This document discusses the ethics of virtual reality (VR) and how VR environments can raise new ethical issues. It provides examples of how VR is used for training, art, therapy, and entertainment. While some VR worlds try to mimic real life, others provide more alternatives or few limits. This can create ethical problems related to issues like limits, content suitability, economics within VR worlds, and matters that could not occur without the connection between virtual and real identities/actions. The document analyzes specific problems in VR worlds like Second Life, such as an example of a "lesbian marriage" between users that turned out to involve a man deceiving a woman about their real gender.

1. ICT Ethics
Second bigger task

2. Virtual reality (VR)
● A computer simulation of a real world or an
imaginary world
● Primarily visual – nowadays with other
sensory information as well
● User interacts with the world using input
devices
● Creating a high fidelity virtual world is still
difficult because of technical limitations

3. VR Uses
● Training simulations
● Art
● Therapy, rehabilitation
● Demonstrating hotels, apartments etc.
● Reconstruction
● Entertainment

4. VR Ethics
● Some virtual worlds try to provide a chance
to do anything you could do in real life
→ Ethical issues become the same
● Some virtual worlds give even more
alternatives
● Some don't really place any limits at all

5. VR Ethics
● No limits
→ More problems related to general ethics
→ New problems caused specifically by
virtual reality?
→ Are the new problems entirely new? Are
they related to anything else?

6. Example: Second Life
● Complex, huge, 3-dimensional virtual world
● Launched in 2003, now over 16 million
accounts
● Create a resident – do anything you want
● Most of the content is created by residents
● Similarity to real life also creates similar
ethical issues

7. Second Life
● Economy
– Own currency unit, the L$
– Buy goods, rent property, own land
– Exchange to real money
● Education
– Distance learning
– Research

8. Second Life
● Art
● Work solutions
● Religion
● Embassies
● Sex
● Sport
● Games

9. SL: General ethical problems
● Money
– SL creators sell virtual land, virtual land
owners make money by renting it
– Virtual money can be invested in virtual
businesses
– Poor beginners can be ostracized
– Etc.
● Not different from the real world

10. SL: General ethical problems
● Content unsuitable to minors
– Nudity, sex and violence can be seen by
anyone who so wishes
– No permanent effects on virtual characters
– Access to some places has been restricted
– Etc.
● Not different from more traditional media
such as television

11. Problems specific to VR ethics
● VR-specific problems are caused by the
underlying connection to reality
● People have the chance to benefit from
their virtual actions in real life
● It's never 100% virtual, users don't cease to
be human beings when entering VR
● To conclude with, an example of something
that would not have happened without
virtual reality

12. Case: “Lesbian” marriage
● Two female Second Life residents met and
fell in love
● The couple got married and bought virtual
land, built a virtual house, etc.
● Eventually one of the women confessed to
her virtual wife that she was a man in real
life despite claiming otherwise to begin with

13. Case: “Lesbian” marriage
● The couple got divorced
● Both had spent hundreds of dollars' worth
of real money on their virtual property
● The real life woman started a petition to
find a way to confirm the gender of
residents

14. Case: “Lesbian marriage”
→ Case analysis will follow in Task 11
Thanks.