SL closing down??

Nope-if you're 16 or over and have sex with someone aged UNDER 16, it's illegal. 14-year-olds can have sex with each other though.

That's what bothers me. I'm confident the people who know me aren't going to turn on me or anything - but there's a whole lotta people I don't know.



A coupla weeks ago, in fact. I was invited by this one girl - I won't mention any names, but her initials were Marianne McCann.

Aww....



Ya. 'course, assuming yer not doin nothing against the TOS, of course, I suspect you'd be safe. I know people have ARed me for just standing there before. Not recently, but it's happened. Obviously, this did not have any substantial effect on my account status



Well, dat tells you how many requests I get, huh?

Mari

Ahh thats not what the google information said was the case.

A couple of sources (one being wikipedia) did make the claim that 14 was legal unless a case could be made that someone over 21 coerced the 14 year old.

But since you live in Germany you know better than google I am sure.

--------------------

It doesn't make the whole point invalid though - just change "14" to "16"

There is still the discrepancy, like in most places, between the age of consent and the age where pictures of that person are considered child porn.

I personally think if 18 is the cut off for child porn then obviously it should also be the age of consent.

We had some really rubbish cases at school where a 16 year old had a relationship with a 14 year old and they made a lot of legal fuss about it...I don't think we still have any kind of law using 21 as an age. Everything is usually 18 or 16. 14 is the age of criminal responsibility though.

You would think that (not just Germany) it would just make more sense to have an across the board age of adulthood. Consent, Criminal responsibility, Financial responsibility, etc would all just be the same age.

I don't think most cultures want to admit their age of consent is antiquated and has only gradually bumped up from the time period that families would marry off their young teenage daughters to grown men.

Hello again..

Goodness I can't believe this thread is still going strong.

Ann Launay and Walker Moore, thanks for undertaking such an academic post-mortem of my posts. The legal world is certainly missing two shining stars of talent.. that is of course unless you are actually in practice already

I wasn't expecting my posts to be picked apart by such terrier-like legal minds and hence probably was a little "sloppy". Not being in the legal profession myself, I doubt that I could have structured my opinions in such a way that they'd stand up in a court of law anyway..

I'm assuming however that as masters of the moot, you have both come across the debating tactic known as the "straw man". I say that because albeit it is classed as a logical fallacy and quite a crass and obvious tactic, this thread alone could be used as a master class.

I know that you both love to be refered to an original source, so just in case you haven't come across the term please have a look at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

And see if it rings any bells.

Some people have taken my pretty innocuous posts to this thread in the manner they were intended and I thank you for that.

Others haven't for what ever reason and in the spirit of open debate I've provided supporting views from experts in the field as well as referenced the specific cases and investigations (which aren't a figment of my imagination) that I thought might be of interest.

I guess you guys have your own views and experiences of SL which are at odds with the concerns of others. That's all well and good and to a certain extent I sympathise with that, however the fact is that certain agencies are investigating certain activities in SL. They just are, you can disagree with me, paint me as "evil".. but that doesn't change the reality of the situation.

Will the activities of these busy bodies impact SL's future? My view is that no commercial organisation can flourish under this hail of negative publicity and LL will in the future have to make further accomodations to mollify a somewhat hysterical public.

To be honest, the easiest way for this to be fixed is for LL themselves to come out and categorically say in public that there is no RL Child Porn circulating in SL and that "age play" in SL is never used as camouflage for scenes of Child Abuse. Case closed and we can all go home happy.

However, to my knowledge, the most they have ever said is that such activities are against TOS, the SL citizenry is self policing and if anything happens it isn't their fault.

A clear statement of responsibility should be pretty straightforward for them to do however. You guys seem able to commit categorically to such statements of fact, so I'm guessing LL themselves should be able to..

It might be tricky though, given that several people in the following thread admit to recieving such material themselves:

/327/8f/243836/1.html

Doesn't exactly inspire confidence does it?

Real Life child pornography should be removed whenever its found on the grid. But that has always been Linden Lab's position on it. and, its rarely found on this platform. You insist its some huge problem that it simply is not. Hope no one is wasting too many resources or peoples tax dollars investigating it in Second Life. its very foolish.

Again i fully support any efforts to remove rl child porn from Second Life. But i would be very surprised if you found anything that would warrant that type of investigation. Continuing to repeat that there are investigations ongoing in Second Life, regarding this matter, only convinces me that these people dont know what they are doing here.

You really need to be more careful when you talk about child porn and sexual ageplay in the same post. You are still lumping them together indirectly and its making me very uncomfortable. They are two entirely different topics and one has nothing to do with the other.

Hello Swan,

I think you've misunderstood me.

I don't think it's a huge problem. I think it is perceived as a problem in certain quarters.

Unfortunately those quarters are linked to agencies who have the ability in certain countries to influence legislation which would impact the way SL is perceived and accessed by people in those countries.

I do understand the distinction between ageplay and child abuse/pornography. I think however in some people's minds and in certain circumstances the distinction is seen as one which benefits certain criminals.

I also think that from an investigative point of view, they would logically say that for certain scenarios or scenes to be played out, one of the avatars would have to be played as a child.. and therefore perhaps simplistically.. the ageplay community is where they'd start their search.

I understand that I'm the one placing the unpleasant and to an extent unfair situation in front of you and so on the surface I appear to be taking the side of the inquisitors.

I'm actually on your side believe it or not, I just know that you can't defend yourself or meet a challenge without facing the realities of the situation.

As my Dad would say.. people who live with their head buried in the sand often end up with a boot up the backside....actually his version was slightly more explicit.. but you get the idea....

PS.

I know there seems to be the idea that this is a non-situation fanned by me. However it would only need someone from an investigative agency to read the following thread

/327/8f/243836/1.html

To suspect that there was something worth looking into.

i appreciate you clarifying your position. My position is as long as innocent residents, including sexual age players, are not targeted or penalized because of these investigations, then i would offer my full support.

I agree...

Mmmm.. although aren't "sexual age players" different from "age players" and if new legislation went through the UK parliament as it is intended, anyone holding images locally of such scenes would be liable to prosecution?

Notice, I'm making no judgement, just wondering what the legality of such RP would be in certain countries.

For one thing the content of virtual images would be very different from RL images of sexual ageplay.

In RL, the participants would obviously be adults - albeit one would be playing a child. Screen captures of SL RP would show explicit representations of an adult and child.

i dont know enough about UK law to have an opinion on it. Sexual age play is not against the law where i live and is classified as a form of D/s. its banned from Second Life. But, im sure anyone engaged in that type of rp here would find a ban far more reasonable then criminal prosecution. Luckily the UK doesnt legislate for the entire western civilization.

small sized avatars in Second Life are not a fair representation of rl children. and i have tried to be very clear that sexual age players even in Second Life, do NOT engage in any type of rp that suggest the abuse of a real life child. Therefore it is impossible to make that correlation.

it may appear from the outside that this is what takes places, when viewed by someone uninformed on the dynamics of age play. but, if you have any real understanding of that particular fetish, youd see very quickly that it has nothing to do with children.

Lol well "luckily" or "unluckily" I agree we don't. I guess in that respect we in the UK are "lucky" that the USA doesn't either because we'd still have the death penalty.. but that's a different topic..

As I say though.. as far as I'm aware sexual ageplay involving consenting adults isn't banned in the UK. It's images of children engaged in sexual acts which are. Even so there is a loop hole at the moment which allows purely computer generated images, but there is legislation being presented now which may close that.

There is however, in the eyes of the law, a difference between images of two adults engaged in an activity and images of an adult and a child.

The nature of SL and the presence of child avatars mean that any images of SL sexual ageplay downloaded and stored locally in the UK may be treated as criminal.. while RL images of adults engaged in such play would be ok.

Sorry Swan.. perhaps I am as dim as I'm being portrayed.

I thought I had a handle on what "ageplay" is and also what "sexual ageplay" is.

Is there a distinction and if so, what is it?

Just interested..

i dont know what else i can say to you except to repeat what i just posted:

small sized avatars in Second Life are not a fair representation of rl children. and i have tried to be very clear that sexual age players even in Second Life, do NOT engage in any type of rp that suggest the abuse of a real life child. Therefore it is impossible to make that correlation.

it may appear from the outside that this is what takes places, when viewed by someone uninformed on the dynamics of age play. but, if you have any real understanding of that particular fetish, youd see very quickly that it has nothing to do with children.

there is no distinction. what most people call age play in Second Life actually is not age play. its role playing as children. age players, overall, are not disconnected from their own sexuality. there are other differences as well.

Ok, so the crux of the question is this..

Is there a chance that within a "sexual ageplay" context, an image may be generated involving a sexual act apparently between an adult and a child?

Would the "average/reasonable person", in the legal sense, perceive that it was a representation of a sexual act between adult and child?

If so then it may be that in the future any SL citizen storing images of that nature in the UK will be open to criminal prosecution.

I'm very sorry.. but my understanding is that this is the way current legislation is going in the UK.

This seems hard to sustain, though.

I mean if the purpose of prohibiting picture portrayals of children involved in sexual acts is both to prevent the exploitation and abuse of children as well as to not cater to a sexual "taste" that is considered pathological in most countries (I don't mean "ageplay" here, I mean pedophilia), then I don't see why this wouldn't apply to child AVs. Adult AVs are clearly considered to be sexually arousing and the proper "objects" of sexual play in SL. I would suppose that to a pedophile, child AVs would be similarly arousing. This is true, in both cases, whether or not the AVs are a "fair representation" of human adults or children. If the child AV images are stimulating the libidos of pedophiles, then I can see the justification for banning the activity (even though the players themselves are not children and are engaged in what the adult world calls "ageplay" -- a sexual fetish where adults roleplay as children). It's a troubling issue, because of that typist/avatar distinction, but if one of the goals of suppressing such imagery is to not encourage the libidos of pedophiles, then I can see the justification for banning the activity when using child AVs in SL.

oh very good question. my most honest answer to this is a complex one. For a gamer or anyone who is well versed in virtual environments, a short avatar in Second Life could never be considered a child avatar because of the limitations of the platform's graphics. There are all types of things that would verify this such as the fact that all avatars are based on an adult female named Ruth. and when you shrink the avatars to shorter sizes some parts of the avatar mesh can not shrink with the overall size. you end up with avatars who have very large ankles and feet. The ribcage does not scale properly and there is always adult female breasts on the shape, even if you set the breast size to zero.

and this is only regarding appearance. There are many other aspects to age play that would make it impossible to confuse a small avatar with a child.

However, someone who isnt aware of any of these issues may never notice it. They very well may take one look at an image of that role play and it may represent something far more sinister in their eyes. They may percieve it as a representation of a sexual act between adult and child. But, that wouldnt be correct or accurate.

Regarding my last post. and for me a very important point. even if somehow a pedo could find the image of a cartoon in Second Life somehow arousing, as soon as the person behind that short avatar engaged that pedo in conversation, the entire illusion would be lost. so its a ridiculous argument to me.

But doesn't the law apply to sexual imagery, regardless of conversations? In other words, if a pedophile finds the imagery itself arousing, isn't that a part of what the law is trying to prevent?

Thanks for being so frank Swan.

Unfortunately then.. and to quote my friends on the other side of the pond... that's the ball game.

It seems then, that rightly or wrongly, viewing and storing images of ageplay involving "small" avatars may in the future be a criminal offence in the UK.

If it is passed in the UK, it is possible that the EU as a whole may adopt it.

I understand that this may be seen as grossly unfair given your view on this topic, but if the appearance of the avatar is of little importance within the context of ageplay, you could circumvent any legal issues by playing as "large" avatars.

Given that ageplay in RL is nothing to do with children per se, then this would make your play in SL more realistic anway .. wouldn't it?

Sorry.. I'm not trying to cause trouble, just thinking out loud of ways to remove the taint of criminalisation from your interests.

i dunno . . i dont think cartoons are sexy. im outside my area of expertise now.

Hi Victorria,

Yes that's exactly my point.. from a legal point of view it's the apparent content of the image in question that may be found criminal.

There is a big debate about whether or not visual pornography influences an individual's activities or proclivities in RL.

Legislation in the UK at least seems to be adopting the view that it might. Particularly, as I've said previously, as a mechanism of validation and justification.