SL closing down??

And that's exactly it. But it is my hope that most (that is "most", and "not all" rational people will see sensationalism for what it is and not surrender to a knee jerk reactions of "Oh noes, the sky is falling...". As a society, we've lived through media manipulation that has only increased over the years, perhaps alerting us to the smell of future manipulations. Again... I'm hoping here.




Actually, the onus IS on you to provide proof, otherwise your words are completely meaningless and there can be no confidence in your statements. Back when I went to school we always had to provide proof (be it mathematics, or essays). Besides, if you are so knowledgeable and have performed all this research, then it should be easily at your fingertips and no effort to organize in a series of links. I think anyone would be happy to do this to substantiate their claims -- unless, of course, they're pulling "facts" out of thin air.

I'm not normally one to engage in heavy discussions or arguments here, but, yes, I am interested in the psychology of SL and have not run across the concept of immersive worlds contributing to unseemly RL behaviour. I'd like to read up on that, but not so much to scour the net when such information should be close at hand for you. *shrugs*

I agree with all that Colette, I've never disagreed.

The original OP.. all those many, many years ago .....wondered if recent bad press (albeit not the most rigorously researched) might impact the future of SL.

I cited some investigations into SL activities which to my knowledge are factual and still ongoing.

I also suggested that even the mighty Microsoft crumbled in the face of public opinion in this area.. *shrugs.. I thought there were interesting parallels.

Next thing I knew I was the anti-christ.

Oh.. me and people who work in child support agencies..

Not just child support agencies. I lump most "do gooders" into the same stinking heap.

I agree with you and is my concern also. If there is pressure from the UK it's also likely to hold true with the EU too. I'm just wondering how LL will react to this form of pressure and negative publicity. We all know that LL hates negative publicity.....seems to be the only thing that inspires them to make policy changes.

e.g They introduced Age verification on the back of the German ARD report as well as ban on age- sex play

I'd venture it was more as Walker said, Microsoft just felt it wasn't profitable for them to police thier groups as opposed to just pulling the plug, just my opinion. I'm always amused in one sense that a lot of this hysteria makes it seem that the Internet is the cause of all these misdeeds. All these abeerant behaviors have been going on long before Al Gore thought up the idea while smoking pot in Viet Nam amd coming up wit the idea behind "Love Story". It may be facilitated to a degree, but closing down SL, or the Internet would do nothing to solve the problem. It is a shamethat due to these parasites who call themselves journalists, on of the most horrid of human failings can be twisted as to give so many a jaundiced view over it, myself included.

This is interesting since the Age Verification plan will be having its anniversary soon, and I don't see it being phased in.

Are you saying it was not introduced or suggested by LL after the ARD coverage of child sex act? I seem to remember the Age-verification proposals cropped up shortly thereafter.

It does not really matter as to proof of whether SL fantasies translates into RL actions or whatever....the important issue is that common sense will prevail and LL won't sanitise the game even further by banning child AV's and such like. My concern is that LL will buckle under pressure coming from Europe (Yes, those Child Abuse agencies applying pressure on their governments)...........and now it's largest customer base!

No, I am not saying that. It most definitely was related.

LL was mumbling about something they were working on for a little while.

Then BAM the fox Edwards story followed by the German Child Porn/ Sexual Ageplay story.

Right after that they announced the Age Verification thing.

My point is however its been a LONG time since those plans were announced - Over 9 months, and still no phase-in announced.

Thus they don't seem terribly interested in it, they merely needed something to keep the media quiet.

Well, sexual age-play is already banned anyway, so provided people report it, Linden Lab can self-regulate in order to comply with the law in countries like Germany where virtual depictions of child sex are already illegal. They have said they will do so, and involve the authorities when illegal activity is involved.

Whether the UK government will go ahead and legislate against the same content is anybody's guess. Headlines suggested it would be against the law by the end of last year. That it's not the case yet is notable. There is a lot of debate going on at Westminster about this kind of thing right now.

Just last week I was watching a House of Commons Select Committee discussing child safety on the internet, and the prevailing message was that industry self-regulation is the British government's preferred way forward and not censorship. (The Prime Minister has recently echoed this line on internet censorship: http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page13034.asp)

The problem with companies not acting on complaints about illegal and child-unfriendly material seems to be addressed by the government's longer term plans: They want to force all internet providers to provide an enabled child-content filter (at the ISP end) by default. Although such a filter can be disabled by the account holder, and there are obvious problems with mechanisms like this (anonymous proxies can bypass them), the theory is that it would be so commercially damaging for a child-friendly internet company to find itself on the wrong side of such a filter used by tens of millions of people, that they would self-regulate more vigorously.

There was also talk of a new watchdog being set-up to monitor how effectively internet companies regulate themselves. I must say though, that Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Youtube, etc., seemed to be of far greater concern than anything else, with talk of illegal material being uploaded to member space on all of those sites too.

I could be wrong, but I believe this was already in the pipeline before that, and became publicly mentioned / sped-up as a result.

Mari

Hmmh , it's a bit like everything else here on SL. I'm sure if you try hard enough, you could probably get involved in some illegal gambling on a remote PI sim in some underground cave! Likewise with Banking....just dressed up in another form as money lending and charging a % interest for such a transaction.

As long as one has the ability to move the sliders and create a 4ft Avatar,
LL or any outside agency will never truely stop any sex age-play.....end of story.! Anything else is just pure fantasy. (too many deserted sims to lose one self)

As this thread stands, the claim of a correlation between age players here and child porn is about as proven as the claim of a correlation between American bookshops and glory holes. You knew I was going to work glory holes back in, didn't you?

Stephen, I have an RL friend much like you. Well, actually, he's not like you because he doesn't just drip condescension to those who don't agree which him. But what you two do seem to have in common is the believe that the more eloquently you write, and the bigger or more obscure your vocabulary, the more it must make you right in any argument.

I would also point out that ongoing investigations doesn't actually mean anything until the results are in. No agency with a mandate to protect children is going to leave any stone unturned before ending their investigation. It covers their own ass, if nothing else. If somebody makes an accusation, they are compelled to investigate, and investigate thoroughly (which can take a long time). In most countries one is innocent until proven guilty, and that's important to remember. Pointing at the existence of investigations does not prove wrongdoing.

I could investigate you as being a pompous ass. And then someone else could point out that you're being investigated for being a pompous ass. Does that mean you're a pompous ass?

Correct on all counts. What you have said was objective, truthful and non-judgemental and has not deserved the kind of spin that has been aimed at you.

One thing that isn't mentioned yet in this thread directly, in terms of the spin/acusation that what you have said is trying to "destroy Second life," is that Real World Business People, (except porn peddlers and sex workers) are not going to want to be associated with controversial sexual ageplay, bestiality, rp rape, Bondage and Discipline, or other minority sexual activity etc.--whether it is exaggerated or not.

It's simply horrible PR in the real world, to be associated with that in the media and would keep any real world business, from continued involvement in Second Life. Second life is NOT the internet it is an MMO.

So if you truly want to protect SL from disaster, then Wake up people!

Of course I know two adults in Real Life who are around 4 feet tall.

Besides which its pointless anyhow even if the minimum height was 5 feet, with the maximum height being over 7 feet someone could still create the visual effect if inclined.

To be honest, I doubt you could stop it even if all avatars were regulated to 6'+, but ya... it's just not the issue these "news" agencies make it to be, it's not *real* pedophilia (no matter how distasteful one might personally find some of this), it's not as big an issue as such might be on (for example only) MySpace, LL has made clear (well, clear for them: basically sexual ageplay is verboten) rules prohibiting it, LL *does* actively police these areas (the place in question showed up a few times on the SL police blotter in the weeks before the current Sky News report, and I witnessed folks from the area discussing the issue at the Governance meeting), and finally Sky News' own "expert" noted that "potentially deviant fantasy role-playing that can take place in virtual worlds may be transferrable to the real world, but that it is not at present provable, or known which individuals might be susceptable to this."

To me, it sounds as if LL has dome as much as they can with an issue that has dubious merit in the first place.

Mari

Rebecca, can you point out any real world businesses who have made any lasting impact on SL? The residents of SL have spoken pretty loud and clear on this issue, we don't want real world businesses coming in. Yes, that pretty well kills Philip's dream of a 3D internet, but that is the risk he took when he opened SL to the public.

Hi,

I know that I've been a bit inflammatory in posting to this thread. This was partly because I felt that my position was being twisted unfairly.... and secondly..well .. I was a bit bored and quite enjoyed it.

Seriously however, I do feel it's an issue we will have to deal with eventually.

I do realise that legally (for the moment) LL are pretty well protected, and as I said in my first post I suspect SL will close as a result of commercial pressures rather than anything else.

I also know however that the internet is coming under more scrutiny in general and in the UK operation ORE and the Chris Langham case have raised the public's awareness of its use in the dissemination of child pornography.

Also, rightly or wrongly, we in Europe are a little more willing to;

"Give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety" ....as Ben Franklin put it.

It seems clear to me that various agencies do already have people in SL, "working undercover" if that's what you'd like to call it. I probably wouldn't believe it myself if the admissions hadn't come from the horses mouth.. so to speak.

At the end of the day all of this "press"..does impact SL's reputation and as such may indirectly affect its future.

Finally.. some people have been on at me to come up with the goods as far as sources go for my apparently sweeping statements.

A good overview from my perspective (and don't worry.. it doesn't support what I say but helps I guess)

http://www.csecworldcongress.org/PDF/en/Stockholm/Background_reading/Theme_papers/Theme%20paper%20Pornography%201996_EN.pdf

It's over 10 years old now but still I think sets out the landscape and issues pretty well.

If you look into the subject matter further, there is no real proof that the prevalence of available pornography "turns" people into paedophiles. What it can do is affect people who already have those tendencies, but have them in check.

This is what is termed a mechanism of "validation and justification".

There is also the fact that the more accessible the dissemination channels are, the larger the market, the greater the demand and albeit indirectly .. the consumer of such material is contributing to the wider abuse of children.

Finally if your interested in the perspective of an emminent psychologist you can read a bit by Albert Bandura.. who again raises interesting questions about the impact of Media, Socialisation and Roleplaying as mechanisms of validation and justification.

There you go.. I realise I'm still the antichrist... and a Troll .. but thought I'd do something to redeem myself a wee bit..

You have weird standards for what's objective and non-judgmental...

(I won't get into 'truthful,' since Stephen obviously believes what he's saying.)

Some pretty good 1L shoes at playboy island.

Plus the land on the island is shaped like a bunny head which is kinda cool.

That, and it was the closest Island to the Esoterica Sim where I resided for a while.

Other than that I've never even been to a sim owned by a RL corporation.

Well, at least you are willing to admit you were trolling.



You know what I find funny? Eventually, Mr. Farrell will do a shocking expose where he fires up his kid avatar again, and an undercover cop on a sting operation will proposition, and the whole thing will be secrety taped by Report Mainz. The "sexual ageplay scare" will become a self-perpetuating thing.

Mari

No I cannot point out any. But I do know that many significant companies initially saw the potential of Second Life and came into Second Life, only to wise up quickly and see that as it is, is not a feasible place to develop.

Meh, even Jumpy does SL porn better than Playboy.

Hey I mentioned shoes not Porn.

I didn't actually see any porn or even a skimpily dressed Av on Playboy Island.

@Stephen Wisent: I don't think you're an anti-christ, or a troll, and I apologise for flipping my lid at you earlier. Reading back, I can see that I misread something and over-reacted, and that was wrong. I'm having a bad day or something... but that's no excuse.

Anyway, I still disagree on certain points , but I think it all boils down to this subject being easily blown out of all proportion where the tabloid media is involved. I would remind you that if anything, the whole interwebs/paedaphilia scare (from a UK point of view) peaked almost ten years ago with the advent of Operation Ore, the Gary Glitter case, and the satirical Channel Four show, Brass Eye. (Paedogeddon anybody?)

The Chris Langham case is nothing compared to that whole mess. Just a reminder that yes, famous people can be perverts too.

Despite the ARD and Sky/Wonderland scandals of last year, they simply don't dominate government discussions on this subject. The Select Committee that met last week focused mostly on social networks and youtube, mainly because actual (not virtual) images and videos of abuse (sexual and violent) were being uploaded to those sites. As I said above, the government's line is that it does not favour censorship, but self-regulation. Linden Lab is already self-regulating against these acts that are already a ToS violation. So it's difficult to see how this virtual world could suddenly be taken from UK internet users as a result of a few sensationalist media stories.

News Networks/Programs like to make huge uproars about children getting abused over the internet,

Yet children are abused in real life everyday in the world and very few of those same people do a damn thing about it.

If they really only did these exposes for the sake of children this inconsistency wouldn't exist.