Matt started talking up the weird issues developing around multiplayer online games a few weeks ago. Then soon after he blogged it, a story appeared in On the Media (listen, transcript)

Short story: online gaming is huge — one developer claims four million paying customers. More significantly, the interplay between real and virtual worlds might create new challenges for this real world legal system. “Theft” of in-game money and equipment among players in the online world is possible, but it’s lead to the real-world arrest of at least one person and the murder of another when authorities refused to act.

One argument is that these games occupy players time and cost money, so in-game theft results in real-life loss. Baloney. Chess and Monopoly occupy great deals of time, but try telling the cops I rooked your knight. Money? A huge number of Americans invest time and money on building and racing cars on the approximately 1800 racetracks around the country. Real time and and hard-earned money are lost when cars crash, but the track has its own rules “rubin’s racin, Cole” — and none of us would excuse a driver for off-track violence against a competitor.

tags: crime, game, game money, game world, game worlds, law, loss, mmo, mmorpg, multiplayer online games, murder, online games, real world, real world violence, role playing game, story world, theft, video games, video game, virtual, virtual economy, virtual world, virtual worlds, weird issues

I don’t remember how I found this tip to BaitCar.com’s collection of police videos of car thefts. They’re good for a few laughs, but things like this — and about half of the programming on Spike — make me wonder how far we are from from the worlds depicted in Running Man and so many other stories.

Eh, at least we’ve got Bravo. That’s some good TV.

tags: bravotv, car theft, car thefts, culture of entertainment, entertainment culture, laugh, laughs, police video, police videos, running man, spiketv, theft, wfmu