Sky News has a go at SL

http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,30000-1290764,00.html

Seems SkyNews are having a go at SL now too...by looking for places where you can pretend to abuse children!

I do hope they were good residents and reported this to the Lindens.

I've just read the written report and it says in that he did report it.

/me sighs, "This must be this week's thread."

An actually, I know many kids who have pushed *for months* for SL to do someting about the place mentioned in the video.

The ting dat bugs me is dat SL has this policy they won't put anywhere but their blog (an only under diress did they do dat), they're told *repeatedly* about a place dat violates this policy an do not act against it, an then when it hits the media... then me an the kids who don't do any of that get to deal with the fallout.

Nevermind the "reporting."

Mari

That was most disturbing. I am more concerned by the free access to SL by children though. Hopefully the investigators will sign up and pretend to actually be minors to see just how far some of these would be pedophiles will go.

Good Point.

That would actually be more valuable.

A friend of my Mistress does something simlar, though not about pedophiles.. he's a Master (Not gorean I don't think) and is part of a school in SL for the BDSM Lifestyle. There have been a few cases of people stalking the students, even one of his girls, in RL, and just recently he physically went to Australia (From US) To have one of the stalkers arrested.. He's behind bars now ^^

Watched the report

Some things brought up in the video-

Claims of 9 million users.

Claims that there is no provision to keep adult content from children.

No mention of the fact that Sexual Age Play is officially banned in SL.

Claims that Virtual Sexual Age Play not only can, but has led to real life child sexual abuse "Time and Time again."

A Linden saying that they do not police content - if someone is breaking the law that person should be investigated (implying by authorities not by LL)

Mari, I'm so sorry that this sort of thing casts a shadow on the carefree world of children in SL. I think that it is important that you feel safe in SL just like children should feel and be safe in RL.

Where did you find the written report? It might be my work machine messing up the page but I can't find a way to read the article, only view the video (which I saw while I was down at the gym and thought I'd post about it).

I take it this is the main SL and not the Teen SL?

Are children really using the main grid?

If so..... Ban all "no payment info" AV's

Simple

The report was dealing with child avatars, not actual children.

I must admit, I was rather surprised by the fact that apparantly, a child avatar offered to torture _the reporter_, and they considered this might cause him to abuse real children? If so, they'll have to pull Hard Candy from the shelves quite quickly..

So... people who just want to check out SL without worrying that it might just take their money (It could!!) wouldn't be allowed? Thats crazy talk. We'd have far less people join every day... and.. and.. wait.. thats not _all_ bad...

You are, of course, assuming that the people at Wonderland are really minors. Why, I'll be there at least my RL age. Not excusing anything that might go on there, but jes noting that the issue of real kids being victimized with SL may not have anyting to do with dat place.



Ya. It was... baffling.



All good points. Frankly, it's yellow journalism at it's best. Who are these experts? Did Sky already know what they wanted to write about, then created the cirumstances? Where is the counterpoint to all this? Why so much misrepresentation an shoddy reporting.

Oh wait, it sells.

Meanwhile, here's a good version of this article, courtesy of Second Life Insider:
http://www.secondlifeinsider.com/2007/10/30/virtual-ageplay-still-too-real/#comments



Thankoo.

I went to their offices, but no one was there to comment on the story.



Mari

Excellent! A good pedophile scare always drives the sign-up numbers higher.

I sometimes wonder if LL doesn't let a few sexual ageplay locations continue to exist just so they can depend on the semi-regular "PERVERTS IN SL!" news stories for publicity.

Sorry Mari, you misunderstood my post. I wasn't implying that any real children were at the place in question. I was saying that it would be a more effective tactic for the investigators to pose as RL children in SL to catch and weed out potential molestors. It would also be a good test to see how long they last on the adult grid without being reported and then see the Linden response to that.

Yes that is what I took your post to mean.

Basically some reporter shows up at this Sex Age Play place in a child AV claiming to be a minor IRL. (say 15 for arguments sake)

And see how it is received by the Sexual Age Players.

Thus instead of assuming they are sexual predators, at least they would be investigating (in some form) if they were.

In dat I agree, ya.

(An the place mentioned in the article is still there, an still listed in places search)

Mari

/me wanders in .... shakes head in disbelief, rolls eyes, and wishes Mari and the rest of the kids good luck

and so it begins again *sigh

Mari, is that the one in the sim named for a cartoon? If so it is now listing it's self as "Group Only" and "PG".

Second Life was the lead story on Channel 5 news here in the UK!
Very bad publicity for Second life in general
I can see the sh!t hitting the fan.......age verifcation is definitely going to come into play now, maybe even compulsory upon SIGN-UP

They also interviewed the SL vice president (G.Y), who seemed to pass the buck!
Nothing new there.

Nothing like more media vultures descending upon the place looking for sensationalized half baked stories, while the suits in SanFran play Alphonse and Gaston..

*God, I'm bitchy today*

Marianne, Sky News is a real TV news station here in the UK and the Sim they have I doubt is manned constantly, especially UK evenings. They do hold some live interviews there that I have seen.

I am also slightly confused by this post, here you seem to be saying there is nothing wrong with what is going on in this area, but your previous post says that yourself and others have been reporting it yourself and nothing has been done. Rather a contradiction, or am I reading it wrong?