A Rape in Cyberspace - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

"A Rape in Cyberspace, or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society" is an article written by freelance journalist Julian Dibbell

Julian Dibbell

Julian Dibbell is an American author and technology journalist with a particular interest in social systems within online communities. His 1993 article "A Rape in Cyberspace" detailed attempts of LambdaMOO, an online community, to quantify and deal with lawbreaking in its midst. The article was...

and first published in The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...

in 1993. The article was later included in Dibbell's book My Tiny Life on his LambdaMOO experiences.

Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence "Larry" Lessig is an American academic and political activist. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications, and he has called for state-based activism to promote substantive...

has said that his chance reading of Dibbell's article was a key influence on his interest in the field. Sociologist David Trend called it "one of the most frequently cited essays about cloaked identity in cyberspace".

Summary

"A Rape in Cyberspace" describes a "cyberrape" in a multi-player computer game or MUD

MUD

A MUD , pronounced , is a multiplayer real-time virtual world, with the term usually referring to text-based instances of these. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, hack and slash, player versus player, interactive fiction, and online chat...

called LambdaMOO

LambdaMOO

LambdaMOO is an online community of the variety called a MOO. It is the oldest MOO today.LambdaMOO was founded in late 1990 or early 1991 by Pavel Curtis at Xerox PARC. Now hosted in the state of Washington, it is operated and administered entirely on a volunteer basis...

, the repercussions of this act on the virtual community

Virtual community

A virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals...

and subsequent changes to the design of the MUD program.

LambdaMOO, which is a virtual community still in existence, allows players to interact using avatars

Avatar (computing)

In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character. It may take either a three-dimensional form, as in games or virtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form as an icon in Internet forums and other online communities. It can also refer to a text...

. The avatars are user-programmable and may interact automatically with each other and with objects and locations in the community.

The "cyberrape" itself was performed by a player named Mr. Bungle. The user behind this avatar ran a "voodoo doll" subprogram that allowed him to make actions that were falsely attributed to other characters in the virtual community. These actions, which included describing sexual acts that characters performed on each other, went far beyond the community norms to that point and continued for several hours. They were interpreted as sexual violation of the avatars who were made to act sexually, and incited outrage among the LambdaMOO users, raising questions about the boundaries between real-life and virtual reality

Virtual reality

Virtual reality , also known as virtuality, is a term that applies to computer-simulated environments that can simulate physical presence in places in the real world, as well as in imaginary worlds...

, and how LambdaMOO should be governed.

After Mr. Bungle's "offense", several users posted on the in-MOO mailing list, *social-issues, about the emotional trauma caused by his actions. One user whose avatar was a victim, called his voodoo doll activities "a breach of civility" while, in real life, "post-traumatic tears were streaming down her face". However, despite the passionate emotions including anger voiced by many users on LambdaMOO, none were willing to punish the user behind Mr. Bungle through real-life means.

Three days after the event the users of LambdaMOO arranged an online meeting, which Dibbell attended under his screenname (Dr. Bombay), to discuss what should be done about Mr. Bungle. The meeting lasted approximately two hours and forty-five minutes, but no conclusive decisions were made. After attending the meeting, one of the master-programmers of LambdaMOO (with screenname TomTraceback), decided on his own to terminate the Mr. Bungle user's account. Additionally, upon his return from his business trip, LambdaMOO's main creator, Pavel Curtis

Pavel Curtis

Pavel Curtis is an American software architect at Microsoft who is best known for having founded and managed LambdaMOO, an online community...

(screenname Archwizard Haakon), set up a system of petitions and ballots where anyone could put to popular vote anything requiring master-programmer (known as "wizardly") powers for its implementation. Through this system, LambdaMOO users put into place a @boot command, which temporarily disconnects disruptive guest users from the server, as well as a number of other new features.

Legacy

Over a decade later, these events remain the primary advertisement for LambdaMOO. Research students still regularly visit the MOO (often sent there by their professors) and start asking users about these events. They are surprised to find that sexual actions are currently used as a form of affectionate greeting. For example, creative writing instructor Cynthia Brantley Johnson of the University of Texas writes that after a discussion of the Dibbell article and Sherry Turkle

Sherry Turkle

Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauze Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a sociologist...

's book Life on the Screen, which also mentions LambdaMOO, she has her classes log on to LambdaMOO en masse and congregate "in the 'room' where the virtual rape occurred" before sending them off to explore on their own.

Dibbell continued to participate in LambdaMOO, up to 30 hours a week, and eventually wrote My Tiny Life about his experiences, incorporating the article. He remains somewhat astonished at the impact it has had, saying in 1998, "No piece I had done before had managed to convey as vividly to readers the fact that there was something wild and different going on online, something that might profoundly alter the way they related to words and communication and culture in general."

The article made many people interested in the legal implications of online activity, including Lawrence Lessig, and Dibbell himself would go on to teach cyberlaw as a Fellow at Stanford Law School

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

Center for the Internet and Society.

The article is also considered one of the earliest examples of New Games Journalism where review of computer games are meshed with social observation and consideration of surrounding issues.

Summary

Legacy

Further reading