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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.
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.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
And who isn't pursuing kidde porn in Second Life or, for that matter, in the first one?
Oh crap.. No wonder they ask so many questions. I gotta go cancel my account.
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.
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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make install -not war
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.
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.
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
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).
fair enough ... I'll admit I didn't read the article. Just wanted to make sure the distinction was made that the trading of real-life kiddie porn shouldn't be defended. The virtual stuff ... well, I'm not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, it's "thoughtcrimey" ... on the other, I'll go ahead and draw a line in the sand to assert that it's sick. I'll stop just short of passing judgment and suggesting a resolution to the issue.
The way I understand it, the two users were not banned from SL for their avatar hanky panky but for being involved in the exchanges that others have pointed out - things that have a real correlation to real child exploitation. As for the question of whether or not expressing these urges helps control them: I don't believe there's much statistical data, but it seems logical that having a virtual outlet might be an option for some (probably not all) pedophiles. Others might find this stimulating in such a way that it encourages them to act out the fantasy. Who knows? There haven't been many studies done. Still, this incident occurred in a public enough online space that the investigators were able to capture it. If they were able to find and see it, others would be as well. It may be a virtual act between consenting adults, but SL is full of underage people. If people want to engage in graphic virtual sex, they need to do so in a forum that is adults-only, for the same reason that real consenting adult sex is not legal in public.
A Sherman can give you a very nice...edge.
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.
...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...
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
because it's slashdot and I can :-P
In other words, it's a game with too much hype.
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..
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.
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
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
Members of this group also offered to put him in touch with traders of real child pornography.
The investigation also uncovered so called "age play" groups that revolve around the abuse of virtual children. So, it looks like there were three issues:
That last one is nonsense, and the first is shaky but maybe defensible as a crime (only because you have no way of even trying to confirm the age of the participants in the first case). I can't imagine any court in the developed world saying that that's any more illegal than an adult putting on a sailor moon costume before jumping in the sack with another adult. As long as the people involved are aware that the other people involved are not REALLY children, there's no harm being done. Harmless kink is harmless kink.
Whoops. I meant to say that it was a highly "restricted" area, because it had a ton of rules about what you could place or what you could create. It had a lot of false walls on the outside, but it was easy enough to enter. In any case, my latter comment was directed towards sexually explicit material in general, not any particular ageplay club. You *can* merely meander through Second Life and be accosted by obscenity.
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.
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
I know we have a "+1, Informative," but is there a "-1, Too Much Information"?
Who knows where the psychological line is with these things?
I say that drawing a psychological line is the wrong approach. Punish real world transgressions, not thought-crimes.
As for the little girls "sluttin' it up" in the local mall, yeah, I notice that. Makes me sick too, but I don't blame the kids. It's really the parents and the media. More the parents, because they ultimately have the greatest degree of influence on their children
Yeah, but if the parents start saying "You can't wear that!", then little Jane is just going to wear acceptable clothing overtop of her skank clothes, and then once she's outside of daddy's watchful eye, she strips down to the near-nude. Punishing the behavior you don't find acceptable is not a good way to prevent that behavior.
I've heard all the horror stories about the preacher's daughter going bonkers once she realizes she's old enough to do what she wants, and wanting to try everything dear old dad said was "evil" while she was growing up
Exactly! In our world, that's what most parents think being a good parent is - ruling your child's life with an iron fist. This usually inspires resentment and rebellion.
I know one girl whose mother will not let her do the things that she (the mom) wouldn't do. Things like going to an anime convention. All this does is make the daughter resent the mother; I'm pretty sure once she's old enough to move out, she'll be gone, and the mother will hardly ever hear a word from her daughter. That's the bed mom made, though; now she's gotta sleep in it.
Does refusing to ignore such behavior mean making it illegal? Maybe not, but I can't think of any reasonable alternatives yet.
Even if you make this sort of behavior illegal, it's not going to protect everyone. People will continue to be perverted. If you can't stop the problem entirely, then I see no point in punishing people for victimless crimes.
Some people say drugs should be illegal because they lead to crimes (theft, etc), even though taking a drug harms only the user. But the crimes they commit are already illegal; they should be punished under those laws for crimes they did commit, and not because they might loot, rape, or pillage.
:(){
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
But there is a fine, fine line between having the desire to do something and actually doing it.
...
... When you look at the sum of male sexual desire, you get a picture of someone young. The neon signs blink "GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS!", not "Women Women Women," and they're pink, not red. The porn sites read "barely 18." It's extremely common.
Why not a gaping gulf? It may feel like a fine line in our minds, but at least some of us have sturdier systems of thought in our head.
So, even if I don't LIKE it, I tolerate such material.
Are you sure it's a simple like-dislike? Perhaps you're attracted, but resist or reject the attraction?
The more I study art- not just the drawing of lines, but how psychological and physical features are composed to make a character that people like and such- the more I realize how the basic features of attraction to many female character types are near exactly identical to attraction to children.
From another angle, look at our vocabulary-- "Chicks," "Babes," "Cuties,"
Then back to the drawings: Smooth, with full hair, breasts and clearly fertile;
There have been many studies done on "which picture do males find more attractive?" The result was finding that males are attracted to 13 year old females.
I remember reading the comments attached; One woman said, "Men, I hope you're ashamed of yourselves!" What is interesting is that the social norm is that we are supposed to suppress this fact, and to even avoid (or even outright deny) thinking of it as a fact, because it is a shameful fact.
Look at the way anime is drawn. Slick, shiny, flat shading, big eyes, glossy, curvy, and so on. It keys right into the sexual circuitry. To deny that we are attracted to these features, is just that: denial, either conscious or otherwise, but denial none-the-less. Reject it if you must, but I think it's better (safer, for you and others,) to know the truth about yourself, and then reject it, rather than to pretend like it's not there, and reject it. There's no question in my mind which of the two is more likely to lead to bad real-life behavior.
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.