thefts (in Japan)

On the contrary, the gaming culture as its glorified in Japan is more mature than in US. Police and lawmakers take virtual thefts and offenses seriously. But well, it maybe because the numbers involved in the Japanese case was much higher than the one in US; $340,000 in Japan vs $4,000 in US.

"A Japanese teenager was recently arrested by the Tokyo Police for stealing the virtual equivalent of 36 million yen (roughly $340,000 USD) from Korean MMO publishing giant Nexon, according to a story at Kotaku.

When confronted by authorities, the 16-year-old confessed, saying, "I originally wanted the dress worn by the princess, but I just ended up racking up a bunch of game points."

The boy, a player of Nexon's Mabinogi, obtained the private login name and password of an employee of Nexon's Tokyo branch, and used that information to illegally access the game's servers and pilfer the aforementioned loot.

Obviously the Tokyo Metropolitan Police are treating this as a serious offense, but it will be interesting to see if it's handled as the equivalent of the theft of a similar amount of real-world currency. One could argue that technically none of the stolen goods actually exist, though an argument could also be made in the opposite direction.

Luckily for the boy though, they'll probably just skip right over all of the Gibsonian considerations created by this brave new virtual world and chalk his crimes up to teenage indiscretions."

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/01/japanese-teen-s.html