Виртуальная преступность: правовые и этические аспекты.

Virtual criminal act
Virtual crime, can be described as a criminal act conducted in a virtual world usually massively multiplayer online role playing games, MMORPGs. To grasp the definition of virtual crime, the modern interpretation of the term "virtual" must be assessed to portray the implications of virtual crime. In this sense, virtual crime describes those online acts that “evoke the effects of real crime”  but are not widely considered to be prosecutable acts. There are several interpretations of the term "virtual crime". One scholar defined virtual crime as needing to have all the qualities of a real crime, and so it was not a new subset of crime at all. It is difficult to prove that there are real life implications of virtual crime, thus it is not widely accepted as prosecutable.

MMORPG Massively multiplayer online role playing game, which is a video game that combines aspects of a role playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game. MMORPGs are a platform susceptible to virtual crime. MMOG or MMO Massively multiplayer online game, which is an online video game with a large number of players on the same server. MMOGs are also platforms susceptible to virtual crime. Metaverse In science fiction, the metaverse is a hypothetical iteration of the Internet as a single, universal, and immersive virtual world facilitated by the use of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) headsets. In scientific research, it is defined as “a three dimensional online environment in which users represented by avatars interact with each other in virtual spaces decoupled from the real physical world”. This is where virtual crime takes place. Virtual Economy Also called a synthetic economy, a virtual economy exists within a virtual world, and users utilize it to buy, sell, and invest in virtual items, services, and properties. Many game developers, such as Blizzard Entertainment (responsible for World of Warcraft) oppose and even prohibit the practice. In the online world of Britannia, the currency of one Annum equates to about $3.4 US. If someone were to steal another player's virtual currency, they could convert it to US dollars via PayPal, though this problem has not yet been reported. This stems controversy over whether or not this should be dealt with like real crime, as there are real life implications.

While not resulting in physical injury or physical assault, virtual sexual assault can inflict emotional harm. One of the earliest reported instances of virtual sexual assault occurred in 1993 in the computer programming world of LambdaMOO. In July 2018, a mother in the United States posted on Facebook that her daughter's avatar on Roblox had been gang raped by two other users. Roblox stated that it was outraged that a "bad actor" had violated its community policies and rules of conduct, and that they had zero tolerance over such acts. The incident led to The Village Voice reprinting its 1993 article, A Rape in Cyberspace. In July 2021, a formally convicted sex offender was arrested in Illinois for allegedly grooming and soliciting a minor through the use of Roblox. In November 2021, a beta user of Horizon Worlds reported being groped in game and that other users supported the conduct. Meta responded that there are built in tools to block interactions with other users, which are not enabled by default, and that although the incident was "absolutely unfortunate," it provides good feedback in making the blocking feature "trivially easy and findable." Elena Martellozzo, an associate professor of criminology at Middlesex University says that such abuse may be the result of disinhibition due to the lack of face to face interaction that is exacerbated on the metaverse. BBC News also reported that a safety campaigner knows of children who were groomed in games and forced to take part in virtual sex. In 2024, the BBC reported that police were investigating a virtual sexual assault case.

The virtual economies of many MMOs, and the exchange of virtual items and currency for real money, has triggered the birth of the in game sweatshop. In virtual sweatshops, workers in the developing world — typically China, although there have been reports of this type of activity in Eastern European countries — earn real world wages for long days spent monotonously performing in game tasks. Instances typically involve farming of resources or currency, which has given rise to the epithet Chinese Adena Farmer, because of its first reported widespread use in Lineage II. More egregious cases involve using exploits such as duping money or items. There have also been reports of collusion or vertical integration among farmers and online currency exchanges. In 2002, a company called Blacksnow Interactive, a game currency exchange, admitted to using workers in a "virtual sweatshop" in Tijuana, Mexico to farm money and items from Ultima Online and Dark Age of Camelot. When Mythic Entertainment cracked down on the practice, Blacksnow attempted to sue the game company. The teenagers involved were accused of creating fake Habbo websites in order to lure users into entering their account details, which would then be used to steal virtual furniture bought with real money totaling €4000. In China, Qiu Chengwei was sentenced to life in prison in 2005 after stabbing and killing fellow The Legend of Mir 3 gamer Zhu Caoyuan. In the game Qiu had lent Zhu a powerful sword (a "dragon sabre"), which Zhu then went on to sell on eBay for 7,200 Yuan (about £473 or US$870). The Kagawa prefectural police arrested a Chinese foreign exchange student on Aug. 16 following the reports of virtual mugging and online sales of the stolen items. Official prosecution proceedings regarding virtual crime currently exist in countries like Sweden but not for a majority of the modern world.