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Germans Pursuing Kiddie Porn In Second Life
Several readers sent in links to the BBC, which has picked up news of a German investigation into child pornography in Second Life. A German TV station captured images of two avatars, an apparent adult and an apparent child, involved in sexual activity. The station also said they had infiltrated a ring trading real-world child porn in SL. SL creator Linden Labs is cooperating fully with the investigation, they write on their official blog: "Our investigations revealed the users behind these avatars to be a 54-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman. Both were immediately banned from Second Life." The German prosecutor's office hasn't responded to Linden's offer of help in identifying the real-world traders.
Welcome to the era of thought crime
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is in the games category. Is Second Life a game? I must admit I don't know much about it, but I didn't think it was.
If you can think of it, someone has already done it!
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Whenever I see this sort of thing (both this story and the Belgian rape-investigation one) I can't help thinking that, by their lights, they should also be investigating tens of thousands of Counterstrike players for 'Virtual Homicide'.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Are scheisse videos even possible in Second Life?
Monstar L
This may sound odd in this 'thinkofthechildren' world we claim to live in:
Has anyone considered that allowing someone to 'role play' or 'express' their desires, no matter how taboo, in a virtual world, might lessen real-world activity? Any studies on this?
I mean how many people satisfy themselves with porn rather than engage in risky real life behavior?
Maybe these 'sickos' can get their satisfaction on a virtual world?
It seems like a lot of the 'oddballs' are the ones who come from a background of extreme sexual repression. A virtual outlet could eliminate that repression.
As personally distasteful as I find this -- I'm not sure this constitutes a breach of any laws. "Kiddie porn" involves the sexual photography (and horrible exploitation) of children. It is difficult to see who is being "hurt" by this Second Life activity. Yes, one can make the argument that if one engages in virtual fantasy, one is more likely to engage in the 'real thing'. But this is a straw man argument that has been applied to video games for years with zero proof of any virtual/real-world crossover.
The question ultimately becomes: Can fantasy involving only digital, or make-believe characters, be illegal?
If the answer is yes, I find that to be extremely disturbing in an Orwellian sense. While I find the concept of finding children sexually appealing to be personally abhorrent, I'm not sure the law extends (or should extend) into virtual roleplaying between consenting adults.
My two cents.
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And who isn't pursuing kidde porn in Second Life or, for that matter, in the first one?
"Germans Pursuing Kiddie Porn In Second Life"?
Those Germans are sick bastards.
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Oh crap.. No wonder they ask so many questions. I gotta go cancel my account.
The avatar in a Second Life jail? Will they have to program one?
Or the person in real life?
I'm certainly not condoning the activity, but I have to ask...
If an adult who appears to be a child chooses to be photographed naked, that is perfectly legal. So why is an adult who looks like a kid online different?
Members of this group also offered to put him in touch with traders of real child pornography.
I'm sorry, I'm confused. I can understand going against the people actually trading real kiddie porn, but what the hell is "virtual" porn? And please don't tell me that a 53-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman were subjected to anything worse than being banned for "age play", if they were arrested or anything, that would be ridiculous.
i'm going to hell.
So the German government says the problem with kiddie porn is that some adults are perverts, even if no children are involved.
Do they arrest people in Germany for the love scenes in Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet_ between two underage kids, but played by adults?
--
make install -not war
This is why kiddie porn and terrorism is often called a hack for the consitition. Things have evolved in such a way that people forgot why those things are not desires, and instead opt to ban and censor anything that could mention or seem like, or possibly suggest, terrorism or child porn.
We have 27 year old and 54 year old adults faking sex with avatars, one of which looked like a child. There's no child porn here. Even if they shot movies of their "act" and distributed it around, this is not child porn. There's no abused child. People apparently have forgotten why child porn is bad in the first place.
You can come up with all made-up reasons "but it can motivate people watching it to abuse children".. Right, if anything you see motivates you to replicate it, we have to bad 90% of the potentially violent or sexual content out there.
Just like talking about target shootout at work isn't terrorism, animation of avatars by adult people isn't child abuse.
This is interesting because it infers that there is not such thing as a virtual experience, or at least that virtual experiences cannot be dismissed as inherently less important than an actual one. For if it were otherwise, and if Second Life were just a game, then there would be no problem with this. The fact that there is a problem means the distinction between the virtual and the actual is problematic Of course it could be argued that murder is forbidden in the real world and yet is a common occurrence in the game world. Why the discrepancy? I think it has a lot to do with context and also cultural conventions. But this is only the most glancing analysis of the problem which is very complex and goes to the heart of belief and habit formation underscoring human behaviour.
Hello. I can see your (you = you people living in other parts of the world) point, and why you are disappointed with that. I share most of your opinions about this being ridiculous. But I can tell that most users of one of the largest german news sites (heise.de) shared your opinion in their forums. And I think it's rather sad to instantly see something like "no wonder it starts in germany"-statements. We're past the nazi-era. I'd like to note that those players aren't actually sued for kiddie-abusing. They are sued for sharing rl-kiddieporn pictures. Additionally, german law says that any pornographic material, may it be written, as pictures or sounds are prohibited including material closely resembling actual childabusing which translates into these avatar-sex involving one clearly looking like a minor being illegal, same is for hentai showing kiddie porn etc. This news show is also famous for being sensationally bad in research and populist. They claimed the female player who controlled the child avatar was actually 13 years old. Wonder if they are going to prohibit sexual practices where the woman dresses as schoolgirl next...
so if i ask my 25 y.o. girlfriend to put her hair up in pigtails and put on the schoolgirl outfit, am i now quilty as well? if i ask her to call me 'daddy' am i now committing incest? ....i;ll just post this as an anonymous coward.......
I know this involves 'The Germans', but hasn't a US Supreme Court decision kept virtual child porn legal (computer graphics and text)?
In the same line of reasoning, I expect these coming soon:
Banning midget sex (as they look like kids). You'll have to be this high to have sex.
Banning sex with stupid individuals (they act like kids). You'll have to be this smart to have sex.
Banning sex with people dressed like kids. strict outlines of what "dressed like adult" will be written in a law.
Banning sex with people who said something that could suggest they pretend to be a child or pretend their mate is a child, or think about something child-related during sex.
Banning videos pictures of adults looking at a kid, smiling or something else that could suggest the drawn indivial could have had eventually potentially thoughts about sex.
Banning adults from touching kids, or people that look like kids, and talking about kids if they saw or did something sexual in the last 24 hours.
While in the real world a grown woman can dress up like a child and have sex with a grown man, but while in a virtual world, it's illegal, in the real world?
Where's Eric Cartman when you need him.
Probably the only time it's relevant.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Japan has a generally low crime rate, so it is not really that surprising that sexual crime is also low.
The traditional example is Denmark, where there was a statistically significant decrease in rapes after the legalization of pornography. That statistic actually helped getting pornography legalized in other countries, not always with the same effect (so it might have been a fluke).
If my wife does up the pony tail and the classic Catholic school girl outfit, what am I guilty of?
Child porn?
Exploiting a minor?
Hate crime (depends on the mood I guess).
Contributing to the deliquency?
...for PKing in Ultima Online
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
Censorship strikes in Second Life. Were there any ACTUAL pictures of child pornography? Were there any ACTUAL children involved? No? THEN NO CRIME WAS COMMITTED!
These two people were banned because they did something that was not politically correct, something that was "shocking" and that someone was offended by. They did NOT endanger anyone nor did they force anyone else to stick around and watch. They were punished simply because a "moral" majority did not approve of their particular kink.
Two adults had both of their accounts terminated for roleplaying in a virtual world.
Linden Labs is on the forefront of immersive multiuser graphical virtual worlds and as such they are helping define the future of communications technology. To begin limiting forms of human communication (YES, SEX IS A FORM OF COMMUNICATION) is simply counterproductive for what they are trying to achieve.
LINDEN LABS - - Reverse this decision and reserve termination for REAL crimes.
There are a couple importing things to note here:
A major component of this news story was not just that it was virtual child pornography, but that *there was real child pornography also in the mix*. If you haven't played Second Life, you must understand that it is possible to do anything with images in SL. Wallpaper a building. Send it via the equivalent of a Private Message--a "notecard." Wrap it around a 3D object so that it can walk and talk.
A few weeks ago, there was an alarmist article that alleged terrorists might use Second Life to conduct virtual training sessions. It was ludicrous, and still is, to think that terrorist cells, who obviously value anonymity, would use an open and unprotected medium such as Second Life to conduct covert activity.
On the other hand, quite a few of these "ageplayers" feel that they are doing nothing wrong. And while I certainly don't begrudge anyone their sexual fetishes, and acknowledge that in the U.S. (unlike much of the rest of the world) virtual child pornography is legal, I think it is important to note that we're not talking about what you or I would consider "ageplay" in the real world.
Some people have compared this to dressing up your girlfriend like a schoolgirl while you play principal. While it is analogous, it is not by any means comparable to the actual content at hand.
After the Second Life Herald conducted a widely circulated interview with the operator of Jailbait, a couple SL griefers and I went into the sim to try to figure out exactly how we could fuck with it. It was difficult to enter--a highly protected area. When we finally got in, it was somewhat shocking, even by SL standards. There were apparently prepubuscent avatars screaming and crying in baby talk as they were tortured by older figures. There were "adoption agencies", so that the ageplayers--and yes, I will go out on a limb here and say "pedophiles"--could add a pinch of incest to the mix.
The ageplaying in Second Life is *on another level*.
Sure, none of that stuff is unheard of on the Internet.
But on the Internet, it is generally limited to dark, unknown, secret corners: password protected forums, underground Usenet groups, anonymous image boards.
Contrast this to Second Life, which is experienced as an open, freely accessible world, where one can walk around and see anything as it exists. No effort is needed to find these things--they can be found through mere wandering. It is experientially different, even if qualitatively similar, to the most depraved shit the Internet has to offer.
What is worth noting, in my opinion, is not whether or not this is thought crime or harming anyone or worthy of legal action. There are different traditions of jurisprudence--or, to use a term coined by the jurist Jeffrey Rosen, "jurisprurience"--that govern different areas, and we are unlikely to reconcile international obscenity laws when our own are so obfuscated.
Rather, it is interesting to note the widespread media and political reaction to the seedier side of Second Life, which is nothing new, but whose presence was glossed over or ignored in the initial rush to adopt virtual worlds technology based on media hyperbole.
The study is pretty commonly quoted as an argument against pornography, not sure why.
It is not really surprising that there is a correlation between people who think it is fun to attempt to chock the interviewer by admitting their use of pornography, and people that who think it is fun to attempt to chock the interviewer by condoning rape. Nor that there is a correlation between people who find they need to lie about their use of pornography to appear more moral than they are, and people who find they need to get tough on rape for similar reasons. Even if all the answers were truthful (unlikely given the subject), it would be surprising if people who had little trouble with rape would see pornography as wrong.
The study mostly seems like a pseudo-rational crutch for people who oppose pornography for other reasons.
Any sources to back that claim of "...FBI already spends *MOST* of its resources tracking down child molesters"?
The FBI has many roles, from counter-terror, to counter espionage, to kidnapping and a zillion other things.
Makes it sound like Germans in general are seeking this stuff out. That is so inaccurate. Everyone knows the Germans are into scheisser porn.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Since beastiality is taboo, guess LL needs to ban all furries in SL too?
...I would think they would be tracking down all the furries and arresting them for "virtual beastiality".
But then Linden Labs would lose 90 percent of their revenue...
It's not about justice, or protecting the innocent - Stories like this reveal what's really going on. Think about it: There are pedophiles, always have been, probably always will be (at least for the forseable future). Maybe it's a mental illness, maybe just perversion. Does it matter?
Given that pedophiles exist, and the urge is hard to suppress, shouldn't we welcome that they do their stuff in a virtual world, instead of the real one? Right now, aside from claims by the German authorities, there is no evidence that even a single child was actually involved. And living in Germany I can tell you the authorities have lost a lot of reputation recently. We've reached the point where even mainstream magazines doubt the sanity of our minister of the interior. He was assaulted some year back, has been sitting in a wheelchair since. PTSD is a very likely result of that tragedy.
And this is what it's about. Like the razzias in several cities yesterday, it's a show of force, a spectacle, in the words of Hakim Bey.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
"After the Second Life Herald conducted a widely circulated interview with the operator of Jailbait, a couple SL griefers and I went into the sim to try to figure out exactly how we could fuck with it. It was difficult to enter--a highly protected area. When we finally got in..."
vs.
"Contrast this to Second Life, which is experienced as an open, freely accessible world, where one can walk around and see anything as it exists. No effort is needed to find these things--they can be found through mere wandering."
Something's wrong with your brain.
for years.
In Nevada, where Pristitution is legal, it is illegal for them to pretend to be under 18, or related to the patron anything closer the 2nd cousins.
It's a perfectly fine line for a business to have to draw.
Oh, and it is not 'thought crime' at all. They are not arresting people for thinking about having sex with someone who is an adult pretending to be a child.
Also, depictions of children having sex is illegal in civilized places. The fact that the depiction in this case is an animated avatar makes no difference.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Of course, I don't have to tell you that 99.999% of those who play Grand Theft Auto have zero interest in actually engaging in the various felonious in-game pursuits in real life.
In addition, I would assert that among those who enjoy fantasizing about rape, very few would ever have an interest actually committing a rape or being raped. Perhaps they enact their own fantasies with their partners, but I doubt many would want the real deal.
On the other hand, it is part of human nature to desire to protect the defenseless, including and especially children. This is why you see so many draconian and oftentimes blatantly unconstitutional laws being passed under the auspices of protecting kids. I doubt that there is much middle ground between those who would be interested in engaging in, and those who would be repulsed by, having sex with children.
That is why I think your use of Japanese pornographic tastes does not apply here. I'm willing to bet that the Japanese people, while they may enjoy fantasizing about rape, are not interested in going around raping each other. On the other hand, I doubt that there are many people who would be interested in only fantasizing, but not acting, on having sex with children. This is for the reason I mentioned above, the human-nature desire to protect the defenseless.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
"Germans Purusing Kiddie Porn In Second Life"
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I can say that the majority of so-called 'kiddie' porn is really just age play, considering the fact that the avatars can be altered to be as small or as tall as you like within their constraints. According to the article there is alleged real kiddie porn in the mix, but alleged doesn't count in my book, but then again I live in America were we're suppose to have an adversarial legal system [that probably doesn't count for much anymore sadly], but this case is in Germany, which probably has a completely different take on innocence of the accused, so that card won't work even if it's right. So all I can say is that in SL, an accusation is taken seriously by LL, and you can lose your account and all your IP in that domain by them, it's a sad state of affairs, but that's the course LL has chosen. It wants to look all squeaky clean, but the fact is that SL is primarily used for all sorts of fetishistic sex play.
Hell, I play on a sim for a cyberpunk city called Midian City, which literally has an assortment of all kinds of sex play; vanilla (of all orientations), BDSM, pred/prey capture sexplay, and so on. Yet, it's still no the bread and butter of RP on that sim, despite being the primary audience attraction when it comes to general RP. So, I don't get most of the taboo and icky feeling that the folks at LL have about all this. If they want squeak clean just say so and put it in the AUP or whatever contract it needs to be in, and then I'll just take my leave to elsewhere because I do happen to be an adult and I do not want to be censored (oh noes, I might say b00bs one instance and offend some blue hair'd individual or a bible thumper or two...) among adults. SL use to be a fine idea for a 3d environment, but the more press it gets the more the chilling effect gets placed on adults in SL, despite the addition of a Teen/Kid-only grid which is separate from the main grid. In the end, the only way to resolve this issue is to have someone reverse engineer or make a completely independent version of SL. Frankly, I think that's its future, and LL knows it, they're just trying to rake in more cash before it's too late and everyone makes up their own little 'meta-verses.'
-- Brede
...this is really a grey area. Given that everyone involved was a consenting adult. Much like hentai, where many of the styles have "young" looks, even though the characters aren't. Or it can even be argued with "adult babies", or girls in schoolgirl outfits.
This isn't something where you can really break out the pitchforks for, but you can't exactly say for the win.
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
Perhaps the title should have read "Germans crack down on kiddie porn in Second Life" or "Germans pursue punishment for kiddie porn in Second Life" I don't think they would agree with the current inferred sentiment it carries.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
OK, so it is some kind of virtual playground where nobody gets hurt. Sort of.
Except it is easily shown that what is going on here is reinforcing this behavior and rewarding it.
For a bully being able to bully people in a virtual world where all the victims meekly submit and cower pretty much assures the bully that this is a good thing and encourages acting out in the real world. I see the same thing here.
We need to clearly identify behavior as acceptable or unacceptable and enforce that in all venues, virtual or not. If being a bully is acceptable, then they can practice their bullying anywhere at any time without restriction. If being a pedophile is acceptable, then they should be able to seduce little children whenever and whereever they want. By acceptable I mean acceptable to society - not just a few people but pretty much everyone that could potentially be affected. Today, that means more than just their local community.
Alternatively, if being a bully or pedophile is not acceptable then they should not be able to practice it anywhere, real or virtual, or even talk about how they would really like to do it but are currently restraining themselves. No "reinforcing" behavior, no simulations, no gameplaying. Utter ban.
Pretty much as a society it has been decided that calling black people niggers and "nappy haired ho's" is not acceptable in any venue. You do it once and get fired from your job. You do not find virtual worlds where people get to practice calling black people niggers. Creating such a virtual place would result in a large outcry and banning such a thing. We can develop the courage to ban other activities just as completely.
who gets charged with a crime?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Its a good example and Japan does have a low crime rate but they do have serious problems with sex crimes and sexual harassment that the numbers don't show. For example, the train gropping thing is a problem that I have experienced first hand, and I am a man. I have been grabbed by men and woman on the train in Tokyo. Oh I found it down right hilarious but I'm sure plenty of the women there don't. The funny thing is I have seen Japanese porn where the theme was gropping and then raping women on the train. Its a really common theme and there are even places you can go to pay to act out the scenario yourself. And yes recently there are women only trains because the train gropping is that bad. One reason the numbers are low is because a lot of this stuff is tolerated on a level that would never happen in the US.
My gf's experience is also a good example of the situation in Japan. She was certain science field that was mostly dominated by males. If you were a woman in a lab you were probably the only one. As she started her job in the lab she met the woman who recently quit her position there and she told her she left because she was being harassed by the boss. Eventually my gf gave up the field entirely because her male cowokers were alwasy watching porn in front of her at work, talking dirty to her, touching her etc and this happen in more then one place including the university. It goes without saying that when you do hear about this stuff in Japan's news its a small minority of cases where the person even bothers to say anything.
Child sex crimes are another example. Various regions in Japan have different laws regarding sex with minors but many of them are lower in the US. Regardless of the law there is a big illegal market for underage prostitution. The numbers for sex crimes in Japan mean squat because it has one the largest illegal sex industries in the world and a huge amount of it is tolerated or goes unreported. There's even plenty of cases where some of these more ametuer videos weren't entirely consensual. Even the part of their sex industry that apears legal is almost always run by yakuza who are just as criminal as any gang memeber in the US but are often treated like real corporations, not that there is much of a difference anyways (recroding industry).
Stalking is also a big problem there. Its not a case of there is porn that involves stalking themese so you see less of it in real life. Again, I have experienced this first hand. I have been stalked by several women and when I told people some of them thought it was cute and they were just persistant women, but other foreigners immediately knew what the deal was and had experienced it or seen it themselves. Again it wasn't really a criminal matter and after telling my collegues I was the one who was almost transferred until one of the girls started doing things that were so off the wall they couldn't ignore it. In any event police were never involved and I was told not to involve them. Put that in the stat books.
But... I'm totally for porn and against censorship. Japan is just a really bad example for this argument. I could go on and on with examples because sexually Japan is screwed in almost every way from an unexceptable amount of adults doing audacious stuff in public to declining birthrates. If we were talking about violence and crime in general then you would be right on even if you include the higher rate of suicide and bullying. They don't have the censorship we have, yet their crime rate is much lower and your not as likely to get shot, robbed or approached by crack heads.
Trying to restrict freedom of thought and expression among consenting adults should not be acceptable in a democracy. There are lots of arguments one may come up with for and against, but the simple fact remains: giving the state the power to criminalize thoughts, pictures, or speech in areas as vaguely defined as morality and sex is too dangerous.
It is exactly those powers that the Nazis in Germany used to turn a democracy into a fascist state, with the Germans cheering them on. The rhetoric and issues are the same: protecting the children from deviants, degenerate pictures, illegal aliens, family values, Christian values, etc.
People, get a clue: don't fall for this bullshit a second time.
MEMORANDUM
To: God
RE: Error found in reprod(m,f)
I found a threading issue with reprod(m,f). Someone set the priority way too high and it's creating a system-wide slowdown that's eating up a lot of resources. I'm thinking of de-prioritizing it to spend more resources in power management instead. Also, invoking reprod(m,m) and reprod(f,f) appears to halt other parts of the system inexplicably.
Please tackle these issues ASAP. They've apparently been around for a while, but since after fixing a lot of other stuff, they seem to be more of an issue.
Sincerely,
Humanity
It does not make sense. One, it is a biological function for replication and last I read, digital characters do not require this process. So at most, what was viewed was an imitation of a sexual act, but that does not make it sex. In addition, the digital world has definite boundaries and can only go as far as the code will allow activities to be performed. So, if they were imitating sex, it must have been because the code had logic in place to render such activities. If this never happened, then how can someone imitate sex in SL? Since sex does not exist in digital world and the imitation of sexual acts can only be done in the digital world because code creates it and I imagine SL did not code routines for this purpose, then what was seen? My guess is that it is some kind of reflection of what the viewer saw which still does not make it sex. It does reveal the mindset of the person that saw whatever it was.
Where are you getting your data that Japan has low sex crime rates?
I live in Japan, and I personally know a large number of women who have been sexually assaulted. you might have heard the word "chikan", which describes men who molest women. Usually on trains. This is a social problem so grave that there are now women-only train cars. As I recall, I've read one statistic that said something like 1/3 of all women can expect to be groped/molested on a train to one degree or another by the 25th birthday.
And this cannot be brushed off by saying "Japanese trains are packed, and women just think that any old body contact is rape nowadays". I have personally taken the near-abandoned first train home in the morning, and watched a drunken Japanese businessman start pawing at the crotch and ass of one of my female Australian friends right in front of me. A quick shout of the word "chikan" was enough to end the incident, but Japanese women are usually hesitant to do this because it's a source of embarrassment for the both of them. This often results in the assault usually continuing unabated, and going unreported.
I am not alone in having witnessed this. My cousin lives in Tokyo and once sprang to the defence of a girl who was being molested on the train by grabbing the assaulter's fingers and breaking them.
There is also a not-insignificant amount of stalking and lurking, as well as men taking up-skirt camera pictures on escalators.
I would really check up on your data again, and if it does in fact support your claim, I would suggest that it: a) refers only to instances of penetrative rape and not sexual assault; or b) refers only to instances reported to the police, the vast majority of instances, IMO, not being reported.
Ok, as there seem to be some open questions about the german law governing child pornography, I will try to explain it a little bit... Child pornography is a criminal offence according to 184b of the german penal code (Strafgesetzbuch).
According to 184b Stgb. it is forbidden to distribute, display, present or make accessible child pornography (punishable by up to 5 years of prison).
It is also forbidden to procure or to own child pornography (punishable by up to two years of prison). You don't even have to be aware that you own child pornography to be punished for it. There have been cases of people being convicted fo owning child pornography that have tried to fight agains it.
Child pornography includes everything that deals with the abuse of children (anyone under the age of 14 in germany); that means that it is forbidden for underage avatars to have sex with each other in germany (and it doesn't matter if the people behind it are adult or not). Stories of children (under 14) having sex are also forbidden.
Linden labs has to take actions against this, otherwise they might be punished themselves (for distributing and making accessible child pornography). And germany is an important market for linden labs; there are more germans in second life than u.s. residents (about 209,000 germany logged in to SL in april 2007 compared to 207,000 americans).
Furry sex is also forbidden in germany; according to 184a Stgb. the distribution, exhibition, etc. of pornography with animals is forbidden (it doesn't matter if they are virtual or not; it doesn't even matter if it are real animals or only fantasy ones). But it is not forbidden to own animal or to procure animal porn. But linden labs might be punished for making it accessible.
Do you have a bit of info on how they defined the women's liberation movement? I am against the use of the term feminism, I am a humanist. Or an equalist. So I might have answered that question either way simply depending on my mood and the potential interpretation, and the precise wording of the question (I'm anal-compulsive that way.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not too long ago, maybe a few hundred years, people got married at 12 and were considered adults in the teens. Seems like a very natural thing with nature and maturation taken into account. Or go back to biblical times if you want to be religious about it, or go to some other countries and cultures right now. We tend to think our culture is correct in its judgements about what is good/evil/allowed.
So lets draw a line in the sand. Say 18.. thats a good number. If your older and have intimate relations (possibly just touching) with your girlfriend who is just under 18. Throw you in jail, brand you as a sexual offender, require that you register everywhere you go for the rest of your life. Seems reasonable doesn't it.
Well now we can extend that abitrariness to the virtural world. And your right even if that was consentual its a crime and we will label it as "abuse".
Thats not to say non-consentual sex is ever acceptable. And certainly we all want to protect children from non-consentual abuse. But lets not get too hung up on the arbitrary boundies, and for gods sake thought crime should be illegal. It is truly a slippery slope to 1984 to start making thinking or expressed thinking illegal. Except of course for those who think that thought crime is acceptable, we may have to make that illegal.
SCOTUS has ruled that synthetic digital forms of [fill in the blank] cannot be banned when they ruled on this a couple of years ago. To be fair, Germany and most of Europe would also come down on synthetic digital forms of racial hate, etc. So lets keep this in context, I don't see Slashdotters defending synthetic digital forms of hate (just use your imagination). Bottom line is if you are the sick pervert getting your kicks off of naked kids in any form you need to taken away from the rest of society (i.e. locked up, chained up, rubber room, etc). Wait until we see abuses of these laws where we see them being abused before we cry wolf.
The parent that sues first gets dibs... but it's usually the girls father of course :)
"Two children on a school yard today were found playing cops and robbers. During the exchange, the virtual officer was forced to use his side arm to halt the fleeing virtual robber. The robber has been charge will virtual theft under $5000 for stealing a virtual sum of money from a virtual bank, and the officer's use of virtual force is under investigation by Internal Virtual Affairs."
I hate the idea of child porn as much as everyone else, and think that the work on the distribution ring should be commended. Where does the line get drawn on role playing though? It sounds an awful lot like a witch hunt.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
IMHO, if you need to make a non-trivial effort to see something, it should not be considered public, even if it happens on public ground.
Well at least our SL players should have had enough sense to add a Bush avatar as a whitness to that hot sex scene, in order to get the real Bush in trouble.
yeah I am surprised by this sort of post. If you happened to live here as I do you would know how ridiculous the implied sentiment of your comment is.
South Germany is a rather quite place where people have rather liberal views about sex and sexuality, violence in media and games is considered unhealthy and child Pr0n is illegal.
Brothels and prostitution are perfectly legal, controlled by the same regulations that apply to all other industries. People aren't obsessed with sex, it is just treated as a normal element of human behaviour.
Nor do Germans have an interest in coprophagia as is often suggested, in fact the only two occassions I have ever heard this mentioned was by an English author (on German TV) much to the great insult of my German family and friends, who expected me to defend the fellow until I reminded them that I am of course Scottish and I course I heard it here today on slashdot.
Nor is Germany a dark rainy place full of people dressed in black clothes and clasping 1.5 litre glasses of beer (eine Mass) to their chests.
It is a nation comprising of a vast number of the various people whose parents were completely displaced during the war and relocated all over Germany.
South Germany is very tolerant society where, in general people of different races have the same access to education and employment My students are German, my family here is German, my friends are German and no, there isn't an excess of crimes against children compared to any other part of the West. When Justin Timberlake whipped off JJ's "wardrobe" during the Superbowl spectacular malfunction people were queuing up to ask me why the US was going so crazy.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
Pedophilia is not a crime.
What I find troubling is that people here are defending Child Porn, even virtual, on ANY level. Child Porn should be destroyed on EVERY level. It should not be defended, for any reason. Anyone who does so in my eyes is crazy. Let all Chi8ld Porn purveyors be slapped in cuffs and put away for life. It is what they deserve.
Here the correct URL: http://lb.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buergfrid-Aff%E4r
I know we have a "+1, Informative," but is there a "-1, Too Much Information"?
Theft of the U.S. Federal Government by the world's largest crime syndicate.
When will reality follow fiction?
Patriotically,
K. Trout, C.E.O.
We need to lock up Anthony Hopkins for the murders he committed virtually in "Silence of the Lambs". We also must mandate X-Box Live for everyone and monitoring software. That way you can play Grand Theft Auto, but if you shoot someone or run over someone in your car the police will be notified so they can come arrest you. Don't get me started on the housing code violations I found on my Aunt's low-rent Baltic Avenue slum last weekend... Whack-a-mole at Chucky Cheese? I say "Animal abuse!"
I say the punishment should fit the crime though, much like Grand Theft Auto has the police that come after you if you commit crimes. If you catch someone in Second Life having virtual sex with an under-aged-looking avatar, make them have a virtual trial and make their avatar sit in virtual jail. They can login whenever they want, but they can only move around in their cells and pray their cell-mate doesn't take a shining to them...
Oh wait, It's not illegal to have sex with someone that merely looks underage. Some women in their twenties still look like their 14. Do you want to explain to the dwarf with cancer why she can't have sex with her husband?
Is it having sex with a 6 year old girl?
... that's really bad too. And gambling. And I'm sure some would argue that women walking around outside without being escorted by men while wearing a burkha or worse, should result in stoning, so women aren't allowed either.
...
I would definately say so.
Is it having sex with a 16 year old girl?
I would say no (age of concent in Denmark is 15), but others would say yes.
Is it having sex with a 75 year old elf girl?
If you go by normal standards, 120 elf years roughly equates 18 human years, so I'd say yes.
Is it having sex with a 3 year old woman?
Depending on the species I'd say no if it was Kes from ST:Voyager, as she's obviously sexually mature (and played by a 30-year old woman in the series).
When dealing with regular humans, it's easy to tell.
When dealing with human characters, as others act out their feelings and reactions (as in Juliette, as someone pointed out above, who is only 13 years old), it becomes a bit more tricky.
How about furries? A skunk is sexually mature at 4-5 months(!) old, definately outside the range of 18 years, which many seem to think should be a solid mark for when it's no longer child pornography/exploitation. So, is a 2 year old skunk furry getting it on with a 6 year old Ocampan really child pornography/exploitation?
What kind of line can you possibly draw, that doesn't end up being completely fucked up in the first place?
And why settle for 18 years of age? Some countries have an age of concent of 21. And some outright outlaw prematital sex, so that's right out too. Oh, and killing
And on and on and on
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
-1, Flamebait? That's just pathetic.
Slashdot may be all about first amendment rights, but the mods sure know how to stick their fingers in their own ears.
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
Do they arrest people in Germany for the love scenes in Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet_ between two underage kids, but played by adults?
Nobody was arrested. They were banned from SL. Not quite the same thing.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I would even be so bold as to assert to the contrary, that such role-playing may in some cases act as a substitute for the real thing, therefore protecting real children from exploitation. I have no proof, but I daresay you haven't any for yours either, just the power of affixing the social stigma.
Most children are exploited by people they know, such as family, neighbors, and authority figures close to them (e.g., teachers or clergy). My advice to law enforcement everywhere is to stop the Internet witch-hunt and concentrate on working locally; if this were really about protecting children instead of exercising power, that is what would be done. Anyone who does so in my eyes is crazy. I don't know about that; my psychiatrist never saw any reason to have me carted off in either a straitjacket or handcuffs, and I think he knows me better than you do.
..showed no causal link. the study showed a correlation.
what i wanted to ask you further up the thread is: why is it necessarily bad thing that one group wanted shorter sentences? perhaps sentences are in fact too long, and the group exposed to pornography were more reasonable and compassionate?!?
my password really is 'stinkypants'
You've all fallen victim to Robin Linden's PR spin.
Come on people, get your shit straight before even THINKING about replying... there's a whole SLEW of DIFFERENT issues here. The only reason one applies to the other is because they got stuck in the same blog post.
Issues at hand:
1) Two adults banned for roleplay.
2) Legality of fictional (rendered, written, drawn) children engaged in sexual acts.
3) Jurisdiction of different governments within the virtual space.
4) Presence of Real child pornography.
These are mostly separate issues. The two that were banned in issue one were banned for their roleplay. Let's not get that confused with the issues.
It looks like two different groups are getting conflated here unless I'm not reading the article right. There's the adults doing age-play/virtual child porn and then there's another group trading actual child porn. The news investigation encountered both.
Okay. Actual kiddie porn is bad, because it involves exploiting real children. If they found real kiddie porn shown in SL, by all means, they should go after it. Virtual kiddie porn, however, is not at all the same. No children are being exploited!
What if they applied this logic to real life? For example, I'm 18, but look younger - say, 13 or 14. Does that mean that people shouldn't have sex with me until I look older, even though I'm legally old enough to consent to sex? I mean, if you're not even allowed to have imaginary sex with imaginary people who look like kids, why should it be allowed to have real sex with real people who look like kids? But the whole thing is just absurd...
IANAPBILA = I am not a psychologist but I like acronyms.
I just wanted to join in. Thanks.
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...and when we have all these pervs, lets go after anyone having a copy of Ghost Recon, Counter Strike and GTA. Heck, lets take anyone who played ever PacMan, that's cannibalism, dots eating dots.
Seriously. If anyone uses any medium to exchange any real underage porn then go after that. I saw a few articles where the german prosecutors where quoted saying its as illegal when it is virtual as when it is real. That is disturbing, as I'm about to start good old AoE3 and make sure I annihilate a few civilisations... and I'm not going to the international cout in the Haugue anytime soon.
-w
as subject.
What I find troubling is that people here are defending Child Porn, even virtual, on ANY level.
Throw your brain in the dryer, it's thoroughly washed! I'll defend virtual child porn on every level. If two adults want to roleplay in fantasy la-la land as giraffes, grandmas, or kids what the hell do I care? Why do you care? Do you support the surveillance of married couples' bedrooms to make sure they are not involved in ageplay? Do you honestly believe someone who draws a picture of two 16 year olds having sex should be thrown in prison for life?!?
Woohoo !
... Britney Spears.
Can we charge Britney Spears for encouraging child pornography too?
Then again, she did *kind of* look cute in the music video dressed up as an "underage" school girl, no ?
And I have to submit as AC, cause I don't want to be caught encouraging this kind of thing
Kids are pursuing German porn...
Why does a system designed primarily for 3D cyber sex have child avatars to begin with?
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
I guess two adults roleplaying in their bedrooms are similarly breaking the law. If a husband and his wife decide to indulge in sexual roleplay in their homes where perhaps she's a school girl and he a teacher or vice versa, then they can expect the German police to break their door down and arrest them for child pornography. This is ridiculous. Just when you think the world can't get any worse, punishing the majority because of the few criminals in our midst, it does. Next we will have people being jailed for years because of 'Virtual Rape', 'Virtual Murder' , 'Virtual Fraud','Virtual Robbery'. You think situations like this can only arise in doomsday Science Fiction novels. Seriously, someone should test the system by complaining that someone robbed them of a necklace in Second Life or 'unlawfully' killed them in World of Warcraft (griefing becomes a crime punishable with two months confinement *smirk*), they might actually be able to get the person locked up as though they had actually performed a crime in the real world. Would having a MMORPG which expressly bans people under 18 from playing solve these issues? Now won't that be just great?
-Gel214th
Re: thinkofthechildren, I think that a lot of these "protect children" laws are being passed because some parents these days are raising children when they are blatantly incapable of doing so. These laws are then being used to make up for a lack of parental ability.
:(){
What's your psych's phone number, I may have something interesting to tell 'em.
You should take him up on that threat. I think, after all, this guy needs the shrink more than you do.
Let me see if I get this str8.
Two consenting adults role-played, one supposedly as a child (that's definitely up for debate considering the character variations allowed in SL), and simulated pixelated sex in a game and LL is getting all fussy about it, considering that they have openly allowed it for how long? I'm no advocate for kiddie porn, but am I the only one that thinks this is a little beyond absurd?
Next we'll be banning Furry Pron and guns in video games. THE HORROR!!!
Oh NOES!!!
Mark my words, the amount of information they are requiring for age verification will be SL's downfall.
No I'm not an English teacher. Part of my family lives in Japan, I have gone to school there and worked in the software industry. Nice try at being a third leg. Your argument is also dead wrong. There are tons of horrible English teachers in Japan but its not the reason for the poor quality of written and spoken English in modernized East Asian countries. By the time most of them have even met a foreign instructor they have already established their habits from native Japanese teachers. The most obvious answer would be that its not their native language. Native English speakers are usually worse at Japanese. The Japanese language does not contain many sounds in the English language and the English language does not contain some of the sounds in the Japanese language. Its not so easy for everyone to make new sounds with your tongue when you are already in college. Their grammer is also vastly different. English tends to be more specific even when it doesn't need to be. The English phrase, "I'm going to the bathroom" could be as simple as "bathroom go" in casual Japanese speech. When you study a language there are many different levels of speech that are relevant to your study. I know quite a few Japanese students who understand English grammer better than most Americans, but if you say "Hey, how ya doin" they run for their electronic dictionaries. So a big motivation for selecting English teachers is to learn how to speak and understand the bad English that native English speakers use because they want to talk to real people and not some prick who only pretends to understand proper English. As a student I felt the same way. I just wanted to talk to a native speaker because proper Japanese speech that you learn in class does very little for a real life conversation.