A Study On Virtual Property Theft In Online Games

With the development of internet,virtual world turns into a new dimension of human life.Some of the virtual objects become property,because of the input of human emotion,time and money,the typical of which is the virtual property in online games.The virtual property in online games is often valuable and tradable,so that it is always stolen.Then,how to apply the criminal law in virtual property theft in online games properly comes to be a problem.This problem troubles criminal law circles in past fifteen years,and hasn’t got a certain answer yet.The thesis mainly launches ground three aspects of the above problem: the performance of virtual property theft in online games,the criminal law nature of virtual property and the application of criminal law in virtual property theft in online games.In addition,the thesis will also talk about the consistency in the legal evaluation between civil law and criminal law of the nature of virtual property,and will give the answer of criminal law application in virtual property theft in online games on the base of classified discussion of virtual property’s criminal law nature.The thesis divides into four chapters.Chapter one introduces the concept of “theft” in this thesis.Basing on defining the different type of theft performance,it clears up the trend of criminal legal practice on virtual property theft in online games for past fifteen years.And it finds out the historical and intrinsic reasons of the different judgment in similar case of virtual property theft.Chapter two mainly talks about the criminal law nature of virtual property in online games.It classifies virtual property in online games into different kinds,and matches the different kinds into goods and interests of property separately.Chapter three mainly talks about the outlet for criminal law application on virtual property theft in online games.For goods type of virtual property theft in online games,it will make the criminal law application choice between larceny and illegal access to computer information system data crime basing on the constitution of crime,the theory of implicated offence and criminal law article 287.For interests of property type of virtual property theft in online games,it will not consider it as larceny,but treat it as illegal access to computer information system data crime.Chapter four analyses the real difficulties which we will meet,supposing virtual property theft in online games will constitute larceny,and gives suggestions to overcome them.The difficulties and problems include the titleholder of virtual property theft in online games,the amount of virtual property theft in online games and multiple crime form for virtual property theft in online games.