Crimes and Enforcement Warrants in the Virtual Reality World (Metaverse)

As a multidimensional and interactive digital space, the metaverse is rapidly expanding and allows users to interact with each other in virtual environments, play, work, own property, and participate in numerous social and entertainment activities. Unlike the real virtual world, users in the metaverse will have a more immersive experience and, with advances in touch technology, even more real. Despite its numerous benefits, such technology increases the scope for criminal activities, including financial or property crimes (such as money laundering, theft or fraud), crimes against the person (such as invasion of privacy, avatar murder, stalking or harassment), and sexual crimes (such as sexual harassment and rape). Unlike previous virtual worlds and the physical world, immersion in the metaverse can create new crimes that, while not causing physical harm, damage the nervous system to the same extent as a real crime, thus raising the question of how criminal law should deal with such behavior. This article attempts to present a classification of metaverse crimes according to the nature of immersion and analyzes the guarantees for their implementation in current laws. The findings showed that many abnormal behaviors in the metaverse, due to the substantive differences in the constituent elements, do not correspond to crimes committed in the real and virtual worlds and are not prosecuted under their titles. In fact, current laws are unable to provide for the interests of society and metaverse users, so it is necessary to create an international legal framework to promote cooperation between countries, facilitate criminal investigations, and protect communities.

کلیدواژه ها:

metaverse ، crimes ، virtual reality ، crimes in the metaverse ، avatar murder