Jake Baker Case

After we read “A Rape in Cyberspace” by Julian Dibbell, "Multi-User Dungeons and Alternate Identities," by Howard Rheingold, and “Tinysex and Gender Trouble," by Sheryl Turkle, I instantly thought of a court case that I heard about on the news years ago. This court case was about Jake Baker, a student from the University of Michigan who wrote a detailed fictional story about him raping, torturing, and killing one of his classmates. Someone got alarmed when they read this story and notified officials. Public officials then searched Baker’s dorm room and read his e-mails and files on the computer. In one email, Baker talked to another man about a plan to kidnap, rape, mutilate, humiliate, torture, and kill a female. The type of crime that was committed in this case was the communication involving any threat to injure or kidnap another person. If convicted, this person can be fined, and or imprisoned for up to 5 years. Baker was charged with violating this law. However, there were many debates as to whether the Government violated Baker’s right to the first amendment, freedom of speech, or not. Some argued that it was Baker’s right to the first amendment to write these stories, and they could not be considered a crime. Others believed that Baker intended to execute the actions in these stories. Baker’s defense was that he was just role playing and using these stories as a form of therapy instead of actually acting them out.

This court case reminded me of these readings because the student who Baker wrote about in his story was psychologically affected from this incident. The student who Baker wrote about in his story was psychologically affected from it. She needed to seek counseling after the case. Even though she wasn’t actually raped in real life, there was a description of her being raped on the internet. This is similar to “A Rape in Cyberspace” because even though Legba was not raped in real life, she read the description of her virtual character being raped. This made her really upset. Whether being raped in real life, or seeing the scenario on the computer about being raped, you still have thoughts in your mind telling you that it is real. The text on the computer tells your mind that it is real.

This court case also reminded me of "Multi-User Dungeons and Alternate Identities," and “Tinysex and Gender Trouble," because these articles describe how people create alternate identities to explore things that they cannot explore in real life. This was Jake Baker’s defense. He said that he was just role playing by writing this story and using it as a form of therapy to act out his anger through these stories and through role playing instead of in real life.

For more information about the court case, go to this link.