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Second Life ‘child abuse’ claim

May 9th, 2007 (Visited 2805 times) Tags:

The BBC is reporting about a German police investigation into “virtual child pornography” in Second Life; in Germany, virtual depictions of underage sex acts are illegal. Linden Lab is, of course, co-operating.

Edit: There’s also this report on similar concerns in the Netherlands, and this one about virtual rape concerns in Belgium.

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35 Responses to “Second Life ‘child abuse’ claim”

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한RSS wrote on May 9th, 2007 at 8:18 am:

[...] of underage sex acts are illegal. Linden Lab is, of course, co-operating. 댓글달기 http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/05/09/second-life-child-abuse-claim/#comments A World’s Fair for VWs in SL? Raph 2007-05-09 02:07 작성 | Game talk There’s [...]

External News wrote on May 9th, 2007 at 8:22 am:

[...] Second Life ‘child abuse’ claim [...]

¥á¥¿¥Ð¡¼¥¹-metaverse information wrote on May 9th, 2007 at 4:35 pm:

(Feedster on: second life) 05/10 01:00 Business Musings: A picture is worth 1000 sales (Feedster on: secondlife) 05/10 00:49 Welcome to Myspace 2: Goodbye Anonymity (Feedster on: second life) 05/10 00:48 Second Life âchild abuseâ claim (Feedster on: second life) 05/10 00:46 Business Musings: âIâm not happy, and Iâm telling!â (Feedster on: secondlife) 05/10 00:37 Today¡Çs Annotated links (Feedster on: metaverse)

One for Second Life Players wrote on May 9th, 2007 at 6:43 pm:

[...] and article about child porn in Second Life.http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/05/09/second-life-child-abuse-claim/ Maybe its time they create virtual police, FBI and Interpol to deal with virtual [...]

Business and Games Blog wrote on May 11th, 2007 at 2:01 pm:

about the latest panic wave that hit Second Life. It took a large portion of my will to refrain from making any comments of any nature, but here’s a good observation from csven, picked up from the comments on this post: In the context of what’s on the net - real flesh and blood - the cartoon pron in Second Life is tame. That’s in no way is an endorsement or an excuse, but with slave trafficking and child prostitution at seemingly epidemic levels, some

Intelligent Artifice: Second Life: Europeans Outnumber Americans 3 to 1 wrote on May 12th, 2007 at 4:51 am:

[...] Hmm, European liberal attitudes toward sex - how odd to read this immediately after Raph’s post today: http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/05/09/second-life-child-abuse-claim/ [...]

Business and Games Blog wrote on May 15th, 2007 at 11:37 am:

Reader Comments

Amaranthar said on May 9th, 2007 at 8:25 am:
The same can and probably does go on in other games. Some games have characters who resemble children enough. And there’s enough raunchy stuff going on in games already. I hope those involved get nailed to the full extent of the law.
csven said on May 9th, 2007 at 8:43 am:
After catching an entry on Mashable regarding a couple of YouTube-type pron sites, I surfed over to get a sense of what was happening in the often cutting-edge world of pron.

One is - as expected - seemingly filled with clips from “professional” videos (kind of like how YouTube is filled with a lot of corporate content).

The other was, admittedly, a bit of a shock (and having traveled much of the world and seen some unpleasant things, I guarantee you I’m more prepared than most). It’s very international and includes videos from places that are much less tolerant than either the U.S. or Germany.

In the context of what’s on the net - real flesh and blood - the cartoon pron in Second Life is tame. That’s in no way is an endorsement or an excuse, but with slave trafficking and child prostitution at seemingly epidemic levels, some priorities need to be set. There are some serious and seriously disturbing things that demand everyone’s attention… and it’s not happening in SL.
csven said on May 9th, 2007 at 8:51 am:
To clarify, I’m referring to the virtual issue called out in this blog post (”virtual child pornography”). Not the part that involves trading real images inside SL (which can be done in many, many other ways; email/Skype/usenet/etc).
Rich Bryant said on May 9th, 2007 at 9:45 am:
But it is there and it’s not news. Something Awful highlighted it almost a year ago and they’re not the only ones either. They weren’t even the first. And yet, Linden seem content to take money from perverts. Hell, if they didn’t, their income would drop by several orders of magnitude since 95% of Second Life is bannable and censorable under any Western government.

I’m glad that Germany is leading the way on this one. Everyone else is all too happy to excuse it and make up pretty lies about some non-existant “metaverse” with a population greater than that of Scotland and a turnover equal to that of a Fortune 500 company. It’s about time somebody in the mainstream media noticed that a) the lies are only lies and b) what you actually get is strip clubs, slescorts.com, animal porn, “Age Play”/rampant paedophilia and a poorly disguised rip-off.
Michael Chui said on May 9th, 2007 at 11:32 am:
I don’t think the news is that there’s child porn. I think the news is the investigation. =P
Ordinal Malaprop said on May 9th, 2007 at 12:21 pm:
The issue of ageplay within SL certainly isn’t new, and for that matter isn’t unique to SL at all, though SL is the only graphical MMO that I know of with the customisation features to make it actually possible to record machinima of it. This is the first occasion where it has been linked to transmission of actual child porn by a major news organisation that I know of though (this has been picked up by the BBC, appeared in the print Guardian today and so on - I imagine in other countries too).

The latter link doesn’t surprise me terribly - while not all ageplayers are paedophiles, it seems reasonable that if you _are_ a paedophile in SL you will gravitate towards ageplay, and also likely be interested in acquiring or distributing child porn further to that, either through SL or through some other medium.

So it’s not news, but the publicity and legal issues and the reaction to them will be worth watching. LL seems to be acting sensibly by immediately saying “we will co-operate fully with the authorities to stop distribution of child porn” but given that the legal definitions differ internationally, and there’s PR outside of the legal element to handle….
Abalieno said on May 9th, 2007 at 3:03 pm:
Excuse me if I’m radical, but if virtual child pornography is a crime then why virtual murder isn’t?

Some coherence, please.
Amaranthar said on May 9th, 2007 at 6:36 pm:
Because one is child pornography and the other is acceptable competition in a game arena.
Abalieno said on May 9th, 2007 at 8:18 pm:
Quite arbitrary as a difference.

Let’s say that I have a wife and in the intimacy of our room I handcuff her to the bed because we find interesting that way. Would that make legitimate cops storming in the room and jail me for molestations and abuse?

If I understand what it means, “ageplay” is a consensual act between two adults. Making it illegal means making arbitrarily illegal something you can write or say simply because you don’t like it. And that is a direct attack to the freedom in the same way it’s unacceptable that you are persecuted because you have different political ideas that are considered potentially dangerous.

Freedom of speech, freedom of sexual preference, freedom of political ideas and expression. Hell, haven’t we learn anything?

What’s next? We burn books on the roads?
Ola Fosheim Grøstad said on May 9th, 2007 at 10:57 pm:
Abalieno, I think one reason is that computer graphics is getting photo-realistic, thus proving that a real child was abused might be too hard when trying to get criminals convicted. Another more applicable reason is the need to prevent pedophiles from getting attached to existing pedophile-networks which in turn creates a market for real child abuse.

Of course, the next step is to ban art…
Morgan Ramsay said on May 9th, 2007 at 11:46 pm:
Would someone please tell me when avatars were classified as legitimate human beings? This reminds me of what Stephen Colbert was talking about—some group trying to get a chimpanzee classified as human so it can receive donations…
Mikyo said on May 10th, 2007 at 3:42 am:
Child porn, words to conjure with. So controversial and provactive that they never fail to spin eyeballs toward anyone willing to use them. The more interesting word here is ‘jurisdiction.’ What will happen when Germans decide to try to prosecute someone who lives elsewhere? What if the local government where the accused lives will not co operate? Are we on the road to internet borders? Will there be a chinese/soviet style “Electronic Curtain?”
Rich Bryant said on May 10th, 2007 at 7:17 am:
> If I understand what it means, “ageplay” is a consensual act between two adults.

Neither of the participants can be certain of that. Furthermore, the representation on-screen is illegal in many countries because representations of children involved in sexual acts are illegal regardless of exactly how those images and representations are created.

Both participants are involved in creating images which involve the depiction of minors involved in sexual acts. And that, Signor Abalieno, is a crime in Italy and the UK as well as Germany.
Amaranthar said on May 10th, 2007 at 7:50 am:
And to expound on Rich’s comment, the reason it’s illegal is because it feeds a sickness that society doesn’t want fed.

Speaking of freedom, there is no such thing as complete freedom. Societies can’t exist with it. Laws inhibit freedom, for the good of the society, the people. So you can’t kill someone, you can’t steal, etc., and you can’t promote child abuse in any way in many societies.

As always, it’s easy to start getting sidetracked over a point like this. Game characters aren’t human’s as chimps aren’t, but what does that have to do with it? (I like Colbert, and I think he’d be the first to agree that what he does is commedy and if you want to hang a hat on what he does, well, that’s really funny.) Germany can find guilty people of other countries, standard stuff just as our country has warrants for the arrest of non-citizens outside our borders.
Brode said on May 10th, 2007 at 12:17 pm:
Hi all- first time post here for a long-time troller.

I’m a former cop, and have actually arrested a pedophile or two.
These guys are mentally ill and need to be treated as such.
However, I’m also an artist and take issue with sweeping moves
of censorship by the church/state… like fig leaves and book-burnings.

Of course this is a serious ethical & legal issue…
the kids do need to be protected from these predatory perp’s,
but I think we need to exercise some reason & wisdom here.

If the image in question is a real child, or portrays a real child,
and intent can be proven… that is a criminal act.
But if the image in question is a virtual representation, there is no real
victim for the state to represent in court.
Simply put: “If there’s no real victim, there’s no real crime”.

Of course, this requires us to clearly distinguish virtual reality from actual reality…
and the more sophisticated the artist’s illusion gets,
the more sophisticated the audience needs to be to tell the difference.

The US Supreme Court ruled on this some years back:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1933676.stm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Decency_Act
JuJutsu said on May 10th, 2007 at 12:37 pm:
There seems to be a discrepancy between one of Rich’s posts:
“Furthermore, the representation on-screen is illegal in many countries because representations of children involved in sexual acts are illegal regardless of exactly how those images and representations are created.”

And Brode’s post:
“If the image in question is a real child, or portrays a real child,
and intent can be proven… that is a criminal act.
But if the image in question is a virtual representation, there is no real
victim for the state to represent in court.
Simply put: “If there’s no real victim, there’s no real crime”.”

Can anyone clarify?
Rich Bryant said on May 10th, 2007 at 1:05 pm:
Difference between European and US law is all.

You guys have that damn’ silly Second Amendment thing which you bizarrely extend beyond speech and into visual media.
Ordinal Malaprop said on May 10th, 2007 at 1:31 pm:
I don’t believe that ageplay within SL is illegal under UK law at all. Please furnish me with the relevant acts and so on if I am mistaken there.
PastorVor said on May 10th, 2007 at 1:33 pm:
The hypocracy in the world never ceases to amaze me. The internet would not exist as it does without porn. I don’t think it’s a streach to say that porn is BY FAR the number one subject on the net.
‘But, don’t cross that one line… you know the one… the one that I just drew for you here.’
Age play is a crime? First off… in real life it would not be a crime so why in the world would it be a crime on the net. Second… It’s VIRTUAL. There’s nothing real. No sex act. No trading of bodily fluids… at the most you might have some lewd conversation. If one person is an adult and one person is not then you might have some kind of small crime… but, there is no way to know how old someone is. There is never any criminal intent. There is no criminal! How asinine is this?
Do we start arresting people in WoW for virtual rape when some greifer charges up to you and shoves a sword up your butt?
If I peek into someone’s SL window and I see them changing their Avatar outfit am I a “peeping Tom” deserving of jail time?
What if I put a large “virtual” mirror on the ground in SL so that whenever an avatar walks over it I can see what I’m not supposed to see? Are these crimes?
Back to the hypocracy of it all. You know, we live in a society which promotes the teen sex symbol day in and day out. Maybe we should take a look at society before we start locking up people playing sex games on a computer.
Brode said on May 10th, 2007 at 1:43 pm:
A little clarification…
The first amendment protects freedom of speech, press and religion.
It’s been interpreted to include other forms of expression that did not exist when the original framers wrote it… the internet being the latest example.
The second is actually about the right to keep and bear arms.

I think the issue in both court systems is that there needs to be an actual victim, not a virtual one. On the other hand- if there were an actual child controlling the avatar-victim, and it could be proven that the pedophile-predator knew this, then I think you’d have some kind of case. This is something different.

Media of real, actual, human children being criminally abused is actually evidence of a crime and should be used in court to prove such acts occurred.
Dealing in these types of media without reporting it to the appropriate authorities would be covering for, or profiting from, the perpetrator of the abuse.
JuJutsu said on May 10th, 2007 at 2:24 pm:
@Ordinal

A bit of googling and I came up with this…

The Child Protection Act
In 1988 the law was strengthened further by the Criminal Justice Act, which made the possession of indecentimages of children illegal. In 1994, in response to advances in computer technology, the law was further
strengthened by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which made illegal the creation, distribution and possession of ‘pseudo-photographs’ of children. A ‘pseudo-photograph’ must involve an image of an
actual child that has been doctored, such as a photograph depicting a child’s head on an adult’s body. Animated images are not covered by the Act as they did not involve the exploitation of an actual child in
their creation. However, the BBFC may still take issue with such images under the terms of the Video Recordings Act if it is felt that harm might arise from their distribution (eg by assisting paedophiles
in ‘grooming’ children or by stimulating a sexual interest in children).

Video Recordings Act
The act was amended in the Video Recordings Act 1993 but underwent no significant changes. It was amended again in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 to deal with the growing issue of “video violence”.
In addition, the amendment extended the definition of a video recording to any device capable of storing electronic data, which invariably includes works available on DVD as well as CD and CD-ROM, although the amendment exempts video games. The labelling regulations were amended in 1985.

Looks like the worst case is a labelling violation…
PJMRM said on May 10th, 2007 at 2:49 pm:
I wish western governments were more interested in REAL child exploitation than virtual child exploitation. Yes virtual child porn is sick and disgusting, but being someone who grew up in a US inner city, I have seen REAL children abused as prostitutes and legal agencies could care less about them.

This, no matter how sick and disgusting, is a free speech/freedom of thought issue. But sex tourism to 3′rd world countries or trips to the inner city are Child endangerment issues. I rather all European and US agencies focus on child exploitation and human trafficking, then some pervert getting a thrill off of pixels.

ALSO- Maybe countries that have huge sex tourism industries where children are victimized should have trade and travel sanctions against them? Oh wait I forgot, we are just interested in protecting pixels not children.

Virtual hypocrisy!
Rich Bryant said on May 10th, 2007 at 3:03 pm:
Sorry, we don’t have a formal constitution on the grounds that it would limit, rather than protect rights. What is not protected is forbidden, that kind of thing.

On the subject of UK law, the CJPOA 1994 introduced the concept of ‘pseudo-photographs’ of children. Pseudo-photographs are technically photographs, but they are created by computer software manipulating one or more pre-existing pictures. For example, a child’s face can be superimposed on an adult body, or to another child’s body, with the characteristics of the body altered to create pornographic computer generated images without the involvement of a real child. It is now an offence “for a person to take, or permit to be taken or to make, any indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs of a child; (or) to distribute or show such indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs” under section 1 of the 1978 Protection of Children Act.

Further European legislation has been enacted which does not stipulate portions of real children and i believe that an SL avatar would be covered by this legislation, and as such, would be prosecutable in the UK or any other member of the EU.
Ordinal Malaprop said on May 11th, 2007 at 1:42 am:
Hm, I’ve read a few people from other EU countries saying that this isn’t the case where they are either - I don’t think it is general EU legislation but, rather, Germany-specific. It is hard to prove a negative of course, but I’ve found several references to different EU countries with different legislation on it in the past, which would suggest that there isn’t any harmonisation.
Dotswarlock said on May 11th, 2007 at 5:01 am:
The one thing that bugs me is the way that the law is applied in certain countries as it seems to target certain media over others. If it’s on the internet or in a game then it’s bad but if it’s on a painting or part of a multi million industry then it’s ok. An example: cupid… yeah, I’m talking about Saint-Valentine. Try googling ‘cupid’ but while you’re at home (it’s not work safe) and you will find many pieces of art (I’m not being sarcastic, it’s really called art) that are just as offensive. Those types of arts however are sold in stores, galleries and poster shops everywhere and someone could placate the walls of his house with them. I’m not pushing for or against the law but merely pointing how misused it is.
JuJutsu said on May 11th, 2007 at 5:54 am:
@Rich

See above; apparently “Animated images are not covered by the Act as they did not involve the exploitation of an actual child in their creation.” AKAIK SL avatars don’t qualify as pseudo-photographs under the Child Protection Act or the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act unless someone uploaded a real picture and used it in creating a skin for an avatar. Is that possible in SL?
Ordinal Malaprop said on May 11th, 2007 at 2:14 pm:
@JuJutsu: it certainly isn’t possible to the degree that it would count as a pseudo-photograph - skins created to match RL photos are generally really, really scary and fall into “Uncanny Valley” territory, and the mesh on avatars is not amazingly detailed (and not directly customisable, only through sliders).
Abalieno said on May 11th, 2007 at 3:25 pm:
If one person is an adult and one person is not then you might have some kind of small crime… but, there is no way to know how old someone is.

About this argument, I doubt kids play Second Life. It’s not exactly that approachable.

I don’t know if there are cases where pedophiles use Second Life to trade child porn (which would be illegal), but I doubt kids are involved directly there.

And on one MAJOR italian newspaper now I’ve even read debating the real psychological consequences of a virtual rape. WHAT THE FUCK?!
Pro Fumo said on May 15th, 2007 at 5:44 am:
The US, perhaps home to more hysteria about paedophilia than any other nations bar the UK and Germany, sees child mortality rates higher than any other industrialized nation - suggesting that it is not children which their laws seek to protect (and how could they, images have no DNA), but rather the Mother Grundy attitudes of some adults. The banning of US Federal funding into investigations of the harm supposedly done by such images - or even such activities - after the furor caused by a peer-reviewed report that showed that consensual “underage” sexual interaction was much less harmful than generally imagined (and social intervention much more harmful), is another pointer to the protection being for precious illusions rather than children, as well as being indicative of a widely spread and therefore probably justified suspicion that many, many more people are engaging in such activities than is generally acknowledged (and the study alluded to above supports this perception as 80% of young women and 60% of young men surveyed, self-reported earlier illegal sexual contacts). As homophobia studies and lurid press reports about homophobic preachers caught in delicto have shown, those shouting loudest may well be those most engaged - or attracted to - such behaviours. Nonetheless, given the willingness to ban images of paedophilia (pedophilia would better describe foot fetishists), these laws being very recent enactments, as witnessed by e.g. that in most of the world it is possible for young people to marry, but if they photographed one another, the images would make them eligible for serious jail time in many jurisdictions; perhaps it is time to look at banning other images.

How about slavery? Slavery is, as far as I am aware, pretty much illegal everywhere. So perhaps it is time to turn our attention to images of slavery. After all, laws against slavery stretch back hundreds of years in most jurisdictions. Wherever one goes in virtual environments one can find avatars which appear to be slaves of one sort or another. There are even sims completely dedicated to the depiction of slave owning societies (and what sexual perversions they get up to is unfortunately not left to the imagination). Now it can be argued that this slavery is “voluntary”, or “just role playing” but if these arguments fail in the case of depiction of an under-age avatar (which is not even a human, never-mind a child) engaging in simulated-sex (which is not even sex), then such trifling objections to slavery should not be permitted to overturn the stomach wrenching images coming from simulated slavery in virtual life either. Even the argument that the men and women abasing themselves by adopting the role of slaves could choose not to; or derive some benefit from it, must fail in the light of the revulsion all civilized people should feel at the idea of slavery for fun. After all, the UK and Germany banned slavery long before they established modern ideas of arbitrarily defined late sexual maturity (children in Spain and Holland are legally competent to engage in sex at 12, while some US states wait till fourteen, although the US Federal Government wants 18, but in the UK the ages were 16 for girls or 18 for boys until very recently) - and even longer before laws against images or pictures (which are not real) of youthful sexuality (which is real) were drafted. While the US was a late starter in banning slavery, it was an even later starter in “age-of-consent” laws and its virulent war on images is even more recent. Or we wouldn’t have the ridiculous situation where you can legally phuck - but may not take photographs, or where you can buy printed books containing images similar to those that have seen parents locked up after a Walmart clerk noticed pictures of their child in the tub. Indeed, if these rules were rigorously applied across all media we probably wouldn’t have much of the works of Renaissance painters either, Michaelangelo included.

And now the residents of virtual worlds, untrained in any aspect of this complicated psycho-sexual-social and legal minefield, with varying norms and standards throughout a world where the US and Zimbabwe share the honor of refusing to adopt the Declaration on the Rights of Children, appoint themselves as arbiters of sexual practice, while ignoring the sordid spectacle of slavery sumptuously spattered across their screens.

For shame!