Quite right. So let’s ban every fighting game, every FPS, every war game or simulation.

You know which soundclip I hear in games more than ANY other? “headshot”.

It may not sound so stupid. Doing an act in a virtual world, may set pretenses for doing it in a real world.

If your sick enough to get off “raping” someone in a virtual world – at what point to you draw the line to say that it couldnt happen in the real one?

give me a break

That ppl feel a need to express themselves by costing ppl time, effort, Lindens, Dollars, whatever – pretty inane and sophmoric; but happens.

I’m with foobar, this is amateur hour. And many of the comments sound similar to the arrogant stuff I heard in the early 80’s when people voiced their “knowing” opinion that average people would *never* have a use for a home computer. History repeats…

And griefers exist in everywhere. If someone were able to actually delete ABC’s assets then perhaps they should go after the island administrator since they didn’t set the permissions on who could do what. ABC dropped the ball on something simple.

Investigations into “cyber-rape”… While I’m sure that the person who was “violated” might feel they were wronged, there’s a simple solution. It’s called LOGGING OFF. Done. I’m sorry, this is a joke. You don’t even need to log off if you don’t want to. Teleport somewhere else… mute the “rapist”… and if they were using “naughty bits” on their avatar then they should have known that they can set permissions on who can do what. Hell, it’s in the notecard that you first see when you purchase the damned things.

Pedophilia. Yes, this is disgusting and has NO PLACE in SL. It does exist in some of the seedier areas but not like news media outlets are making it seem that it’s rampant and widespread. Much like you can find crap like that on the internet, you can find it in SL. But it’s suddenly a bigger issue in SL since it allows interactive visuals representations? While distasteful and disturbing, many media outlets fail to make mention that the 2 individuals who were involved were adults (54 and 27, I believe). Is it a crime to pretend to be someone younger?

When does it become a crime to play Counterstrike or Halo because you’ve just commited virtual homicide? Will I never be able to play an RPG again because I might be arrested for cyber-theft by walking into a villager’s home and taking a healing potion from the cupboard? I’m sorry, certain RL laws just can not be applied to virtual worlds. It’s just insane to think that they could.

Others have already mentioned it, but the only way to have a big hole appear on a sim in SL is to give users the permission to do it. That’s not the default setting for land in SL, so some moron at ABC must have purposefully set it that way. It is equivalent to using chmod 777 for all of your files on your web server.

TechCrunch usually has decent coverage, but this writeup is amateur hour at best, trying to make headlines on other blogs vs. real coverage. Michael… reign in your stringers!

I just think many ppl speak from ignorance when the judge and stereotype this world. Because in essence it is truely multidimensional and full of wonder. And for the record I have not been griefed in the past 4 months. I guess I am hanging out in the right places.

As for the past post about lack of goals… What happens is that ppl do not understand that this game its all about developing your self impossed goals, whether it is business, community building, self expression, art, construction… just like in real life but with less effort, no boundaries and more immediate gratification. It is just fun if you have an open mind. If not, this virtual reality might not be for you.

Happy discovery