Criminal Law in the Metaverse: Defining Wrongdoing in a Virtual World

When the Metaverse began becoming trendy in October 2021, with the renaming of Facebook to Meta, it did not take long for the downsides of such a technology to make themselves obvious. Bad online behaviour is practically synonymous with the internet, and the Metaverse, being an extension of the internet, is no exception. This chapter looks at how criminal law might currently be applied to bad behaviour in the Metaverse, and goes on to discuss we should think about the use of criminal law to regulate harms in digital spaces.