The fusion between virtuality and reality has achieved a new quality of experience by the establishment of metaverses and virtual worlds, like Second Life, Twinity, Entropia Universe or Fregger have experienced rapid growth in recent years and show no signs of slowing down. Not only have countless companies discovered these virtureal worlds as marketplaces, but so have fraudsters and other criminals. To meet the new challenges arising from virtual worlds, the University of Heidelberg organized the symposium Virtual Worlds and Criminality . This conference brought together European experts from different academic disciplines. They discussed the reasons for and the impacts of these new forms of criminality as well as the necessities and possibilities for fighting these. Moreover, other fundamental issues were examined, such as the addictive potential of virtual-world use, media violence, and conflict resolution problems arising in the context of virtual worlds.

Christoph Klimmt, Virtual Worlds as a Regulatory Challenge: A User Perspective

Christian Laue, Crime Potential of Metaverses
Tilo Hartmann, Is Virtual Violence a Morally Problematic Behavior?
Dieter Hermann, Media Violence and Criminality
Bert Theodor te Wildt, Internet dependency-symptoms, diagnosis and therapy
Arno R. Lodder, Conflict resolutions in virtual worlds: General characteristics and the 2009 Dutch convictions on virtual theft
Kai Cornelius, Responsibility under Criminal Law in Virtual Worlds.