German Authorities Search for Child Pornographer

Posted May 9th 2007 1:59AM by Akela Talamasca
Filed under: News

German Authorities in the Central Office against Child Pornography have been alerted to a resident who has been trafficking in images of child pornography, and soliciting sex with residents in child avatars. While this isn't a crime in America, such activity is punishable in Germany by prison time up to five years. Currently, the identity of the pornographer is unknown.

A couple of things about this story: First, although LL's servers reside on American soil, clearly LL will defer to German law in this case, as it probably should. However, in cases of less clear jurisdiction, it will be interesting to see how LL adjudicates these decisions.

Second, the article states that "Bestiality, or sex with animals, is becoming increasingly popular on the site ... " I suspect that they're speaking of Furries in this case, in which case the concept of Bestiality only vaguely applies. It's not difficult to imagine any sort of activity taking place in SL, limited only to the imagination and skill of its residents, but we need to clamp down on such bold statements if we want the reputation of SL to remain above-board. There are already enough examples of sensational press out there; let's not add to it.

(Via buzzle.com)

Tags: bestiality, child pornography, furries, germany, prison, second life, SecondLife

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Reader Comments

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1. Forgive me, but your post seems a little complacent. You seem more concerned about managing Second Life's public image than addressing any problems there might be.

To me this raises a fascinating dillema. Should Second Life be regulated like the real world? Obviously sex with children is wrong and illegal. But sex with an adult pretending to be a child? Sex with an adult prentending to be an animal? Sex with an adult pretending to be a dragon?

Where does the line get drawn? And by who?

Posted at 5:44AM on May 10th 2007 by Nick Reynolds (BBC)

2. The BBC article I read said that (allegedly) real child pornography had been displayed in-world and that offers were made to put someone in touch with real world child pornographers. Those things are definitely illegal in the United States. I suspect that some pedophiles made themselves conspicuous in SL through "age play", and that it wasn't the "age play" that the authorities were focused on.

Still, societies will have to decide where to draw the line. Should children be sexualized in any format? How is this handled legally when it comes to painting or drawing, and is VR different than those things?

Posted at 7:54AM on May 9th 2007 by Cadroe Murphy

3. We are back to the Age Verification. This would at least eliminate the possibility of children being in mature grid SL for wrong reasons

Posted at 9:30AM on May 9th 2007 by Dagger Tir

4. This has nothing to do with age verification. Even if there was an impossibly high, absolute ban on minors entering SL, this scenario would still have occurred. The german article stated two things. One, that there was an avatar basically saying that for 10L for ten minutes you can rape a nine year old. Disturbed, but its not like a real world child prostitute due to the typist probably not being nine.

but two real issues. The first is the uploading of textures that feature real child pornography. That is a crime and one that can be traced back to the Lindens. They are the ones storing the data and allowing for the data to be shared. They would have to establish themselves as an ISP and not able to control what textures are uploaded, even though they are paid to upload those images. The second issue, was whether the resident in question was German. I re-read the BBC article and it did say that a German was involved in virtual child pornography, so the jurisdiction rules apply for him. The Avastar did not state that the resident distributing the images was German, so it looked like it was a resident, of any country, doing this.

Posted at 7:18PM on May 9th 2007 by Jessica Holyoke