For a *nasty* take on the abuses of VR, check out Ryk Spoors "Grand
Central Arena" and the sequels (the third book is currently being run
by beta readers).

A "side issue" (that becomes more important as things go on) is the
Hyperion project.

Basicly, some folks got together and built a space station (very
common in the solar system of the books) and set up a massive bunch
of AIs to run a number of VR setups that are rather like Star Trek
holodecks.

They enhance and alter a number fetuses(?) and raise them in the VR
environment, with the AIs running everyone they nteract with.

They are raised believing they are James T Kirk, Sherlock Holmes,
Slippery Jim deGriz and a host of others.

Eventually some of them discover discrepancies and figure out ways to
communicate between their individual "realms". Which lead to them
revolting against the folks who set the whole thing up.

The results were not pretty.

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com