Underage Avatar and Sex

since when are foprum threads factual? and I do not defend it, if you actually knew me I fight against it but I am very carefuyl of stating only facts, not assumptions

This one doesn't come to that conclusion at all, but then this one has been here for almost two years now and has read lost of posts by Toy.

Might want to read the law carefully on that. Some cases were raised where it was drawings, and were found not to be child porn because there were no 'real' children in them in that jurisdiction. Now in others it is considered child porn (but so are many ads featuring children under 18 as well by the standards employed by many...)

And we have limited information, much like LL will have from the AR so we don't make the call.

We give people the information on the rules.

We don't have a witch hunt or lynch mob. After all the avatar can say things in rp, that are in character falsehoods (you know like... oh my mate don't mind... or oh I shouldn't I'm too young... when both are false for a mated 20 yr old character)

Nothing presented in this thread is fact. It's all hearsay, except possibly to the OP. The only conclusion is you don't know what you are talking about here and should just go back to insulting people on technical matters, as you do it so well.

While you may indeed be correct on that, I think if LL pursued every case of "breach of contract" for violating their TOS, they'd never have had time to get passed their earliest versions. Likewise, we have seen a case where their own TOS was stuck down in court. I doubt they ant to risk that too often. Hence, I would suspect they would stick with their usual tactic of bannination.

Also, the OP was referring to LLs laws on the matter, not California's. I think there question has been answered repeatedly.

Ah the usual screaming of a fundie that has their arguments picked at.

Not everyone has a reason other than pointing out ambiguities and flaws with information others post.

It's called making sure things are clear and that there is no misinformation.

One has to point out that you have an agenda that guides your posts, and for the children is a cry that has caused many terrible things to be done. After all in some places... they mutilate a child because it's considered for the child's benefit.

The biggest catch here is: There are no children involved, simply avatars.

Careful you don't strain yourself jumping to those conclusions.

Does anyone else think thta it seems very fishy that the blog post seems to go out of its way to avoid mentioning any specific age at all, almost as iff LL were giving themselves a loophole of some sort? The term 'minor' is continually used and this can mean differen things to different people for different purposes until LL define what they consider to be the age at which minority stops. I know the easiest answer is under 18 like the sign up TOS insists on but whay don't they actually sayso in the ageplay blog?

For an example of the confusion that can happen if you are not specific see this article

http://www.nowpublic.com/west_virginia_law_bans_sex_with_miners

And for a Miner with whom I would happily take a chance on fornication in Cali

http://seanandnarcissus.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/rachel-miner.png

Are you kidding me? Check those eyebrows. I haven't seen anything that fake on a woman since Pamela Anderson. Kiiiiinda creepy.

http://www.askmen.com/women/galleries/celeb-profiles-actress/rachel-miner/picture-1.html

I misread the article, and thought it was that there was NO depiction of any
children at all - just cartoons of adults (one being drawn by a child).
That seemed unusal which is why I chimed in. But re-reading the article,
it sounds like just another example of an "adult" avatar and "child" avatar
having pixel sex (so there is a cartoon depiction that is intended to look
like a child, but no children involved at all).

That's against the rules of Second Life that Linden Labs has decided upon.

But in the USA, that's not child pornography. The Supreme Court has
ruled on "virtual child porn", by which they mean an image that is
indistinguishable from a real unaltered photograph. They said that
we don't have thoughtcrime, and that the law is about protecting
actual, real, specific, non-virtual, non-imaginary children from
actual, real, non-imaginary sex acts on film. Computer-generated
imaginary children are not real children and cannot be harmed.
The case was not about cartoons like Second Life avatars,
but it seems obvious that if "indistinguishable from real" imaginary
images are not child porn, then cartoon avatars aren't, either.

If one of the people on SL was a child operating the avatar,
it still would not be child pornography. That might be breaking
some other laws though, depending on a variety of factors.

In the USA, you can also role-play (in your bedroom, on your phone,
texting IMs, whatever) any weird sex fantasy that you want with
another consenting adult, no matter how sick someone thinks it is.
I'll call you "Juliet" and you call me "Romeo" (both teenagers!)
I'm pretty sure we even have movies and plays and songs about that one.

Remember Betty Boop cartoon movies from the 1930s? She was established
as a teenaged human girl, and was always in sexual situations, including
explicit topless dancing. By the way, she was originally a poodle, so I'm
sure there was some bestiality thing going on there, too!


Last time I checked, California was still part of the United States. Please see the United States Supreme Court case Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002).

I think the whole thing has sort of gotten off track here.

Yes, assuming that what the OP posed about the situation is true - and for the love of Pete, I'd like to know what sort of conversation is ever possible when folks assume whoever posts in the forum is full of crap from the get-go! - assuming that what the OP posed about the situation is true, and the avatar is identified as 17 in their profile, then the avatar is representing someone who is, in general terms, under the age of consent, whether they are humping another avatar or not. It's not frikin' rocket science.

Submitting an AR does not guarantee that anyone is going to get so much as their hand slapped about anything. What it does guarantee is that you have told the powers that be about what you perceive as a questionable situation, and now it's their ball to deflate, kick back into play or whatever they want to do with it.

Pick all the nits you like, folks, I'm not one to stifle a conversation. But the crux of the matter is that LL wants no more bad publicity about ageplay, has stated they don't want this sort of thing going on in their blog, thereby publicly covering their ass on the issue. I'm very sure that's all that post was really designed to do.

By choosing to file an AR you have reported it. Beyond booting them off your land, that's all you CAN do about it and that's all anyone outside of a Linden should have to concern themselves with.

Everything after that is academia, and if someone wants to push the envelope with their account that's their business. WHAT is the hard part?

I'm glad I don't have the same taste as you then! I'll take Rachel and you can keep 'Elora'.

Wow. You're channeling the ghost of McCarthy.

Excuse me? You mind restating your opinion of my RL mate in plainer terms?

The whole sexual ageplay thing is a big mess.

If somebody asks me how old I am, I tend to say I am nearly 2, which is how long I have been in SL. If I say this in open chat and then have sex, does this count as SAP? It's there on each of our profiles, "Born on ..." and there's not one single person in the whole of SL whose av is over the age of consent, in any country that I can think of, based on this piece of info.

Or, my main av generally looks like she is of an indeterminate age somewhere between about 30 and mid-50's. Suppose I put on my profile "my SL age is 17, but I have had a hard life" and then proceeded to have sex with someone in my very mature-looking avatar, does this count as SAP?

Perhaps we should all be made to assert an avatar age on our profiles. Lots of people, me included, would hate to be forced to do this, and many of us change between all sorts of ages (and gender and species, for goodness sake), including wearing child avatars for some of the time, in some situations.

Perhaps it should only count as SAP if the av is obviously pre-pubescent and in a sexual situation. But then what about people who simply choose to be on the short and slim side, or who are just not very good at making shapes. From what I have read on these forums, ARs on these grounds are not uncommon.

LL's rules, however daft, need to be spelled out much more clearly. Meanwhile, I refuse to AR anybody on such grounds.

I can understand the OP's concerns as this is happening on her land, and it could just possibly be construed as dodgy by somebody who sees the world in very black-and-white terms. If it was me, I think I would ask the person to either change (or remove) the age in the profile, or refrain from having sex on my land. I would warn them that they will be banned if they refuse to comply, and I would politely explain why, pointing them to the blog post.

I wouldn't AR them (although the OP is perfectly within her rights to do so), because there are already way too many stupid ARs happening around this issue, and because as long as it's not happening on my land I don't think it's any of my business, and because I personally don't see a 17 year old as being a child, no matter what Californian law states.

It's amazing how rabid some people become about "saving the children" even when there's not a actual child involved that needs saving. The "17 year-old" in this case sounds like someone who's just out to get a rise off people like the OP by putting that number in the profile. If it had said 18, I doubt we would be into the 5th page of debate about what to do about uninvited couples having pixelsex on your SL land.

Oh, I'd know exactly what to do.

/checks battery on video camera

Ah, that's a whole other debate. I got the impression from the OP that pixelsex would have been acceptable if the avs were over 18, i.e. that she runs some sort of a sex club. I may have understood wrong.

Interesting that someone who claims not to know anyone here in the Undead Thread and has only made 5 posts somehow knows enough about Ghosty to link him and I together.

That was uncalled for. Who's Alt are you and why drag me into this?

Hmm... my drama sense is tingling.

Oh who the hell cares OP? Get on with your Second Life and stop trying to interpret the vaguely written TOS/CS and do something worthwhile. A 17yo on the main grid? *yawn* There are far bigger issues to tackle if you want to police residents behavior. If you were 100% certain you were doing the morally acceptable thing, you wouldn't have needed to create a thread to justify it.

just AR if you feel it's against tos and let lindens sort it out. thats why they have all these different groups, csr's, 'gteam', etc.

like I ar's a child avi other day that had the whole pregnant fetus crap with teddy bear in 1 hand talking about how she got raped but was keeping the baby. So far that avatar has been gone since

You'd be surprised some of the stuff you'll stumble across hehe.

These threads all seem to follow the same lifecycle.

1. Someone asks a question related to sexual ageplay. The question itself may be innocent or may be a troll.

2. A number of people respond reasonably. The answers and suggestions may vary, but they tend to be within the range where reasonable people may agree to disagree while continuing to respect each other.

3. Some of the responses may be the result of misreading the original question or interpreting some ambiguities in the original question in a way that doesn't match the intent. These are still reasonable responses, only they don't really apply to the original question as intended.

4. Other people jump in with clarifications, explaining why those off-target, but still reasonable responses aren't applicable in this thread. So far, everything is still reasonable.

5. Someone with strong feelings on the subject (not unreasonable) but a poor understanding of the law, TOS, Community Standards, and history of the subject jumps in, making statements about the law and/or rules that are false.

6. Other people correct those fallacies.

7. The person whose feelings are strong, motives are reasonable, but understanding of the law is flawed accuses the others of defending child pornography. At which point, any hope of retaining sanity in the thread is lost.

"Defending child pornography" is the SL forum's corollary to Godwin's Law.

Quite true. Although, to be honest, it's the ones who are 100% certain who scare me the most.

Usually ageplay threads put me fast asleep, but something caught my interest here: the vast disparity between age of consent and age of majority in many jurisdictions. And that child pornography seems to be linked to age of majority of the participants.

Mind you, I do not accept that pixelsex between/among avatars can be child pornography under any circumstances except extreme perversion of the observer--or legislator. But ignoring the applicability to toonhumping:

At first it may seem arbitrary that participants in pornography should need to be of an age to vote, as opposed to an age to consent to sex. I mean, if pr0n isn't about sex, then why 18, as opposed to drinking age, say, or some other randomly selected number such as 30?

But then consider Canada. Here, the age of consent depends on the difference in age of the participants: a 12 year old can legally consent to sex with a 14 year old. And in fact I have no problem with 12 and 14 year olds actually having sex. But as much as I try not to be a prude, I'm pretty damned sure that *pics* of 12 and 14 year olds knocking boots would squick my child porn detectors. So, yeah, age of consent doesn't really seem all that relevant to child porn.

It is pretty weird, though. Two kids can *have* sex, but couldn't *watch* the same act. So, logically, they should have to wear blindfolds. Or maybe child porn should depend on the age of the *observer*: notti pics of 12 year olds are okay, as long as they aren't seen by anybody older than 14.

For what it's worth, I found that blog posting (to which several people, including myself, have posted links) by going through the Knowledge Base. It can be found under Legal Matters, subheading Policies. This is not quite a wiki, but it is a much more reasonable place for such items than the blog.

The fact that the knowledge base item only has a pointer to the blog is an example of 21st century, white collar (web collar?) laziness that needs to be discouraged. Because it's so much faster to just create a link, people do that, without understanding that context matters. Blog posts are inherently transient, and there will always be a question about whether a blog note that's over a year old represents current policy. If memory serves, at the time of the blog posting, the furor over ageplay was still relatively fresh, and hence the blog post author didn't feel a need to spell out things like "minor means under 18", because most readers at that time would have known it from previous announcements and discussions.

So whether the technology is wiki or something else, I quite agree that the policy needs to be stated in some place that carries a clear, official imprimatur, that's easy to find (without unreasonable clicks or unadorned links), and that collects all the details in one place.