The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: November 2, 2008

Official News page 10


REAL LIFE NEWS: VIRTUAL MURDER LEADS TO REAL LIFE ARREST

by Hazed

A 43-year-old Japanese woman is in trouble with the cops. Her crime: killing her husband. The twist is that she didn't actually slaughter a real life flesh-and-blood person, but her virtual husband in a Korean massively multi-player game.

The couple had been "married" in the game MapleStory - but not in real life. In fact I don't think they had ever met outside of the game. Still, in-game marriages can feel pretty real to the participants even if they are just virtual. And so can the pain when things go wrong.

Suddenly, the woman found that she had been divorced. Just like that, the marriage was over. "That made me so angry," she told investigators. Well, it would! So she decided to take revenge, and like many a spurned wife in real life who has cut up all her ex-husbands clothes or trashed his car, she went after something he really valued... his virtual life! You see, as part of the joyful sharing of their blissful marriage, he had given her his MapleStory password, so now she used it to log on and deleted his character. Revenge is sweet!

Now this is where it gets weird. When he discovered his character was missing, he contacted the police, who promptly arrested her on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data. She's been taken to Sapporo, where the man lives, which is 620 miles from her home and while she hasn't been formally charged yet, she could face a prison term of up to five years in prison.

Well, we've seen the break-up of some in-game relationships cause trouble in Fed2 before, but never anything as serious as this. Still, if you give somebody your password, and they use it do damage to your character, is that really "illegally accessing a computer"? I guess the moral of the story is, when you break up, change your passwords!

PS - Lest anyone think I am condemning such behavior, I am not. Deliberately killing off somebody else's character even if they did give you the password is against the Fed2 rules and would get you banned from the game. I just don't think it's a matter for the police.


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