> Now here's a development I never quite saw coming. A man was arrested in Japan because he ran a bot that mugged characters in an online game, stealing items that other people would pay actual money to obtain for their own characters.
>
> If we can get around the sheer absurdity of the whole matter -- and I'm not sure I can -- what law has been broken, and, if none, what unsightly laws might legislators be tempted to create to try to stop things like this from happening?
>
> As a quasi-tangent, if anyone out there knows a bit about Japan's political climate, I'd be interested in hearing a bit about it. I know it's a democracy of some kind, but how socialized it may or may not be, for example, I have no idea, nor do I have much of a sense of how valued civil freedoms are. Knowing a bit about the Japanese government might put this story in context a bit better.

Here's an article in which someone whose life has been stolen by online gaming defends the kind of attitudes which were responsible for the arrest of the Chinese exchange student against attacks of absurdity with...far more absurdity.