SL closing down??

Sorry Swan, you seem to have been interrogated within an inch of your life this morning

I'm just interested that's all.

Thanks for being so frank and open when confronted with what must seem very obtuse questions.

I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens..

i dont live in the UK so i dont have to follow those rules. also, i have my own moral compass and i dont let other people tell me whats right and wrong. i have the ability to think for myself. i dont think its right to penalize an group of innocent people on the basis that there might be one person out there that isnt mentally stable. i could go on and on about all the reasons i dont agree with your post. but, the fact remains, its very unlikely any of these investigations or new laws will effect me negatively. its simply a waste of resources and time to do so. but, it has no meaning for my life or my Second Life.

/me looks down, puts his hand over his private area and screams, "They want to remove our taints too??!?!?"

Lol.. only if they're criminal...and that can be from an aesthetic point of view too..

you have no way to get inside a residents mind and ferret out what their motivations are for their rp. Playing thought police is evil.

I sort of agree Swan, but unfortunately for any criminal to be convicted his mental state is of prime importance.

Sorry to start a law course and bore everyone to tears but to be convicted of many crimes a person must be shown to possess both the Actus Reus (i.e actually did the deed) and the Mens Rea (in that they had a certain motivation or thought process).

An obvious example is the distinction between Murder and Manslaughter.

There are exceptions to this rule, normally in the form of "Strict Liability" offences.. and it's under this framework that any new legislation in this area may be presented.

So you see, the law will always attempt to be "thought police" to a degree..

yep, exactly that.....at least here in the U.K and the E.U won't be far behind on this matter!

oh that makes me dizzy. good luck with that. the human mind is very complex. seems like an awful lot of trouble to go through for a handful of people who regardless of thought processes, have committed no real crime. it seems at the very least, morally wrong.

Can't see any reason to assume the EU will get involved, other EU Member States maybe (Germany clearly have similar concerns to the UK authorities), but the EU? I doubt it, it's not the kind of issue the EU itself is usually concerned with.

*shrugs.. perhaps.. although to quote Captain Kirk (and no I'm not a trekkie )

The needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many..

So I guess the logic goes that if one child is spared pain and anguish , then the temporary discomfort of a particular SL group is worth it.

lol.. again, an argument open to debate and a few "straw men".. but something to think about...

The only TV channel who has run with this story is Channel 5. Neither the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 or Sky News has mentioned it.

Channel 5, which has about 5% of the UK TV audience, obviously has some major problem with SL, as they have been carping on about it in the past and have been trying to make it out as some sort of "threat". Its a classic example of the sort of pathetic chest-beating "hysteria" news that has been plagueing UK Tv news for the past decade. Channel 5 have always had a real problem in attracting a decent sized audience, and it seems that this is another desperate way of trying to grab some attention.

The fact that BBC news have not made so much of a mention of it (neither in their main news, UK news, or "technology" news) suggests that this is just more hype from a desperate third rate nothing-channel.

Ignore.

...which takes its news feed from Murdoch.

I can still remember the pitchfork-waving mobs besieging the homes and surgeries of paeditricians after the News of the World (that paragon of virtue) embarked on its witchhunt a couple of years back.


Chris Morris should have been given a knighthood for that Brasseye special...

Mmmm.. well given that the UK and the rest of the EU countries have direct influence on and are obliged to apply supranational EU laws, it's not outside the bounds of reason.

If nothing else all EU citizens have the right to directly petition the European Commission on Human Rights.

All of which means that fundamental shifts in legislation in one country often have implications for other member states.

youre quite right . . i think we should ban McDonalds and toy stores because they might attract pedos. and even though they havent committed any crime against an actual child, we all know just thinking is a crime against mankind and deserves to have your entire life ruined.

Well not to be inflammatory, but in an attempt to save a few straw men from the flames anyway..

I suspect that if McDonalds were handing out a computer generated image of a child engaged in a sexual act with an adult along with every Big Mac and Fries..

I think they might have a wee turnaround in their fortunes....

I'm 5'1" without shoes. With them, I'm all of 5'4"... I come up to most males' belly buttons! If it weren't for the fact that the avatar looks like an adult female build, it could very easily look like an adult/child situation.

correct ! Thats how these E.U laws develop.....lobbying from certain member states.

correct ! Thats how these E.U laws develop.....lobbying from it's member states.

Second Life isnt handing out computer generated images of children engaged in a sexual act with adults.

i know you think youre being clever but you really are not.

your view is so completely skewed that even having a reasonable discussion with you is incredibly tedious.

So there we go then.

You have an adult female build.. and I suspect that you dress like one.

If voyeur that I am, I was to take a snap of you and your partner doing the poseball challenge and downloaded it to my PC here in the UK, would a "reasonable " person looking at that picture mistake take your avatar to be a representation of a child?

If the answer is yes, then in the future I may have a legal problem.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just that throwing up straw men repeatedly doesn't actually get us anywhere.

You're right and I apologise.. it was a cheap shot.

Anyway I'll bow out of this thread now, I've sort of said what I wanted to and now even I'm getting sick of hearing myself making the same point.. over.. and over.. and over again...

Good luck with everything you do, I'm sure you'll be fine.

New York Times Article on "Kids and the Internet"

Actually written by someone who appears to have used the internet at sometime in his life.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/technology/personaltech/28pogue-email.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The only caution I would offer is that anything even remotely close to involving sex with children or depictions of sex with children is kind of a nuclear issue -- it attracts prosecutors and legislators precisely because it is almost always a political positive for them with no downside. That makes enforcement risk and legislative enhancement risk much higher, I think, which is something LL does have to concern itself about.

As much as anyone else, I wish SL could be a complete free for all, because that suits my own worldview, but doing business in the variety of countries where it does -- it's not that simple from LL's perspective.

Um, what? I said very little to you and Walker admitted to overreacting to your posts. Now, I did have a disagreement with Rebbecca over her use of your terminology, but that was about HER, not you. I stand by my opinion that the post of yours she originally quoted wasn't objective or non-judgmental, though.

The vast majority of EU legislation does not originate with Member States but with the Commission.

Yes, we do have the right to petition the European Court of Human Rights but that has very little to do with the EU. The ECHR is established by the European Convention on Human Rights, it is not an arm of the EU, and many countries who are not part of the EU have signed or ratified it. The UK of course signed the Convention in 1953, but it was not incorporated into UK law until 2000 when the Human Rights Act 1998 came into force.

In any event, the Convention only governs the relationship between State and citizen, in much the same way as the US Constitution protects the citizen from interference by the Government e.g both the ECHR and the US Convention prevent Governments from restricting freedom of speech but they say nothing about my right to ban you from my property (or vice versa) for saying something I disagree with.

Which of the rights protected by the Convention is relevant here? I suppose being prohibited by law from viewing SL child AVs engaged in sex could be argued to be a breach of Article 10 on freedom of expression, but I don't think you would get very far. (For US citizens - the ECHR protection on free speech is much more limited than that in the US Constitution).

To try and get the ECHR interested in banning images of child AVs you would have to argue that the lack of a legal prohibition breaches the Convention. Article 3 on the grounds that seeing such images might possibly occasionally lead to a real child being abused which would be a breach of that child's right not to be inhumanely treated? Good luck with that one.

Frankly I cannot see the shift in legislation you have discussed as "fundamental". It closes a small loophole as you described it. Even the legislation that contains the loophole is arguably not a fundamental shift since the existing obscenity laws could probably have been used in most cases.

And all I said was it seemed unlikely that the EU would take an interest. That is a far cry from suggesting it was "outside the bounds of reason". Generally I agree with your posts Stephen, they are certainly amongst the better thought out that appear here, but maybe I begin to understand why you get so many hostile reactions.