Avatar, Baby

I don't usually do "weird news" here, but I clipped this story a few weeks ago and it still says something about the strange new world we're entering, as cyberspace meets real space, and both are real life.

A 43-year old woman in Japan, a piano teacher, was a devoted player in an interactive game called "Maple Story," with its virtual world, where she had met and married a 33 year old man, an office worker in another Japanese city. That is, her avatar married his avatar within that virtual world. As part of their online marriage, they exchanged log-in information.

Then one day the teacher logged on to find that he had divorced her. "Without a word of warning," she said. "That made me so angry." Angry enough for her to use his ID and password to get access to his avatar-- and to destroy it. In revenge for the virtual divorce, she committed virtual murder.

Enter the police. The real world police. They arrested her, and transported her 620 miles to another city, where the office worker lived and where, in their terms, the crime was committed. She was jailed, on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data.

The office worker victim had apparently also been upset to find his avatar dead, and called the police.

The AP story I saw (in a real newspaper, so I have no online link) said she hadn't actually been charged yet, but the penalty for a conviction was up to five years in prison. Her real self, in a real prison, for five real years.