Well, first we had a real murder over virtual property. A chap in Hong Kong was obviously very annoyed when another person "sold" a virtual sword he had borrowed from the first person. The sword only existed inside the virtual world.
And now we have the alleged theft of virtual property. This article discusses the purported theft of some sofas from within a social networking site called Habbo. The theft occurred when the accused allegedly tricked other users of the site into revealing their user names and passwords to the purported thief, who then "moved" the furniture into his "room" within the Habbo virtual world.
The sofas cost real money by the way.
it will be interesting to see how the authorities frame the charge against the accused, whether as "theft" as we think of it or as something related to the fact the accused set up a false website to trick the owner into revealing his/her user name and password.
Virtual worlds are expanding so rapidly, it can boggle the mind. There are now virtual law firms, virtual courts and the like, all to go along with the virtual sex, theft, and other myriad activities. It sounds alot like the real world....
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