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A Rape in Cyberspace
"A Rape in Cyberspace" is an article written by freelance journalist Julian Dibbell and first published in The Village Voice in 1993, and later included in Dibbell's 1998 book My Tiny Life. The article is about the aftermath and community response to a March 1993 sexual misconduct incident in the virtual world LambdaMOO. Prior to "A Rape in Cyberspace" directing media and academic attention to the incident, LambdaMOO users referred to it as the Bungle Affair.
Lawrence Lessig 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".
Julian Dibbell's journalism career began in the music industry, though his writings eventually came to focus mainly the Internet, including various subcultures such as LambdaMOO, a MUD, which itself was further divided into subcultures, a phenomenon he inadvertently encountered through his girlfriend. One day, when he was having difficulty contacting her by phone, he searched for her in LambdaMOO because he knew she was a visitor. When he found her, she had been in a meeting regarding how to resolve the issue of a player named Mr. Bungle.
"A Rape in Cyberspace" describes a "cyberrape" that took place on a Monday night in March 1993 and discusses the repercussions of this act on the virtual community and subsequent changes to the design of the MUD program.
LambdaMOO allows players to interact using avatars. The avatars are user-programmable and may interact automatically with each other and with objects and locations in the community. Users interacted through script, as there were no graphics or images on the MUD at the time.
The "cyberrape" itself was performed by Mr. Bungle, who leveraged a "voodoo doll" subprogram that allowed him to make actions that were falsely attributed to other characters in the virtual community. The "voodoo doll" subprogram was eventually rendered useless by a character named Zippy. These actions, which included describing sexual acts that characters performed on each other and forcing the characters to perform acts upon themselves, 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, and how LambdaMOO should be governed.[citation needed]
Following Mr. Bungle's actions, 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.[citation needed]
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 JoeFeedback), decided on his own to terminate Mr. Bungle's user account. Additionally, upon his return from his business trip, LambdaMOO's main creator, Pavel Curtis (screenname Archwizard Haakon), set up a system of petitions and ballots where anyone could put to popular vote anything requiring administrative 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.[citation needed]
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A Rape in Cyberspace
"A Rape in Cyberspace" is an article written by freelance journalist Julian Dibbell and first published in The Village Voice in 1993, and later included in Dibbell's 1998 book My Tiny Life. The article is about the aftermath and community response to a March 1993 sexual misconduct incident in the virtual world LambdaMOO. Prior to "A Rape in Cyberspace" directing media and academic attention to the incident, LambdaMOO users referred to it as the Bungle Affair.
Lawrence Lessig 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".
Julian Dibbell's journalism career began in the music industry, though his writings eventually came to focus mainly the Internet, including various subcultures such as LambdaMOO, a MUD, which itself was further divided into subcultures, a phenomenon he inadvertently encountered through his girlfriend. One day, when he was having difficulty contacting her by phone, he searched for her in LambdaMOO because he knew she was a visitor. When he found her, she had been in a meeting regarding how to resolve the issue of a player named Mr. Bungle.
"A Rape in Cyberspace" describes a "cyberrape" that took place on a Monday night in March 1993 and discusses the repercussions of this act on the virtual community and subsequent changes to the design of the MUD program.
LambdaMOO allows players to interact using avatars. The avatars are user-programmable and may interact automatically with each other and with objects and locations in the community. Users interacted through script, as there were no graphics or images on the MUD at the time.
The "cyberrape" itself was performed by Mr. Bungle, who leveraged a "voodoo doll" subprogram that allowed him to make actions that were falsely attributed to other characters in the virtual community. The "voodoo doll" subprogram was eventually rendered useless by a character named Zippy. These actions, which included describing sexual acts that characters performed on each other and forcing the characters to perform acts upon themselves, 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, and how LambdaMOO should be governed.[citation needed]
Following Mr. Bungle's actions, 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.[citation needed]
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 JoeFeedback), decided on his own to terminate Mr. Bungle's user account. Additionally, upon his return from his business trip, LambdaMOO's main creator, Pavel Curtis (screenname Archwizard Haakon), set up a system of petitions and ballots where anyone could put to popular vote anything requiring administrative 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.[citation needed]