I’m blogging excerpts this week and next week from a new article by Mark Lemley and me, “Law, Virtual Reality, and Augmented Reality.” (Click on the link to see the whole article, including footnotes.) This post is from the criminal law part; we begin with disturbing the peace, but soon we’ll tell you about indecent exposure, strobing, virtual groping and more.

One general assumption we make throughout: VR and AR technology (think something like Google Glass) will get better, cheaper and more effective at rendering lifelike human avatars that track the user’s facial expressions. I think that’s a safe assumption, given the general trends in computer technology, and one that doesn’t require any major technological breakthroughs; but we are indeed prognosticating about technology that’s likely at least a couple of years out.