When is lying illegal?

That’s a fundamental question in any system of laws. If you and I agree that you’ll give me a dollar, and in return I’ll give you two back later, we have a contract. If I skip town, I have committed a crime: fraud. It’s the most basic of crimes, and simply boils down to lying. Of course, there are a thousand ways to lie and be nothing more than a cad. If I tell you I’m a lousy pool player, we bet a dollar on a game, and it turns out I’m better than you, you’re a sucker, I’m a con artist, and there’s been no crime. Yes, I misrepresented myself, but it was a matter of judgment, not fact.

And there are plenty of cases where lying is a sanctioned risk. If we play a poker tournament — a legally constructed one, regulated by our fine system of government — it’s not only acceptable to lie, it’s expected. The card player who fails to lie effectively will almost always lose. It’s a condition of the game.

Consider if you will, Eve Online.

Last, week, Dentara Rast — a character in CCP’s Eve Online massively multiplayer online world — pulled off an impressive stunt. He ran a classic Ponzi scheme and walked off with 700 billion ISK (in game money, and quite a lot of it). Normally, this kind of in-game bravado would generate nothing but a confuse stare from someone not deep inside the Eve universe, and little more than scandal-of-the-week titillation and subsequent yawns there. But I believe this case is more interesting than that.

I believe Dentara Rast committed fraud.
I believe he owes the IRS a lot of money.

Admittedly these are bold statements likely stuffed with straw, but they have deep implications, and bear argument.

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