Sky News, previously covered here, has 'discovered' Wonderland, a sim in which Ageplay is condoned at best, and encouraged at worst. A representative from the Kid Avs community has made this statement: "It's really upset alot of us as we've known about this place and its reputation for weeks, and no matter how much we AR linden lab or IM the Lindens ourselves, they don't seem to want to close it down. Now it's our Kid Av community that's going to get it in the neck. Its like, what was the point of starting up all those policy reviews about broadly offensive behaviour, then not doing anything when a real problem sim appears? Its very frustrating, all our hard work ignored."

Now, let's understand a few things here. According to the article, "Wonderland is a virtual children's playground where paedophiles cruise and kids are solicited," said Jason Farrell, a Sky News reporter who's reportedly been researching this for some time. Well, on the surface of it, there's no actual proof, once again, that these child avatars are being driven by actual children. It's likelier that these are adults roleplaying as children. Regardless, this is exactly the sort of 'broadly offensive' behavior that Linden Lab is famously against, yet nothing has been done about Wonderland, despite repeated entreaties over a period of weeks from the community of residents who roleplay nonsexual children. Of course, the mainstream press pick this up and run with it, making Linden Lab look bad, the child avatar community look bad, and all of us in Second Life look bad by tenuous association.

We've contacted Linden Lab for a statement, but received no response by the time we went to press. If/when we get a reply, we'll follow up. The way Sky News is pushing this right now, you can bet that none of us have heard the last of this.