California has launched a new eCrime unit to combat various online crimes. The new law enforcement unit created by California Attorney General Kamala Harris and announced Tuesday, aims take on various "cyber crimes" such as email scams, online fraud, piracy, child pornography, and real-world theft of computer gear by organized crime.

"Today's criminals increasingly use the Internet, smartphones, and other digital devices to victimize people online and offline," Harris said while unveiling the unit in the Silicon Valley city of San Jose.

Kotaku gets the scoop on what could be the future of dealing with obnoxious people in online games. A new report from Kotaku looks into Riot Games' new justice system for League of Legends, which is going to be run by the player community. They are calling it citizen justice, and if it works, we could see a new standard in dealing with problematic players who go out of their way to ruin the online gaming experience for others.

Starting sometime in the next few months, the creators of League of Legends plan to implement the Tribunal System, which will be staffed by players.

"This is innovation that was bred from necessity," Steve 'Pendragon' Mescon of Riot Games told Kotaku in a phone interview.

If you haven't been living under a rock, you've probably heard about "Jessi Slaughter", a.k.a. "Kerligirl13", and her controversial attention-seeking videos on Youtube and other video sharing sites. Now, it's nothing new for kids to act like fools on Youtube. But Jessie took her videos just a bit too far, and the Internet struck back.

After becoming something of an internet meme for posting threats like "I'll pop a glock in your mouth and make a brain slushie" she aroused the unstoppable ire of /b/, which began a campaign of trolling her videos. And so it began, with /b/ posting her personal information, and bombing search engine results to make things like "Did Jessi Slaughter's dad give her PCP?" a trending topic. You know, the usual stuff.

Taking Xbox Live smack talk to another level, a Hamden, Connecticut man has been arrested for using the online service to threaten a witness.

23-year old Anthony Hayward was arrested in New Haven last year for allegedly having drugs and a stolen gun in his car, reports the Hartford Courant. Freed after posting $75,000 bail, Hayward logged into his Xbox Live account last December in order to type threats to someone that is apparently a witness in Hayward’s drug/gun case.

The witness received a message that said “Rats Die Slow,” and Hayward also referred to the person as a “dead man walking.”

For these threats, Hayward was charged with harassment, intimidating a witness and tampering with a witness. He was arraigned on Tuesday in Milford Superior Court and held on $50,000 bail.

As part of its reporting on trends and issues in crime and criminal justice, the Australian Government’s Institute of Criminology has issued a research paper that takes a look at transgressions that occur in virtual worlds.

Crime Risks of Three-Dimensional Virtual Environments was written by Ian Warren and Darren Palmer and kicks off with a mention of what may have been the first case of its kind—the “rape” of an avatar in the text-based game LambdaMoo. The incident resulted in a Village Voice piece on the incident, and eventually a book, and brought the issue of crime in virtual worlds to light.

A similar incident took place in Second Life in 2007 and actually caused Belgian police to patrol the online community to prevent rapes.

While virtual crimes such as money laundering or fraud can usually be handled by real-world laws, the grey area of harassment-type assaults online seems to continually confound authorities.

A few thoughts put forth by the paper:

The question of whether real-world notions of interpersonal harm apply to virtual assault or sexual assault is unresolved. This complicates the question of regulation within virtual worlds.

While civil redress for psychological harm is conceivable, the 'disembodied' character of such an incident would invariably bar liability for any crime against the person.

The paper notes that under Australian federal criminal law, a maximum penalty of three years could be levied on someone who menaces, harasses or causes offense to another user, though whether this law has ever been applied to virtual worlds is unclear.

Thanks to multinational users, jurisdictional uncertainties and technology that continues to evolve, “there is considerable uncertainty surrounding the role of criminal law in these multi-user categories.” The paper suggests that, “Formal criminal intervention would only have a place if an appreciable and measurable effect on the real-world victim could be established.”

Since so much is unknown or untested about this subject  as of yet, the paper suggest research directions for the future, which include “enhancing our understanding of the nature of harm within multi-user 3dve (three-dimensional virtual environments) platforms,” and more collaborative research on how to protect children in virtual worlds.

The report concludes:

Clearly, Australian 3dve users require more knowledge to identify, manage and prevent harm. Developing a systematic approach to harmonise current knowledge on these emerging issues is perhaps the greatest research priority.

Thanks Anthony!

Jack Thompson has been making waves this week, riding a lawsuit against Facebook back into the mainstream media.

Thompson’s multi-million dollar lawsuit against Facebook is based on the disbarred lawyer’s findings, “nearly five weeks ago,” of “Jack Thompson Groups” spread across the social networking site, which he claims advocate violence and harassment against him. Thompson stated that, at the time, three different letters to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg did not result in the removal of these groups, which, in light of the company’s quick removal of “Should Barack Obama Be Killed” polls, only served to further incense Thompson.

Bloomberg and the Huffington Post are among the mainstream media outlets to pick up Jack’s suit, which he announced in an email on Tuesday, September 29. In the dispatch he labeled videogame “news sites,” including GamePolitics specifically, as “terror sites.”

An email from Thompson sent this morning, under the headline “Instant Confirmation from Around the Globe that Jack Thompson’s Suit against Facebook Is a Winner,” trumpets coverage of the case on both “reputable” news and videogame websites as proof  of “not only why the lawsuit had to be brought but why it will succeed.”

GP: Frankly, Thompson crowing victory as a result of the widespread coverage he received is among the reasons we didn’t report on the story as it developed. Is he still relevant to the gaming industry? It’s this editor’s opinion that he is not, at least when dealing in generalities. For now, as a way to move forward with this subject, GP will simply qualify coverage of any Jack story on a case-by-case basis. What do the GP readers think?

A South Korean academic's campaign to encourage friendly online communications has spread to China.

Writing for China Daily, Professor Min Byoung-chul of Korea's Chung Ang University describes some of the issues which led him to create the Sunfull Movement in May of 2007. Sunfull translates to "good replies."

Min ranks violent video games among the causes of negative online behavior and asserts that adolescents who have been exposed to violence are the "main culprits of negative comments":

With one of the world's lowest birth rates, there are more one child families in S.Korea than before, and children are becoming incapable of communicating with others.

 

The development of the gaming industry has created an addiction for these lonely children. Most games focus on stimulating plots like violence and murder rather than on educational methods for their humanity. Therefore, teenage gamers became familiar with instant killing in these games. Some of them confuse the real world with violent games and this confusion leads to replicating violent actions and criminal behavior in the real world.

 

In this regard, adolescents who have accessed obscenity and violence on the web easily become offensive and thoughtless rather than considerate to the people they encounter in the Internet. They are the main culprits of negative comments.

This phenomenon is in line with the rise of virtual violence, which includes mobile phone bullying and strange murders without motives.