If Internet has brought to our society many ways of gathering people thanks to the numerous social networks which have appeared these last years. Nevertheless, it also gave birth to new forms of illegality called “cybercriminality”.
In november 2007, a Dutch teenager was arrested for having stolen 4000 euros of virtual furnitures on Habbo Hotel, a 3D social networking website which has been created and organised as a virtual world where netsurfers can tchat, play together, create their avatar, decorate their room and even buy products. If the world in which netsurfers roam is virtual, their crime are, on the contrary, totally real.
As the spokesman for Sulake – the company that operates Habbo Hotel – told it to BBC News at that time : “It is a theft because the furniture was paid with real money”. (to view the article on Bbc News, it’s here !)
Here is the complexity of the Internet : a virtual world which has concrete influence over our world and society.
Hopefully, instead of trying to swindle, many people have understood that social networks are, first of all, places to have and give fun as the netsurfer who produced the video bellow thanks to Second Life, a social network which has been conceptualized as a virtual world :
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