Now a German Paedophile Expose in Second Life

Marv Albert wears a fur I think.

I think according to their laws it is the same thing though Chip.

That leads down to the idea - is why do German laws apply in Second Life? If you arent a German Living in Germany .. I dont see why they would.

And like you were saying any actual child porn (as in photos) that traded hands in SL should be prosecuted if proved by whatever country has juristiction. People could use Yahoo to xfer the same sorts of files so I dont see LL's responsibility there.

Exactly!

Incidentally, I love that here in the UK we can strip off and do the nasty 2 years before we can watch two people simulate it in a movie.

Christ on a Pony!!!!! Where the hell is that idea coming from? Another question: Was the alleged sale of Child pornography transacted in world? or did the parties meet in world and then make the transaction outside of SL? This story appears to be full of innuendo and half truths and plain old misinformation.

I'm not following or reading too well yet today, and I just popped in this thread to post that news article.

But my impression was that people in SL were found actually trading child pornography - i.e., actual photos of actual children participating in sexual acts.

That is illegal in the U.S., too.

Is there something I've missed that means it couldn't be referring to actual photos of actual children?

coco

P.S. Apparently, yes, photos - cause here, from the Register article chip posted:

"as well as offering child pornography for sale.Investigators in the city of Halle are acting on specific information about a German Second Life player, or avatar, who put child pornography images up for sale"

- or maybe that's ambiguous, too. However, it doesn't seem unlikely to me that pedophiles would trade pictures on SL.

On the other hand, Robin did say they would turn this person/these people over to the police, which is what LL would do were actual child pornography pictures being traded or sold in SL.

What Mandy said.

But were the images put up IN WORLD?

I guess is comforting to know the US doesnt have a monopoly on Obviously Biased Newsreporters who dont bother to do their research before coming out with a story furthering an agenda.

You know, I don't think that matters. Just the act of having and trading them is illegal.

But - if they weren't put up in world, how would the original investigators have found them?

If they were being privately traded between players, only LL could see that.

coco

well, I'll tell you. I've noticed my cat has been eyeing my laptop for a while. I thought she just wanted to lay on it, not GET laid on it!
Who would want to cyber with an animal? Their typing is atrocious!

I dunno. Perhaps, for the "Greater good" of secondlife Lindenlabs should just rangeban The entire EU and UK just for good measure. Just lock em out. that way they won't have to get thier prissy little Undies in a bunch over it and it's citizens won't be enticed by the decadent west.. Seems reasonable and would protect all parties involved. Later on..We could enact some new bans on Central and South America, Asia and Canada.Oh, And then Utah. And the Bible belt.....

That was France, the UEJF vs. Yahoo case. UEJF (an organization) was complaining that Yahoo made available nazi signs to french citizens, which is prohibited under a french law (France has not the First Amendment). The law also says that any content provider is liable under the french law if he makes the said content available on the french territory. It does not matter where the server is. The server should be out of any international jurisdiction to escape that, and I know only some off-shore platforms and the moon.

The fact is: Yahoo, Google and most search engines now GIVE DIFFERENT ANSWERS IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES. This is made possible by IP address geolocation (to the city level, even to the street), so the server can return a different answer based on local laws. This is easy to check by tunnelling a request through a machine in the States and making the same request directly from France. Answers are different.

So, forget Californian laws. That's how the Internet works now, and Second Life is part of the Internet.If UEJF sees nazi signs in Second Life, the will sue Linden Lab, be sure of that.

I think LL would just see Textures file names trading hands - Im sure they dont even attempt to monitor whats on our tectures.

Yes, that seems to be the case, but I get the impression from the statement I posted that they're also talking about ageplay in general, between adults using child avatars, and for all we know what's being traded might just be screenshots of avatars.

@Collette, I think LL is likely afraid of two things - being liable for civil suits and having participation in SL barred in Germany which according to that article has over 200,000 SL residents, one of whom happens to be their single largest tier payer.

Yeah SL is a stupid place to find beastiality.

Someone into that would have a higher sucess rate going to like .. a Farm.



Of course I do know some people that call themselves Milk Cows.

A BDSM subset that involves gigantic lactating breasts and mentally acting like a cow I guess.

Still this isnt beastiality - It just a unusual (looked for a safe adjective) Lactation Fettish.

Or half baked legislaters and law enforcement officials.

Yeah great point.

Of Course - If Virtual Images are Child Pornography in Germany - then they could say trading THOSE photos, taken in Second Life - was trading in Child Porn.

I can't see lawyers passing up any new law or set of laws that will lead to more billable hours.

This is a huge opportunity for the legal community to make new laws and lots of money. Its not going away.

And big money will be behind it because some private/commercial activities of residents will be seen as impacting the image and bottom line of the larger investors in SL and discouraging others investors.

I've been thinking (while I let the cat out) - you know, to us, who are used to consenting adults engaging in roleplay with one of them putting on a child avatar, it is hard for us to imagine that there might be hard-core pedophiles here, trading or selling actual child porn.

But then, I'm thinking, isn't that kind of naive of us? I mean, those guys have a history of doing that all over the internet. It would hardly be surprising, especially with all the publicity of late, if they have found SL and found it a wonderful place to do this (and an anonymous one).

It makes me wonder what else might be going on here - like money-laundering, or even terrorist activity.

Now, I know that is going out on a limb - I'd sooner expect the pedophiles than I would terrorists using this as a meeting place or something. I really don't think that's likely at all.

But - just to say, it's not a small, unknown world anymore, and I suppose it's quite likely that quite a few unsavory types are here among us.

coco

I misspoke. What I meant to say were the images exchanged within the SL Platform? If so, POSSIBLY a case may be made as to LL's involvement. But if the two "persons" simply met in world and exchanged the images via email or some other method outside of SL, then I think the Gestapo need to be looking elsewhere.

What does that have to do with anything here? If anyone is getting discriminated against by European courts, its the ageplayers. One can easily acertain no child is being harmed in a cartoon representation of child sex.

I suspect its no more legal in your country than it is in Germany, after all, your country has child safety cigarette machines, reading a code in your bank chip card containing information if you're actually legally old enough to smoke. That's only a step away from avs systems like Germany's xcheck.

American law regarding freedom of speech has absolutely nothing to do with discrimination - in fact it is all inclusive, for everyone who is a US Citizen. US law regarding discrimination are hopelessly entangled in citizenship issues, all the way back to Dred Scott.

You should try reading these things, sometime.

I'll help you

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech

Seems clear enough for me. It's the basic ethic of "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"

Laws dealing with discrimination against blacks and other minorities were passed after the Civil War and are entirely separate from freedom of speech issues. They have to do with citizenship and residency issues, the aftermath of slavery and the need to right the wrongs committed there. They have to do with Federalism as well (power of the states vs the Federal Government) which is still a war alive and well today in the US and is a huge mess for the most part. Just about everything dealing with discrimination falls under Due Process clause of Amendment 14. (because the first part of the clause was invalidated by the Supreme Court a few years after the Civil War in the Slaughterhouse Cases, again, entirely unrelated to free speech)

so this part no longer applies -

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;

this is what applies to discrimination -

--nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.--

I'll freely admit I'm more a federalist than a freedom of the states kinda gal, at least in regards to the Constitution's Priviledges or Immunities clause - which is a necessary check on the abuses of the states against individual rights. Eroding it led to the Jim Crow south, and it took about a century after these laws were passed for blacks to actually get the rights that were due them by law.

Just goes to show legal systems are not one to one comparable. Your clause in the Netherlands about discrimination comes from an entirely different sort of precedents than the laws around discrimination in the US.

One could argue, the US actually has more laws protecting discrimination of minorities than most European countries do - which freely discriminate in areas such as work and housing all the time. The US has a lot of laws prohibiting this. Equal opportunity, and all that.

To the question of whether or not this child porn was real, from the Avastar (bolding mine):

Child porn scandal

By Regis Braathens

GERMAN authorities are investigating a shocking report uncovering RL child pornography in Second Life.

In a month long investigation into Age Play in Second Life, reporters from the Report Mainz program on German TV channel ARD filmed sick scenes of adults paying for sex with and raping child-like girl avatars. One child avatar at an Age Play playground said: "I'm nine years old. Do you want to be my babysitter? Then you can rape me. I cost L$10 for ten minutes."

Another vile Age Player, looking to exchange RL child pornography, handed over several shocking photos to the reporters and boasted that he could deliver thousands more. The photos, however, are now in the hands of the German authorities, who have launched an investigation. "We will try to put a name to this person. If we succeed in catching him, he can count on a jail term of three months to five years for third party possession of child pornography", said Peter Vogt, Chief Prosecutor at the Central Office Against Child Pornography in Halle.

It is the second Age Play scandal to rock SL this year. At the beginning of March, The AvaStar spoke out against Age Play, and called for it to be banned. Editor-in-Chief Regis Braathens wrote: "We should be clear about this - there is no place for Age Play in real life, and there is no place for it in SL. It is wrong both morally and ethically and it should be stopped." In response, Linden Lab sent out notecards to offending parties in SL, stating that all advertising of Age Play is now banned. Yet few other effective measures appear to have been taken.

Robin Linden, vice president of Linden Lab, has now vowed to take action. "We will find out who is behind this, and then inform the police", she promised.

Read the FULL story and reaction in this week's issue of The AvaStar, available on Friday 11 May.

Click here for the video from 'Report Mainz' If you want to voice your opinion, then send an email to [email]regis@the-avastar.com[/email].

The next thing is to make crayons illegal in case someone draws sexual acts with them.

I have no doubt that there is this and any other type of criminal activity you can think of going on in SL and in any other community you can think of. Again none of this is new. I think maybe its just people are becoming aware of it more. I remember having a conversation with a guy that who was a self proclaimed criminal and ex con just out of jail in another game. He also hacked accounts (enough said about that) stole the stuff sold it etc. Its just another environment to do their whatever in just like it is to us to do our crafting and role play and such. I remember the conversation well because I had never seen or talked to someone who was just so "honest" about the entire being a criminal thing. His thinking all of it was bass ackwards I went away totally boggled by it. Yet I have had to deal with criminals in real life but this guy like bared his soul and what he showed me was indeed scary (annonymouty of the internet is a very scary thing and produces all kinds of problems)


I know people are upset about all this verification and stuff but in all honestly unless we want to all fall into a big black hole and Linden lab end up with dealing with issues of criminal law we have to accept that they are indeed attempting to do the responsible thing. We dont have to like it (who said any of us had to like any of this) What we do need to realize is that its not just their fault this is happening its the size of the game and the exposure its getting and a credit card really means nothing these days. They are simply for lack of a better way to put it lag and all a victim of their own success and therefore taking matters into hand.

Yes verifying is something that is a worry to many and inconvenient to some degree for everyone, but its better then the alternative. They are trying to limit criminal activity we should be thanking them for taking this step and working with them to make it a smooth transition and making suggestions without creating hysteria and negative hype

Let's face it even if your worried about your privacy you can't say what they are doing is wrong and no one can they are simply trying to act responsibly as a business.

this is a good post -

Its important to note that by a strict consititutional interpretation all of that discrimination was already illegal, the Soutern laws were unconstitutional but it was a situation where the states did it anyway.

It wasnt until The civil rights movement these things were challenged and the constituion was enforced.

That can happen with other rights too - Laws have been passed denying freedom of speech in the past.

Fortunately the Consitution is one of the things that prevents the US from being what so many of the world claim it is - a Police State.

And it will be what guarantees Bush will step down peacably in 2009 - contrary to what all those who claim hes the next Hitler think.