cyber-violence

The case of rape in cyberspace I was referring to in class comes from the book "Tinylife" by Julian Dibbell. Here's a link to an excerpt from the book where he describes a case of virtual rape: http://www.juliandibbell.com/texts/bungle.html

The piece describes a case of cyberrape that involved a certain avatar perpetrating two other community members in a text-based MUD (Multi-user domain). Mr. Bungle used a series of commands to elicit violently sexual actions from the two characters he victimized. This piece explores the boundary between real and virtual, and online and offline. The issue is: if the emotional pain experienced by the victims was real, can we call this transgression a real crime and persecute with off line laws?

If the article by Dibbell may be considered on the borderline of legal debate, some stories are less arguable in terms of offline consequences. Consider the case that happened a few years ago: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE3D71E3EF936A15751C0A961958260 and http://www.nypost.com/seven/10042007/news/regionalnews/online_rape.htm