Police forces have entered the world of Second Life, but not to crack down on virtual crime--yet.

A new Vancouver Police Department initiative will see police officers holding a recruitment seminar in the game, with the goal of enticing tech-savvy players to a career of real-life crime fighting. Futuristic Vancouver Police Department avatars have been designed for officers to use during the drive, which will begin on Thursday.

"As we move into the future, we're going to need people who understand technology--that are conversant with it, that understand the impact of it and understand how to use it," said VPD Inspector Kevin McQuiggin, according to a story by the Vancouver Sun. McQuiggin heads the department's technology crimes division.

Inspector McQuiggin says he got the idea from a project at the Great Northern Way Campus, a small collection of graduate institutions in Vancouver. Last September, Northern Way program director Gerry Sinclair hired a Second Life player to create the university within Second Life, with the school's open house coinciding with a virtual version of the event. After hearing of the idea, McQuiggin approached the school, which offered to assist the VPD in its endeavor.

"It's important for us, as an organization, to keep abreast of modern technology--both from an educational standpoint and an outreach standpoint, and from an investigative standpoint," McQuiggin added.

In virtual worlds where property ownership can be a hotly contested issue, with disputes over valuable items ending in lawsuits--or even murder--a real virtual police force may not be far off.

"It's going to be interesting when we start to receive crime reports--you know, harassment cases or things like that--in the virtual world," McQuiggin speculated. "How are we going to deal with them?"

Last year a program called CopyBot caused a volatile stir in the Second Life community. Allowing users to quickly copy user-created content--the lifeblood of an in-game economy which generates real-world income for virtual business owners--many players saw CopyBot as blatant copyright theft. Facing increasing pressure from outraged players, Second Life creators Linden Lab refused to take direct action against the writers of the program, instead urging the community to respond.

"Longer term, Second Life is going to have to develop its own law or its own standards of behavior," Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale said, according to a story by BusinessWeek. At the time, Rosedale expressed the hope that players would police the world themselves, shunning those who they found in violation of the community standards. Protests were held against known users of the program, but business owners maintained Linden wasn't doing enough. The company eventually declared that known users of the bot would be banned from the game, while assuring players it was working on a way to identify users of the program.

Further challenging the idea of virtual property rights, Pennsylvanian lawyer Marc Bragg filed a lawsuit last year against Linden, claiming that the company shut down his Second Life account containing $8,000 in virtual property. Bragg says he found a legitimate way to purchase land at far lower prices than market price at auction, and accuses Linden Lab and CEO Rosedale of illegally seizing his funds. Linden responded by filing two motions to dismiss the suit, but a Pennsylvania judge denied the arguments. The case will now be resolved in a federal court.

In some instances, online property disputes can become far more ugly than a mundane court case. In 2005, Shanghai resident Qiu Chengwei, 41, murdered fellow gamer Zhu Caoyuan over a property dispute in the online game Legend of Mir 3. Chengwei had lent an in-game weapon to Zhu, who then sold the item behind his back for a large profit. When Chengwei tried to file a complaint at the local police department, he was told that virtual property is not protected under Chinese law. Chengwei tracked down Caoyuan at his home, repeatedly stabbing him in the chest before surrendering to police.

For now, the Vancouver police are leaving their involvement in video games to mere recruitment tactics. However, what happens when a robot, renegade cop steals the VPD's virtual donuts? McQuiggin addressed the myriad challenges a future online police force will face:

"There are jurisdictional issues. Where does the crime occur? Where is the suspect? Where is the victim? We want accountability, but if it's spread all over the world like that it makes it very difficult for us."