I’d say this makes it at least assault. If I used a remote controlled robot arm to slap you on the ass, would I get off just because it wasn’t my actual hand?
Charge them with regular old assault, and let the courts decide. Courts set precedents for new versions of old offenses all the time.
Unless that’s the point. I could see a fighting game based on you really feeling the hits, which would be more realistic, but would not cause actual damage, unlike a real-life fight. Misuse of such a system could be a problem. Consenting to a fight in one case doesn’t mean you consent to feel pain in every case.
If it happened in an actual match, it would be no different than getting beat in real-life kickboxing. But what if the game was simulating a large scale tournament, with multiple players and multiple matches, where the players not currently fighting can still interact?
So imagine someone notices you haven’t disabled the pain system in your VR suit after your last match, and decides to slap you on the ass outside of a regular match. Entirely possible, non-consensual, and not part of the tournament that you agreed to.
What does she look like? I’ve had my ass non-consensually slapped before and I wasn’t offended. I must hang with a tougher crowd than most.
What you describe is like going around with your pants around your ankles. You need to be aware of where you are.
If there was no physical contact, the complaint should be of sexual harrassment. Sexual harrassment in a virtual environment is 100% sexual harrassment in the traditional sense.
ETA: I don’t believe sexual harrassment is a crime unless it crosses over into battery (physical contact), assault (reasonable expectation of battery; i.e. threats), or stalking (reasonable expectation that the harrassment causes severe emotional distress as per 18 U.S.C. § 2261A (2)(b)).
The Terms of Service between the game service provider and its users, however, should provide that sexual harrassment is grounds for terminating a user’s service.
~Max
A couple of decades ago, I was involved in early VR development, and the term used for such technology was “teledildonics”.
For a more recent real-life example, see
Chanelle Siggens recently strapped on an Oculus Quest virtual reality headset to play her favorite shooter game, Population One. Once she turned on the game, she maneuvered her avatar into a virtual lobby in the immersive digital world and waited for the action to begin.
But as she waited, another player’s avatar approached hers. The stranger then simulated groping and ejaculating onto her avatar, Ms. Siggens said.
~Max
Ah, yes the good old, “You were asking for it” defense.
Sorry, I should have been clearer. I meant “we don’t have an issue identifying an actionable wrong here; this is clearly an assault under existing well-established rules”.
John Scalzi’s near-future Lock In crime novels touch on several of these issues. Well worth a look.
If I only very briefly grab someone by the pussy, does that not merit the full weight of the law?
… like witches using it to test whether people are real humans.
I think that the folks arguing that real-life assault laws would apply are correct… but even if the courts found that the law doesn’t apply, surely it would be against the terms of service of the company that offers the VR platform. The offender might or might not go to prison for it, but he certainly could, and probably would, be banned for it. Which, if this is the person’s primary way of interacting with the world, might even be an even greater punishment for him.
No, that’s fine. I obviously apply the 5-second rule to sexual assault.
Although I know you just can’t help yourself in asserting a morally superior position any any opportunity, selectively quoting me here to set up a straw man to attack, I made perfectly clear in a post just above that I was commenting only on the likely dynamics of an assault in a fictional VR setup, and how it would differ from an IRL assault.
And if you read the thread, I have been strongly advocating the position that any assault in VR is just as “real” and criminal as an IRL assault, e.g.:
If the feedback from the VR is physical, and all the users know that it is physical, then it’s very possible that a court will extend assault and other laws involving physical trespasses to this situation.
Furthermore, if the VR assault is known to have consequences then it might be covered by theories of intentional infliction of emotional distress or injury.
The more realistic a VR system is, the more likely that courts are going to start applying non-VR-specific laws, even if there are no explicit laws on the books regarding these matters. Very commonly, courts are ahead of legislatures in addressing new matters.
I was referring to a virtual grab. You seemed to be arguing that just a “very brief” virtual assault is no big thing. I was saying that the briefness of the sexual assault is completely irrelevant. So completely that there is no need for even dwelling on the fact that the setup only allows for brief assaults.
That’s entirely in your imagination.
So you didn’t say “the physical power imbalance of IRL sustained sexual assault would not be present.”?
Sure sounds like you were dwelling on the sustained nature or not of the possible assault.
My point is that brief assaults are still assaults, end of. One punch is still battery, after all.
And if the court does decide that the current laws don’t apply, and lets the person walk, this would likely be the impetus to create a new law covering such incidences. Person #1 gets away with it, but not Person #2.
Again, I made perfectly clear in a post just above that I was commenting only on the likely dynamics of an assault in a fictional VR setup, and how it would differ from an IRL assault, with an explicit disclaimer that a brief assault is no less criminal. Even without the disclaimer, it is pretty pathetic to try to paint my post in the worst possible light in order to suggest that I think grabbing someone’s pussy is just fine.