My 0.02 pixels on age play in SL
May 10, 2007 11:24 am
Let’s see if I get this right: I may murder little innocent children, but I may not sleep with them?!
Before you state I’m obviously sick: I like my avies male and grown up, thank you. Anybody that uploads, shares, sells, … FL child porn in Second Life should be removed from the grid without even a second thought. But ‘our investigations revealed the users behind these avatars to be a 54-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman‘. Those person’s avatars were having SLex. That’s all. No proof at all that they were responsible for spreading the first life child porn found. Then why remove them from the grid? Because a TV station decided to make - yet again - an issue of sex in Second Life? I’ll bet my meta-ass over the fact that that german TV crew did not ‘by accident’ stumble over those two avies having sex. They went actively looking for it, just to get a shocking story.
Sex with animals isn’t allowed in FL neither (although I’m not sure about all US states *grins*), yet relationships between furries and human avatars are endulged. Will that be punishable too when PETA starts to complain? On the grid we may murder and rape and do to war captives as we please. Any avie brought before the war tribunal at The Hague already? The thirteenth amendment prohibits slavery, so let’s kick all slavetraders off the grid? No, of course not, because LL assumes those actions are all taken by consending adults and it’s a simulated world after all. So let’s be consequent and just say to those avies ‘get a room’.
The report that caused all this: (and subs for it you can find here)
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk8uNWF77gg]
25 Responses to “My 0.02 pixels on age play in SL”
I don’t do SL, but I do try to research child porn in FL, which is hard of course, since you can’t really research child porn in FL anyway. But that’s my problem, not yours.
Anyway, I’m glad you understand the difference between real child porn and role playing sex between virtual minors and adults. Much of the coverage of the SL / child porn “story” seems designed to blur the two together.
CPE
Vint,
Yes the German news crew went looking for it, my follow up post http://2ndlifer.wordpress.com/2007/05/10/more-info-on-the-childporn-group-from-bbc-news/
has more details. goes into some of the details, but there seems to be more to come.
The BBC article isn’t very clear about what ‘virtual’ child porn is though. Is it computer generated child porn or RL child porn that finds itself on a hard drive somewhere?
Well of course they are ambiguous about what it is, makes it easier to convict you of it in Germany…
Though it that use I am assuming pics of the SL sex act involving the child avatar. Though I could be wrong….
Well, hun, your US law also states that computer generated images of children and adults doing sexual thingies are child pr0n. So it’s not only Germany where it’s easy to get convicted. ;)
I was just staying the context of the article, it was a German TV new program, the evidence has been presented to a prosecutor in in Germany, and the article mentioned the Germany law…
In the UK, putting childrens head on adult bodies in photoshop will get you convicted of child porn
Just a small thought, we are sacrifiying freedom for security and morality, and this is not just in SL.
For a ‘morale’ with double standards, and this is not just in SL. :D
I mean, SL is a virtual world where just adults have access (and LL is responsible of that), killing people is illegal in most of the countries and nobody is talking about that, having weapons without a special permission is illegal in all Europe (europeans are more than 60% of SL residents) and you can buy a weapon in SL easier than in Florida. I’m not on ageplay, in fact i think if you like it maybe you need to go to a psicologist, same for slavery in Gor sims (well not only there) or some other things, but if we are all adults i can’t see where is the problem exactly. Absolutely everything agreed by two adults (or more) in private has my respect, as long as they respect my options of course.
The problem is with the definition of child pornography as can be found here: ‘(B) such visual depiction is a digital image, computer image, or computer-generated image that is, or is indistinguishable from, that of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; or…’
So, yes even watching two avies where one is a ‘computer- generated minor’ is legally child porn. Still, it’s hard for my mind to grasp that.
This is getting more and more confusing. Murder is illegal and probably being punished even more severe then producing child’s pornography, yet lot’s of people and other creatures get killed in the LoTR movies and nobody is complaining about those. Real snuff movies are ovbiously illegal, as one needs to rape/kill someone for that, but that happens in a lot of movies. So murder and rape computer generated or enacted upon are fine, and child pornography computer generated is not fine? Btw, has anybody thought of shooting snuff machinima in SL already? =D
And yet another question: the article I’ve linked to says nothing about written pornography. So I could (this is ‘IF I wanted to do so, what I don’t want to, obviously) write a story about a mature (avatar) and a child (avatar) having sex, and it is not child pornography? So IM’ing and chatting about it would not be punishable? Except maybe because of the TOS, but not by law?
I don’t disagree with your sentiment, and I love the cartoon, but I find the comparison to furry sex highly inaccurate. Real life pedophilia involves actual children, whereas furry sex involves pseudo-animals…other adult humans dressed in costume. One is a crime, the other a kink. If Linden Labs were cracking down on adult-appearing avs dressed in schoolgirl fashion, the comparison would be more valid.
[…] bestaan er nog mensen als Vint Falken , cartoon […]
Ann, yes, but in-world pedophilia also involves adult humans dressed in costume. A child’s costume, but still a costume. But I repeat: I’m still confused at all this. =d
Would’ve been quite amusing if it was bit too sad…
- the small technical err… insufficiency of education on the subject.
“Linden Lab has very easy means to prevent sexual abuse if they simply program their world in such a way that for example sexual contact between children and adults is impossible.”
1) SL AVs do not have genitals. Dear folks claiming how “easy” it is - please login yourself, take off the clothes, and check out whether there are any signs.
2) Consequently, from the technical (code) standpoint, there is no sex in SL either.
3) There is no flag “child avatar” or “adult avatar”. Is av who is 1m20 high to be considered a child ? what if it has wrinkles and beard ? OTOH would the avie of 2m height be considered an adult ?
Given these two factors, I’d see it slightly difficult to define the “easy” way to detect the “sexual contact”.
- instead of seeing some opportunities for improvements, it is much easier to depict it as “hot story”.
“Scientific studies [furthermore] prove that such play scenes get burned into the mind. The inhibition thresholds … are lowered”.
So, if you:
1) know the said activity is a crime IRL
2) are a professional who knows how to and want to treat the root causes of it
3) know that in SL the threshold for these activities is lower
why not put on your err… child av, go into these areas, fish for those individuals and try to treat them *before* they commit any real crime, rather than going out to the news and making yourself a publicity around it ?
[…] I still think it’s rather stupid we can murder child avies but not sleep with them. *still […]
Vint, are you advocating the banning of guns now?
[…] at me. I’m sorry but you went out of hand at telling me all this. I’ve AR’ed her work as it is borderline intolerance, also it would be wise not to say names at strangers like you have. […]
Of course I totally agree with you on the general issue of the poor old Lindens and their clumsy attempts to bring a little order into this chaos. Stick with the ones and zeros boys!
And I equally think that the whole question of child abuse has taken on a life of its own and spawned witch hunts which would make those in Salem seem like Sunday picnics.
But with the greatest of respect Vint, I think you’re on a hiding to nowhere taking this issue as the point of your spear which you use to make a more general attack on the Lindens. I noticed recently in a court case in New Zealand that some of the uncles on Pitcairn Island were a little careless about checking age in their ritual deflorations of their nieces but with that possible exception I don’t think there’s a society on earth which tolerates pre-pubescent sex.
Keep up the excellent work. You have my total support. But maybe move the target a bit…….
I do not say it is tolerated, but that it happens and has always happened. So we shoud not ‘not speak’ about it, by banning anything related to it. (As recently happened with the ban on ‘lolita’ in events posted.) Furthermore I do not consider what happened between those two adults as ’sex with a child’. But sex with an adult playing a child. Role play. I was scared - and still am scared - for the consequences of the witch hunt on child avies. If you can understand Dutch, just look at the chat convo posted here. If not, I’d be happy to translate for you.
How hypocrite is our society, if we may murder someone but not sleep with it? Which one of both is the worst? (Now that I think of it, there are tons of games in which you need to shoot adults, but I never saw any game we’re you’re supposed to rape adults. So rape is worse then murder? Or did murder become that much ‘normalized’?)
I don’t think I’m questioning your basic point. What I’m saying is that essentially this is politics. As Churchill said, politics is the science of the possible and more could possibly be achieved by approaching it from a different angle.
Of course Bismarck said it before Churchill (and he said art, not science) but the point remains.
So how should we approach it, then? As we do now? Just looking ‘dirty’ at all child avies? :(
Ah now there’s the beauty of being a commentator on a blog. You can be as negative as you like with no obligation to make any positive suggestions at all. That’s the job of the blogger, not us poor old blogees.
But seriously I think your basic point about the way the Lindens apply control is very valid. It has implications way wider than the small number of things that we choose to discuss. I have a big bee in my bonnet about their absurd ideas of intellectual property. Resale of items and distribution is one of the most basic building blocks of any economy but try to set up a SL distribution network based on resale. They make it as difficult as possible.
I could go on for ever about their weird moral standards. I just don’t think that this particular issue is one that most people can think clearly and objectively about, much as I agree with both your premises and their applications.
And thinking about the difference between killing a child on SL and having sex with one…..
Well, I don’t personally do guns so correct me if I’m wrong but everybody knows when you’re dead in SL, resurrection follows. It’s not real.
SLEX, now there’s another thing. Of course finger to genital replaces g to g but somehow it’s very……. real.
I suspect that’s the difference.
Care to comment?