14 DAY TRIAL // Various news outlets are reporting that a Japanese woman, aged 43, has “killed” her husband. The good news is that she only did it online, in the virtual world of Maple Story. The bad news is that the woman has been now arrested by the police, being charged with hacking and other illegal activities.
The woman used the personal data of her virtual husband in order to access his account, and then took his character out of the game. She is quoted as saying that “I was suddenly divorced, without a word of warning. That made me so angry.” It seems that, after committing the virtual crime, the woman did not take any action to replicate her actions in the real world. Under Japanese laws regarding privacy and digital crime, she can get up to five years in prison, and faces a fine of 5,000 dollars.
This is the first documented case when a crime committed in an online world has led to real world consequences for the perpetrator. It's worth noting that the woman was taken in for the hacking she has done, and not for actually killing her virtual husband.
Maple Story is a casual online world, where avatars are created and users can then interact in a variety of ways, one of which is virtual marriage. It's well known that love on the Internet tends not to last, which makes most marriages rather short lived. Usually, the reaction is not so hot tempered.
The incident will probably lead to a lot of talk regarding crime in virtual world, the way we interact online and the consequences we might find in the real world. We're bound to see some people attacking videogames for the violence they allow and for making people expose their dark sides. Gamers, we'd better brace ourselves for a backlash.