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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.
what part of "trading real-world child porn in SL" is a thought crime?
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.
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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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?
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Thoughtcrime indeed, 2 adults rollplaying is legal, rollplaying online isn't, its still 2 consenting adults.
The police need to get out of our sex lives. Linden labs isn't fooling anyone, Secondlife is for virtual sex...
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.
The part that referred to "trading in virtual child pornography is punishable by up to three years"?
I'm as horrified as anyone by real child abuse and pornography, but virtual one? Age-play? That's just dumb. If anything, it might be possible to identify whether the people acting out their fantasies have either engaged in real child abuse or have been victims of it. But to criminalize virtual role-playing is indeed a complete thought crime.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I have no problem with anything two consenting adults (or their SL avatars) do with each other. That is covered by the whole 'government should stay out of our bedrooms' thing.
The entirety of the problem lies in the fact that RL child pornography was being displayed and/or sold to other people via Second Life. When this occurs it is a crime. The fact it is happening in SL doesnt mean it is any different from someone selling them on a web page.
Honestly? I'm not suprised it is happening in SL. Considering it is a place where you go to fulfill your fantasies in a virtual life (IE. house, car, good looking outfits, seems some sickos added kiddie porn to that list).
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
And yet, Japan enjoys the lowest rates of sex crimes of all 1st world countries. I'd say the ability for an individual to safely vicariously explore deeper and more sinister fictional sexual practices (as defined by society-at-large) definitely prevents a significant number of real crimes with real victims.
While certainly a valid point, I think this is hardly definitive. Like the gun-control debate, comparing crime statistics across nations is notoriously prone to confirmation bias. There are too many legal, cultural, economic, and social differences to really compare results in one nation with results in another. I do know, for example, that many people feel sexism is rife in Japan and that women are objectified to a much greater degree than in the US. Compared with other studies about porn, this would strengthen the old idea that porn leads to desensitization and objectification of women. The actual incidence of violent sexual crime, however, could very well not show an easily observable statistical change.
This is precisely how the connection between smoking and cancer was combated for so many years. The incidence of cancer is so low that it's easy to construct studies which reflect no statistical increase. It's similar to the lag in acceptance of global warming.
What we do know, however, is that pornography's impact on those who view it is considered so detrimental that you can't get randomized, control-group studies approved and that those studies which were randomized and controlled (and led to the conclusion that it was too detrimental to ethically get people to watch porn) found statistically significant connections between exposure to porn and a lower support of women's rights, a declining importance of marriage, and laxer attitude towards rape punishment.
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
Trading digital images of real naked children is a real crime. You have to exploit children to make such pictures, so trading (and making) them *should* be illegal, investigated, and prosecuted.
Making a polygonal mesh resemble a naked young child is not a real crime. No children were exploited, and hence no harm was done. That *should not* be illegal, though Linden is perfectly within its rights to set a terms of use policy against that (or against wearing blue shirts or speaking spanish, for that matter) since they own the servers.
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.
I'm glad to hear from someone who has seen this stuff first hand. I also believe that the people engaging in this kind of stuff are probably pedophiles themselves. But I think that the best way to deal with them is to leave them alone in the virtual world, where they are out in the open, and no one gets hurt. Then anyone can keep an eye on them, get their info, and do a cross check on what they're doing in their first life. If someone's an actual pedophile - bam, slammer for you.
To some extent, this is like people advertising that they're pedophiles. It makes it that much easier to figure out if they really are pedophiles, and to deal with them for what they've done in real life. Making this stuff illegal just makes it harder to track these people.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
The whole argument, Virtual pedophilia leads Real world pedophilia is fodder for moral legislation.
Seriously, do you buy that argument? Thats the same argument they use for war on drugs, war on terror..
I would like to state that, in the US very few people wuold complain abut nipples at all.
Janet Jackson had , what was it, a thousand complaints? big whoop. The fact that it was the most re-watched piece of video in TiVos history indicats that Americans would LIKE to see more nipples.
I sure would, and I thin it would go a long way to removing this breast fixation we have.
A breast fixation I share...mmm breasts. But quite frankly I would like my chioldren to grow up without that baggage.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
There's one example of real world evidence I know of: Japan.
There's a bigger one: the U.S. And probably most of Europe.
The Internet has made porn available fairly freely and discreetly where it wasn't available before. Name your perversion: a quick google search will turn up lots of hits. And any Geek Squad member or other computer repair person knows that a great number of people, who never would have read anything more extreme than Playboy before, have porn collections and pretty bizarre stuff.
Have we suddenly reduced sentences on rape since the birth of Netscape and broadband? Hardly. The original poster refers to a survey made during Ed Meese's crusade against porn. Funny that in the last 23 years apparently nothing has come out that supports it. But I guess the Mormons (like him/her) still try to hype it.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
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.
"But with all due respect, that is predicated on the rather naive assumption that people will keep these predatorial fantasies locked within the rather unsatisfying realm of virtual reality."
No, it is predicated on the assumption that people are innocent until proven guilty, and that thought crimes are an Orwellian horror.
I'm alternately amused and horrified by how easily people are willing to throw others in jail without due process and clamp down on free speech that they disagree with.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
It's nobody's business what fantasies people have, and it's nobody's business who sleeps with who, but it is everyone's business when someone becomes a danger - especially to children.
Back in the day, men took wives who were, what, 14-16? Where was the OMGKIDDIEPORN crowd then?
Besides that, have you walked around an American mall lately? It makes me sick at times. 12-16 year olds sluttin' it up. I see a girl walking along, and she's in some pretty hot clothes, and then I get within range to determine that she's way too young, and I start to gag. It's amazing how overtly sexual these young girls are. And they know it, too.
The fact that clothes like that are made in sizes for children of that age should be illegal, too, shouldn't it? After all, a mall is a pedophile's ideal hunting ground - look at all that underage skin the girls so willingly show.
This means restricting certain behaviors, preferably by way of cultural norms, but if necessary, by legislation.
Be careful. Some people think you should legislate certain behaviors, like violent video games. That's a pretty slippery slope you're on there.
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How about we stop trying to criminalize thought and let the police focus their limited resources on actual crimes?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Back in the day, men took wives who were, what, 14-16? Where was the OMGKIDDIEPORN crowd then? Back then, children were property of their father.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Well, I'd be lying to deny any sort of attraction, but attraction is not a simple thing. It comes in many shapes and sizes.
However, while I agree with the vast majority of your points, I feel the need to point out that there is a VERY large difference between attraction to "not-quite-18/barely 18" and pedophilia. Biologically speaking, as soon as someone enters puberty, attraction starts. Society teaches us that we are not to start having sex at this point due to biological/sociological complications, but it is still going against our nature. Pedophilia is attraction to pre-pubescent, which is not in our nature, at least in a sexual sense. (Please note, when I say "not natural," I mean it's not built into humanity as a whole, or on a large scale." Fetishes are in an individual's nature, but not programmed into any one group)
Yes, "virtual porn" is the road to madness.
There is a precedent in porn midgets in school girl uniforms. On a similar note, an exasperated judge in our metro a couple years ago dismissed a case and read the prosecution the riot act, "No, he does _not_ have to prove that the girls in his porn _were_ adults. YOU have to prove they were _not_."
I trace "thought crime porn" to the late Andrea Dworkin -- of the fat and ugly lesbian manhating branch of feminism. One of our metro cities called her in some years ago to try to pass a law stating that if a person reacts to it as porn, it's porn. In other words, if somebody said he was provoked to become a rapist by the uncontrollable lust the Victoria Secret web site generated in him, then the Victoria Secret web site is porn.
Such people should pick up a book on the philosophy of art. The "intentional fallacy" has been perhaps the most discussed concept in the field for decades. Nobody can be held responsible for the reaction something provokes in someone else and to think the link can be proved demonstrates some "interesting" faith in metaphysics.