Identity theft in the virtual world: Analysis of a copyright crime in second life from the perspective of criminal law and IT forensics

Abstract

In Hungary, there is an active practice for inspecting crimes committed in information technology environments as well as crimes affecting intellectual property as the two areas often overlap. Recently a criminal infringement of copyright occurred in a very special environment — the virtual world of Second Life. In this paper, the questions raised by the above-mentioned case from a legal and IT forensic perspective will be present along with the recommended answers from the authors. The first half of the paper will present the specialties of virtual world environments and how the criminal investigation was started. General criminal procedure norms governing IT forensics will be discussed. The question of how copyright law protects avatars or virtual items in Second Life and how the financial value of a virtual item can be determined will be answered. The remainder of the paper will present, in detail, the IT forensic examination of the concrete criminal case where illegal copies of avatars appeared in Sec...