1. isntead of bannign inocent peopel that just liek to dress up and play pretend, they shoudl sue those peopel that distort the reality , viiolate the tos, and make them look bad (well, make htem look worse than they already look)

Posted at 7:01PM on May 11th 2007 by TigroSpottystripes Katsu

2. In some countries they could easily go to court for this! Tis is the media manipulation of the worst kind. TRhe question which is left to lindens is why it happened. Is it just a nice story to sell the news, is it bad public relations from the side of LL or what?

Posted at 7:01PM on May 11th 2007 by dandellion Kimban

3. Although they did appear to leave out some details, like the fact that the couple in this case were both adults, the argument is still the same: is cgi depicting sex with minors good or bad? Obviously, many of you are SOMEHOW torn on the issue and think that people can do whatever they want as long as it's not hurting someone. The news story does get it right in the idea that it is not a good idea for virtual child pornography to be spread around like it is.
It is certainly not encouraging to think about what is going on behind the guy who is having sex with the virtual child, is it? I mean, really, you're defending people who are interested in having sex with children, plain and simple. What other reason could there be, that they want to have sex with the person behind the AV and the AV they're currently inhabiting happens to be a child? Unfuckinglikely. They want to have sex with children, and are doing it virtually because they're afraid of RL consequences. That is undefendable. It doesn't matter if there is actually an adult behind the child AV. The real issue is that the other AV is interested in seeing that, virtual yes, and probably in real life too, because that's the natural extension of it. Sick people. I'm sorry if you disagree, but it's unacceptable, and you guys (and gals) that are defending these actions have some issues to work out.
I'm also surprised to see dandelion defending this action when she was so offended about being "raped" by someone in SL. That's just weird.
WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE? Are you so infatuated with SL that you can't see why this is a problem? There ARE bad people on SL. I hope that LL takes a proactive stance on this ASAP.

Posted at 7:45PM on May 11th 2007 by rp

4. rp, does the end always justify the means?

The news article suggests that SL readily and easily shows everyone RL kiddy porn. I am not, in any way shape or form condoning paedophilia, or images of paedophilia when I say it makes me wonder about the rest of the report. I, we, all KNOW that this part of the report is just incorrect.

So, we have one demonstrable "sexing up of the story" to sensationalise it. Perhaps we should start wondering what else they're doing, what other short cuts did they take? Did the journalist upload the images himself to make the story even hotter? I'm sure you can find paedophile images in SL if you look hard enough, but given it's illegal in many places, would you just hand it over to a stranger? Do you think this person looked hard?

I've never tried to look for paedophilia, but in almost three years I've never seen any either. It's not just around every corner which is strongly what this suggests.

Acting to crack down on the people that break the laws about paedophilia, absolutely, more power to LL. Smearing SL as overrun by paedophiles, sloppy, lazy journalism deserves to be pointed out as such.

Posted at 10:57PM on May 11th 2007 by Eloise Pasteur

5. "RH: I hope that whoever found these images gives us more information about them. We will find out who is behind this and then inform the police."

I think Eloise Pasteur has a hell of a point about the images of real children. As per the quote above, and blog posts on the official Second Life Blog, LL hasn't been able to track down these images.

And why not? All they need is a UUID to track down what account uploaded them, and then through that the IP address of the uploader, etc. So why haven't these German reporters so much as told Linden Labs the name of the avatar they received these images from? Wouldn't that be enough to track them down?

Something's not right here

Posted at 11:51PM on May 11th 2007 by Ryozu Kojima

6. While I've always felt uncomfortable giving a sexual outlet to the male avatar in this case, feeling that it might promote pedophilia in RL, I've always wondered about the rights of the female avatar in this case. Is there something disturbed about her? Is there something "sick" as some people say? What about her rights to expression? Its not like she can violate the law by being abused at her own desire.

And there's a legal difference between visual depictions in an artistic/pixelated sense of child sexual acts and pseudo-photographs that are indistinguishable from real children being abused.

Also, one thing to keep in mind, the German reporters found pictures of real children being abused, not solely pixelated approximations.

Posted at 7:09AM on May 12th 2007 by Jessica Holyoke

7. I think we're in danger of missing the point here. We can pull the report apart for it's misunderstanding of some basics around SL "OMG, don't these fools realise they were both adults? They think a 13 y.o. looking avatar *must* be a kid. Well, duh!" but we could say that about *any* mainstream media reporting of SL. They always get some of the details wrong. We shouldn't get hung up on outsiders not being utterly familiar with every aspect of SL and dismiss their views when they don't completely 'get it'.

This news report should make us all sit up and pay attention to what's going on here. LL has, inadvertently, turned SL into a haven for paedophiles. Combine anonymous and easy registration with the creative freedom of SL and you allow anyone to 'realise their dreams'; problem is, some people have pretty sick dreams - they like to fantasise about raping children and SL gives them the opportunity to enact these fantasies in a virtual space. What's more, they can upload RL porn and then share it with others who have the same interests. That's incredibly dangerous for the safety of children. It's acting this stuff out, sharing fantasies with other paedophiles and the sharing of RL child porn that makes paedophiles more likely to enact their fantasies in the real world, on real children. That's part of the reason for laws prohibiting distribution of RL child porn (and simulated child porn in some jurisdictions). The main reason, of course, is that RL child porn involves a disgusting crime perpetrated against a child in order to be produced. But the effect of its distribution is also important. It allows paedophiles to delude themselves that their desires are 'normal' and provides a justification for acting out their sick fantasies on real kids. That's why ageplay is so dangerous inside SL. It is not harmless. It's sick and wrong and it should be condemned.

Are we surprised to find that people engaged in ageplay in SL are also distributing RL child porn among themselves? Surely that gives the lie to the idea that ageplay is 'harmless, role-playing among consenting adults'. It's training for the real thing. That's what needs to be condemned, not the German televison programme. They did what investigative journalists are supposed to do, they uncovered something foul and brought it to the world's attention. That's helpful, that's good.

Posted at 7:35AM on May 12th 2007 by Patroklus Murakami

8. I would take the civil libertarian view point on this. Excluding the real life pictures because of the real childen harmed, a point I feel I need to emphasize, when you start saying that one person's thought processes need to be condemned, and not their actions, where does it stop? In the US, prostitution is condemened as illegal and immoral, should the escorts in SL be removed because they are sick for doing this? In the UK, extreme bondage is considered illegal, should all the dungeons in SL close down because of their treatment of people? In arab countries, the clothing that most women wear in SL would be considered immoral, should all the fashion designers be removed?

I believe that the cause and affect of normalizing pedophilia is more unknown. After all, its not like pedophilia was created with the internet age.

Posted at 8:52AM on May 12th 2007 by Jessica Holyoke

9. "I believe that the cause and affect of normalizing pedophilia is more unknown."

It certainly is, and what more, it probably will remain that way as research is so taboo that no one ever does any.

What little research that has been done is usually written off as inaccurate and biased. IE: Kinsey Report

Posted at 2:03PM on May 12th 2007 by Ryozu Kojima

10. pardon me, but I just noticed that some of the footage in the report required the reporter to be taking part in the child rape scene. I could be wrong, but the camera is moving with the animation in one scene.. only can be from the camera being part of the animated avitar.. Look for yourself at the youtube link. Thanks to the translator.

Posted at 12:00AM on May 13th 2007 by Unmitigated Gall

11. One wonders, why the TV show isn't prosecuted for trafficking in child porn too. They took that laptop - on a plane - into the USA - into LL's offices - from Germany.

That, as far as I know, is very much against US law, and I've read stories of reporters going to jail for taking the law into their own hands (so they said) before... because its irresponsible reporting like this that ruins a court case before it ever gets to trial. letting the bad guys free to abuse again.

Posted at 5:52PM on May 13th 2007 by Hypatia Callisto

12. Patroclus:

"LL has, inadvertently, turned SL into a haven for paedophiles. Combine anonymous and easy registration with the creative freedom of SL and you allow anyone to 'realise their dreams'"

I call BS. Child abusers are everywhere. They could even be your neighbor and you not know it. SL is no more a haven for pedophiles than any other online service ever has been, graphical or not.

By your logic, you might as well close down all the services on the net which allow open registration. Yahoo, AIM, MySpace, to name a few. These places, with their large teen userbases, are way more of a draw for actual child abusers than SL's main grid - I've yet to hear of a real kid who was caught on the main grid actually using a child av. These child av users are all adults. Yeah, I think it's sick but there's no victim there. I'll grant you - its obscene. And that's what obscenity laws are for - and they cover the issue quite well.

Actually, Yahoo was used to find a 14 year old girl who was kidnapped and sexually abused, saved by a reporter on Perverted Justice, because she managed to log in Yahoo on her account from where she had been kidnapped, and was subsequently tracked down by the reporter. And it had a HAPPY ending - the girl recovered alive, which usually doesn't happen in child kidnapping cases. So au contraire, about open registration.

The truth is - you're not that anonymous on the Internet. You use any services like Yahoo, AIM, SL, etc, you can be reliably tracked down by law enforcement. With no age verification at all!

Posted at 6:17PM on May 13th 2007 by Hypatia Callisto