"A Rape in Cyberspace, or How an Evil Clown, a Haitian Trickster Spirit, Two Wizards, and a Cast of Dozens Turned a Database into a Society" is an article written by freelance journalist Julian Dibbell and first published in The Village Voice in 1993. The article was later included in Dibbell's book My Tiny Life on his LambdaMOO experiences. Lawrence Lessig has said that his chance reading of Dibbell's article was a key influence on his interest in the field. Sociologist David Trend called it "one of the most frequently cited essays about cloaked identity in cyberspace". Background Before Dibbell wrote his article in 1993, he started his journalism career by becoming a music journalist. Through his journalism career, he became interested in the phenomenon of the Internet. This interest that Dibbell had of the Internet became the main focus of his writings. His writings included a variety of sub cultures when it came to the world of the Internet and during his exploration, he stumbled on to the online world of LambdaMOO. Dibbell saw LambdaMOO as its own little sub culture that has sub cultures within them, which he thought to be interesting and inspired him to writing about his experience within the game. Dibbell mentions that his girlfriend at the time played a part in him coming across the story. He came across it by accident when he was trying to get in contact with her over the phone and would not get an answer from her. When he could not get in to contact with her over the phone, he assumed that she would be online so he searched for her in LambdaMOO. When he found her, she had been in a meeting to figure out what to do about Mr. Bungle and that is where the story came to be. Summary "A Rape in Cyberspace" describes a "cyberrape" in a multi-player computer game or MUD called LambdaMOO that took place on a Monday night in March 1993 and discusses the repercussions of this act on the virtual community and subsequent changes to the design of the MUD program. LambdaMOO allows players to interact using avatars. The avatars are user-programmable and may interact automatically with each other and with objects and locations in the community. Users interacted through script, as there were no graphics or images on the MUD at the time. The "cyberrape" itself was performed