[governance] I'm "virtually" baffled - a side-glance at "remote participation"

[Aldo Matteucci]

 Opening the NYT Magazine this morning, I was baffled by a long article
describing a “virtual reality” crime with real "prison time" consequences.
Read my consideration first, though.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/magazine/scott-ritter.html

Pared to the barest bones, the event is as follows. A man on the web enters
an “adult chat-room” (i.e. self-declaration >18y) and anonymously engages
is explicit conversation with another person there. At one point the
chat-partner tells him she is under age. He has no way of verifying the
statement. He then proceeds to masturbate in front of his web-camera.

It so happened that the chat-partner was an under-cover policeman. The man
was eventually sentenced to a minimum of 18 month and up to 5.5 years in
jail.

That the man needs psychological help is undisputed. Whether 18 months in
jail will persuade him “*to take responsibility” *for what he’s done – so
the Judge – is open to debate.

Let’s look at the circumstances of the case, however: the whole thing took
place in a virtual loop. The man was in no position to verify with whom he
chatted. For all he knew, no one was watching what he did, nor was the
person forced to watch what he was doing. He did not propose a face to face
encounter. The baffling question to me is: was there a crime to begin with?

I see a wider connection to “remote participation” – to what extent might
one be liable for passive or active “remote participation”, or even simply
being on a list?

What makes the matter poignant – yet distracting – is that the man was
Scott RITTER, who looked in vain for WMD in IRAQ is the run-up to the war
and warned that there weren’t any. That’s the human angle – and what
accounts for the 9 pages.
Aldo

-- 
Aldo Matteucci
65, Pourtalèsstr.
CH 3074 MURI b. Bern
Switzerland
aldo.matteucci at gmail.com
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