by a player named Mr. Bungle, who leveraged a "voodoo doll" subprogram that allowed him to make actions that were falsely attributed to other characters in the virtual community. The "voodoo doll" subprogram was eventually rendered useless by a character named Zippy. These actions, which included describing sexual acts that characters performed on each other and forcing the characters to perform acts upon themselves, went far beyond the community norms to that point and continued for several hours. They were interpreted as sexual violation of the avatars who were made to act sexually, and incited outrage among the LambdaMOO users, raising questions about the boundaries between real-life and virtual reality, and how LambdaMOO should be governed. Following Mr. Bungle's actions, several users posted on the in-MOO mailing list, *social-issues, about the emotional trauma caused by his actions. One user whose avatar was a victim, called his voodoo doll activities "a breach of civility" while, in real life, "post-traumatic tears were streaming down her face". However, despite the passionate emotions including anger voiced by many users on LambdaMOO, none were willing to punish the user behind Mr. Bungle through real-life means. Three days after the event, the users of LambdaMOO arranged an online meeting, which Dibbell attended under his screenname (Dr. Bombay), to discuss what should be done about Mr. Bungle. The meeting lasted approximately two hours and forty-five minutes, but no conclusive decisions were made. After attending the meeting, one of the master-programmers of LambdaMOO (with screenname JoeFeedback), decided on his own to terminate Mr. Bungle user's account. Additionally, upon his return from his business trip, LambdaMOO's main creator, Pavel Curtis (screenname Archwizard Haakon), set up a system of petitions and ballots where anyone could put to popular vote anything requiring administrative powers for its implementation. Through this system, LambdaMOO users put into place a @boot command, which temporarily disconnects disruptive guest users from the server, as well as a number of other new features. It was later discovered that Mr. Bungle's identity consisted not only of a young man attending NYU, but also a group of NYU students on a dorm floor which encouraged his actions by calling out suggestions during the evening of the rape. Analysis Legal and ethical debate Dibbell's "A Rape in Cyberspace" brought issues of online abuse to light that had not been heard much of during its time. It led to some debate about