Free expression in a virtual world: Peter Ludlow was booted from the Sims online game after reporting on player misbehavior. Now the Michigan professor is asking: don't cyberpeople have rights?

Peter Ludlow says he was only trying to expose the truth that Alphaville's authorities were all too happy to ignore. in his online newspaper, The Alphaville Herald, he reported on thieves and their scams. He criticized the city's leaders for not intervening to make it a better place.

In response, Ludlow says, he was banished from Alphaville. He was kicked out of his home; his property was confiscated; his two cats were taken away.

Alphaville is not a real town but a virtual city in an Internet game called The Sims Online, where thousands of paying subscribers assume fictional identities and mingle in cyberspace. Indeed, none of Ludlow's possessions existed outside the game. But the recent decision by the game's owner, Electronic Arts, to terminate Ludlow's account has set off a debate over free expression and ethics in the online world that is reverberating in the real one.

"To me, it was clearly censorship," says Ludlow, a University of Michigan philosophy professor. His critics, some of whom are part of the Sims world, say Ludlow violated game policy and got exactly what he deserved. Regardless of who is right, the episode has called attention to the little-known netherworlds of a popular computer-game genre known as "massively multiplayer online role playing games." Blurring the line between fantasy and reality, the games have become a gateway to complex social networks that take on lives of their own.

POETRY & PAGANS 

In a Sims city like Alphaville, players see their computer screens dotted with cartoon houses and stores. They visit each other. Some have poetry readings, others hold pagan sacrifices. Some vie to be on the "most popular Sims" list, or to get rich, but there is no way to "win" the game.

The players create animated figures that reflect, or deviate from, their real life identities. The median age of Sims subscribers is 28 to 30, and about 60 percent of them are women.

The 80,000 Sims Online subscribers are a relatively small group so far. Everquest, the most popular of this type of game among Americans, has 430,000 subscribers competing in a medieval world.

Increasingly, the real people behind the characters onscreen want more control over how their online communities are governed. Yet Ludlow's case also suggests that players often disagree about how online rides should be enforced.

Electronic Arts says Ludlow was kicked out because he broke one of the main rules when he linked his Sims profile to his Web site, which in turn linked to sites that tell people how to cheat. Ludlow says he was nabbed on a technicality. Many players say that the company enforces the rule selectively.

But some players contend that Ludlow's accusations of misdeeds in Alphaville including the charge that teens were participating in inappropriate chats on sexual topics--were based on rumors. And even if Ludlow could prove that EIectronic Arts bounced him for his reporting, legal scholars say he does not have a First Amendment case, at least for now.

GAMES AS PRIVATE CLUBS

Game companies are not like phone companies, which have a legal obligation to carry all speech over their lines. They are more like a private club, which can reserve the right to expel members at will. And the Constitution does not protect speech once it has been signed away by contract, which is what players do when they subscribe.

But the games may come to be regarded like shopping malls, which several state courts have ruled can be forced to uphold free speech despite being private property.

The line between "reality" and fantasy in the games is blurring. The online money of several games can now be purchased for real dollars on Internet auction sites. One in-demand Sims cat sells for $25 on eBay.

Ludlow says that instead of expelling him, Electronic Arts should have addressed his criticisms, including his view that the feature allowing players to chat about sexual topics might not be appropriate for teenagers. "There has to be some responsibility that comes with running a kind of social common space like that," he says.

But many players argue that parents must monitor their children's activities online. Jeff Brown, vice president for communications at Electronic

Arts, says the company would investigate if a teenage player were suspected of inappropriate behavior. But, he adds, "If someone says that is going on in cyberspace, is it lust on anybody that it's not actually happening? No law was violated. It's a game."

Amy Harmon covers technology for The New York Times.