In a defamation lawsuit arising from a feud between players in an online role-playing game, the Kaohsiung District Court on May 20 acquitted the defendant on the grounds that the insults and name calling were targeting a fictional character, not a real person.
On May 22 last year, the defendant, surnamed Lai (賴), was playing Lineage M — a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) with a medieval storyline — on his cellphone with other gamers.
Lai, using the gamer tag “Minion Fish Butcher,” got into an argument with “KGB Pretty Girl,” who turned out to be a man surnamed Pan (潘), the ruling said.
Lai typed messages to Pan in Chinese — such as “Are you an idiot?” and “Are you a fucking dog?” — in the game’s chat window, it said.
Taking the insults personally, Pan took screenshots of the messages and filed a judicial complaint against Lai.
Pan said that Lai had publicly slandered him before a live audience, as figures showed that about 70,000 gamers were playing the MMORPG at the time.
At the trial, Lai said he had typed the messages, but that he had directed them at the fantasy character “KGB Pretty Girl.”
Lai said he did not know Pan personally and had not meant to insult him, the real person.
The insults were directed at a fictional character in an online game, the court said, adding that as Lai did not know Pan’s age or name, he had not insulted a specific person, so it was not public defamation.
The court dismissed the case, saying that as “KGB Pretty Girl” was not publicly known to be associated with Pan, it was not the same as a person insulting someone on a public street.
Wang Chieh-tuo (王捷拓), a lawyer and former prosecutor, said that the justice system is gradually coming to regard online fantasy games and other online platforms as public spaces.
If the case had been filed by Holger Chen (陳之漢), a YouTuber well-known for his online name “Gym Boss” (館長), the ruling would likely have been different, Wang said.
“If people posted comments under a news report about Chen that insulted the ‘Gym Boss,’ most readers would believe that the posts insulted Chen,” he said.
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