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Germans Pursuing Kiddie Porn In Second Life
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu May 10, 2007 01:05 PM
from the can't-do-that-here-either dept.
from the can't-do-that-here-either dept.
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.
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Wait, German porn viewers play SL? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wait, German porn viewers play SL? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Thought crimes? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Thought crimes? (Score:5, Interesting)
Pornography in Japan really doesn't have many limits except simply the censoring of genetalia. While fringe, there is easily available and obtained media of simulated rape, public exposure & sexual activity, sexualized streaking. In the fiction world there are lots of animated and printed works that very obviously depict additional rape, child sex (consentual and non), incest, disfiguring and nonconsentual S&M and human bondage. Hell, just look through Somethingawful's articles on hentai games and you'll see japanese interactive games that let you live out fantasies of banging your younger underage sister. And another one where you literally stalk and rape victims from a train.
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.
I don't know anyone sexually abused as a child, but I'd be willing to wager that if the abuse could have been prevented by the perp getting his jollies off with a few drawn pictures of his fantasy instead, they'd definitely go for it.
Parent
Re:Thought crimes? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Thought crimes? (Score:5, Informative)
IANAPBISPAU (I am not a psychologist but I studied psychology at university.) Pretty much all universities have their own ethics committee whose job it is to come up with very pedantic rules for how any experiments should be done so that no-one is hurt or distressed. Getting permission from these groups can be incredibly difficult and they will often hold up grad students' research for months.
Going another level up, the APA (American Psychology Association) is the dominant body with regard to psychology (around the world, not just in the USA). They have an ethics committee [apa.org] which set a best practice policy on what other ethics committees should think about.
While I agree that it would be nice to be able to study anything without having to worry about the ethics, the can lead to interesting, yet morally flawed experiments such as the Stanford Prison experiment [wikipedia.org] or the Milgram experiment [wikipedia.org], which were informative, but quite traumatic for participants. As a rule psychologists don't like to leave people more messed up than when they got them, so they tend to view overly cautious ethics committees as a necessary annoyance.
Parent
Re:Thought crimes? (Score:4, Interesting)
It can't be said whether this has any correlation to relief, or lack of, afforded by video games. It may be that grabby types don't play those games, or it may be that it encourages them. Germany, however, has traditionally employed censorship before (if ever) conducting research to substantiate it.
Parent
Japan and Denmark (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Parent
This may be controversial, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Pursuing Kiddie Porn (Score:4, Funny)
Morality Plays (Score:5, Insightful)
Do they arrest people in Germany for the love scenes in Shakespeare's _Romeo and Juliet_ between two underage kids, but played by adults?
Beyond logic (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Beyond logic (Score:4, Insightful)
you seem to forget that pedophiles are mentally disordered people. They get affected by what they see in different ways than you and me. You might compare that to an alcoholic seeing someone drinking at a bar vs. a non-alcoholic watching it.
Additionally, they are not sued for abusing children. They shared material showing child abusing. This also includes animated child abuse. US law isn't quite different at this point, or why would you think that nude games are rated only for adults? No real sex here too.
You're a nice example of what I'm talking about. Guess what: serial killers are also mentally disordered people.
What's with all the criminal murder investigation serials? We should be up to the neck full of serial killers by now.
You're trying to justify this non-sense by inventing reasons that don't exist.
They shared material showing child abusing.
The "child" was a 27 year old woman that clicked "OK" to participate in 3D figure animation in a virtual world. Where's the abused child? What if the "apparent child" was just an adult that looked like a child.. Oh wait, it WAS!
Let's ban midgets from having sex then. Especially if they look like "apparent children".
This also includes animated child abuse.
Think about it: if I doodle myself cutting a doodle representing you, in pieces, did I just commit an illegal depiction of a murder in cold blood? Do I have to be sent to jail or banned from somewhere because of it?
Which are depictions of "virtual" child porn are a sudden exception to all this? Do you even realize why?
We're just used to violence, we could watch hours and hours of movies with incredibly detailed and cruel murders, but most people are grossed out by child porn. So the natural reaction is to ban every possible depiction, because people are grossed out. Well, let me tell you: gross things aren't illegal, when noone is harmed, and there's no victim. They're just gross, that's all.
Maybe they should have disclaimers so kids don't see them, and should bear warnings, but they simply not illegal.
Another thing is, currently we're replicating Macartism in a way that demonstrates people don't learn from history at all. Are you afraid that if you support someone's freedom to *draw* child porn, someone could consider you're a pedophile?
Isn't this a big part of why people react so violently against all this. If we don't, we're "one of them" right?
Let me tell you: no, you're not. The gap between thinking or drawing a crime, and committing the crime is huge, don't let the current situation fool you that they're the same.
Parent
Coming up next (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Time out, Slashdot, and RTFA (Score:4, Informative)
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.
ERROR IN reprod(m,f) (Score:5, Funny)
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
Re:Anyone surprised it began in Germany? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Anyone surprised it began in Germany? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
RTFA (Score:3, Informative)
Members of this group also offered to put him in touch with traders of real child pornography.
Re:Anyone surprised it began in Germany? (Score:4, Insightful)
The police need to get out of our sex lives. Linden labs isn't fooling anyone, Secondlife is for virtual sex...
Parent
Re:Anyone surprised it began in Germany? (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Parent
Re:Counterstrike? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
The study (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Counterstrike? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Aren't they both consenting adults? (Score:5, Informative)
In Germany photographs/videos of adults who look like children performing sexual activities are considered child porn.
Don't know about other countries.
Parent