Elizabeth Shreve
September 20, 2015
Eng 111 4-5:15
Professor Roof
Paper 1
Prosecution in the Virtual World
Many online gamers will pay for virtual items with real money. Some people want laws in effect for the real world to protect their rights to their belongings. Theft in the virtual world occurs quite often. In an article titled, “Should Gamers be Prosecuted for Virtual Stealing?” the author Alex Weiss calls out a young teenage boy who is being prosecuted for stealing in a video game. It seems to be a legal blunder that is very straight forward, but becomes a heated debate. It begins with the argument should we prosecute a gamer for stealing via the virtual world? Alex Weiss is correct in saying that prosecution for virtual…show more content… All depending on the game, there is usually a different direction each character types laid out on the table; pirates, philanthropist, vigilantes, and even barbarians. In our be-who-you-want-to-be- world it is nearly impossible to determine the type of character in the real world based on the one who is in the virtual world. Revisit the question of, do in game actions accurately reflect the players’ actual ethical beliefs? Lots of gamers enter the virtual world of gaming. as an everyday escape from a bad day or as a way to enlarge their creativity. So within these virtual worlds, people tend to not be who they actually are. I myself occasionally play video games. My favorite being Grand Theft Auto. Just in this title alone is the word
“theft”. The object of the game is to choose missions to go on and steal other objects; cars, money, car parts, and other valuable items. In this game each player is vulgar and crude.
There is foul-language, and even over dramatization of drugs. It seems as if when I am playing the game that I am playing with a bunch of other dangerous criminals, but what about myself? I have never stolen in my life, and such action has never crossed my mind, yet that is how I play in Grand Theft Auto. Taking a step back to think about it, I realized that I was not the only person filling the shoes of a character who is my polar opposite. The fact is that if every person who would
