So virtual paedophile behaviour attracts the attention of real-world plod (if that isn't an oxymoron).

However, virtual evisceration, murder, torturem theft, serial killing , creative sadism etc., will continue to be not only acceptable, but actively encouraged as doting parents everywhere buy Grand Theft Auto and others to give to their pre-pubescent offspring for Christmas, to celebrate the season of peace & goodwill.

"Ceop's primary concern is the possibility that Second Life, or other virtual environments, might be misused to groom youngsters for abuse"

OMG!! we must bad air asap, people might misuse it as a medium to do bad things, won't someone think of the children!!!

and while we are at it, all the crimes i hear of seem to have been commited under the influence of both gravity and bread, ban em both!!

Firstly, I disagree wholeheartedly with paedophilia - I find it repugnant, and those involved in acts against children should be given the strongest sentences available.

However, this is not paedophilia. This is people engaging with each other over the internet in a manner of their choosing. To try and "combat" it, or whatever, is trying to make it illegal to have these thoughts. Which is outrageous.

Back in Roman days if you weren't shagging your mother, brother, son, local castrated boys, etc, you were the one who wasn't in the norm.

Today, we have laws that prevent us from the above, and it is by these laws our sense of "decency" prevails. However, just because it isn't decent to do these things, how does anyone have the right to stop someone thinking them, when after all, they are just thoughts?? They are in essence just out of sync with our time line.

I predominantly play shoot 'em ups and car games on my 'box. Running around killing people, and driving at 100+mph in a city are both illegal, yet to do so in a game or on-line community is perfectly acceptable, as it is fiction.

If these sort of powers are given to authorities, to ban thoughts as they choose, then this is a very sorry state we live in, and a million miles from being a democracy.

Everyone has the right to think what the hell they like, and interact with others about those thoughts. If they then physically act on it, and break a tangible physical law (not some bullshit cyber one they're trying to push), then fair cop, book 'em.

Otherwise, leave them alone and work on some useful laws that prevent the good guy getting screwed over, instead of wasting your time on ludicrous scare story laws that are an irrelevant waste of time and resource.

While I find it sick that some people will carry out "virtual abuse", I'm not convinced that it would make them want to do it in real life. As an example (can't believe I'm admitting to this) I once "dated" a vampire on SL, so she was technically dead, but I'm not about to dig up a corpse!

Similarly, I don't try to fly off high buildings in my every day life (well, not while I'm sober, anyhow.

As for the abuse of real children using internet chat of any kind (after all, Second Life is just glorified IRC in that respect) -- I still fail to understand how this can happen, how do you touch someone through a computer? Any parent who doesn't teach their children that out in the world there are people who want to steal from you or hurt you isn't fit to have children -- don't parents teach children "don't talk to strangers, don't get into strangers' cars, don't accept sweets from strangers..." any more? Just how bad are some modern parents that they can't teach their children the difference between fantasy and reality, and the basics of "survival"?

So the contents of your hard drive, be they "terrorist materials" or "extreme porn" are heading towards being evidence of crime and now we have "virtual child abuse" too.

It seems that our ever protective Nanny State is so unwilling to trust us that even just *thinking* or *fantasising* about something is prima facie evidence of criminal intent and thus we should be locked up by Big Brother just to be on the safe side.

But, tell me, isn't murder be worse than (or at least as bad as) child abuse? So thinking about it or writing elaborate plans for it should clearly be an offence as well.

So everyone who writes crime fiction where someone is murdered is obviously a danger and a threat to society and should be locked up because whilst they're only fantasising about it now, it might "incite" them or someone else to actually *do* something in the future...

Ban sweets, biscuits, lolipops, candy floss, dolls, toy cars, dogs and cats.

You could argue that any of the above things can be used in the act of engaging a young child for the purposes of grooming......

Or you could just make the punishment for harming a child much harsher. I would argue to move the entire pedo population of england to a small uninhabited island in the middle of the pacific and drop supplies by plane every once in a while....

Or you could be realistic and say that you'd rather have an outlet for these sicko's to get their jollies off, however abbhorrant it is, rather than with your child.......as long as it stays that way and if they cross over capital punisment is in order.

I agree ytou should be allowed to do whatever you want in a (Consenting) virtual environment. As there is no victim, hence no crime.

However after discussions about this with Wifey (Psychiatrist) she pointed out that engaging in this behaviour.

Even if the behaviour is between consenting adults pretending to be abuser and abused, then it is FACT that these behaviours lead to an escalation of activities and eventually could lead to child abuse, or attempted child abuse.

Now obviously the only evidence for this is from people who have been through the medical system for committing said abuses. So they have to offend to show the above evidence.

Everyone else who does the virtual abusing but never gets in trouble IRL, will never be included in the above escalating behaviour observation.

Our joint consclusion was:-

"Hmmm, difficult one this."

Linden Lab do police this. Their banning of accounts involved in virtual "sexual ageplay" caused a furore amongst the free speech advocating users. They took this hardline stance on account of this kind of virtual depiction of child sex already being illegal in countries like Germany.

They have to know about it first, though, and that's probably like expecting someone at an ISP to go through every single USENET post on the chance of finding something awry.

... consider making some things &/or thoughts illegal. I appreciate the thoughts of the people here with regard to censorship, however, perhaps they don't have children and have no concept of what this kind of abuse really is ? I have not personally experienced it, but I know people who deal with it as part of their job, and quite frankly making any sort of it illegal is by far the best thing to do. So what, we might persecute some pervert who, quite frankly, needs help - but we prevent others from going further to abuse children, grooming or worse. Think greater good people - one pervert, or as in a case local to me recently, 62 children - shoot the pervert - better in the long run.

Since the inhuman race never ceases to amaze me anymore, maybe its safer to have these weirdo's on that website. At least while they're getting their kicks out of a virtual world, it might just stop them from doing it in the real world. Paedophilia will never be eradicated. Fair enough, people will say 'but what if they see something on there & go and re-enact it...' Well I'm sorry, but they are going to do it anyway, regardless of whether a website can cater for their needs or not. Seemingly, it's another sexuality. You're either into child sex, or you're not. Nobody can change them, and we can't lock them up because our prisons are full of much more dangerous criminals like fraudsters & car theives. And while we've got judges and high profile celebs being caught with dubious images, it is obvious it's a deep rooted problem, so maybe letting them live out their fantasies on a website for the socially challenged is the best thing to do.

Current child porn law in the UK criminalizes images of lawful sexual activity. The age of consent is 16. The child porn law sets the limit at 18.

OK, so we all think we're talking of the abuse of children, but the law classes people old enough to marry (and bonk their brains out) as "children". I don't want to see under-18s in the porn industry, but calling them "children" is a debasement of the language.

Unfortunately, in my time playing on-line games, though text based, I have seen people involved in pretty blatant ageplay. Not the sexually curious teenager, illegal in some places but not others, but playing the genuine child.

It's disturbing. I do wonder what these people might be doing in reality. I don't feel comfortable about protecting them, or tolerating them. But then I look at the "protect the children" insanity that can regard a married couple as "children", and I wonder when the lunatics will come after me because of my tastes.

To be honest, I doubt computer graphics are up to the demands of live on-line porn. But how long before the lunatics erase the border between badly-drawn pictures and text? And what will that do?

Er... what children would those be? That section of SL requires you to be 18+ with a credit card to get in, so how the hell are these people going to "groom" children who supposedly CAN'T get in there?

Or does the credit card requirement and 18+ restriction no longer apply because little Timmy could "borrow" Mummy's credit card and find his way in? Must we assume that even areas MARKED and RESTRICTED to adults only can now be infiltrated by children, and so therefore nobody is allowed to make any form of expression anywhere, on the off chance a child MIGHT see it?

It's easy to label the ageplayers as sickos, but in reality most of them would simply be reliving childhood memories. Criminalising and persecuting them is vile and unjust. How old were YOU when you first noticed the other sex was "cute"?

They didn't say they intended to prosecute anyone for getting up to some virtual child abuse on sadville, but they were looking at this to see if they find some RL paedos lurking in there.

Again, for the slow, they do NOT plan to prosecute anyone for being a virtual-perv, you can bugger as many babies as you like on SL safe from Mr Plod provided you don't try in out in RL.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!

What a relief to finally see someone else talking sense on this ridiculous double standard.

Sorry futher to my last post :

"Protection of Children Act 1978 (England & Wales)

To take, or permit to be taken, or to make any indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph of a child; or to distribute or show such indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs; or to possess such indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs, with a view to their being distributed or shown by himself or others; or to publish or cause to be published any advertisement likely to be understood as conveying that the advertiser distributes or shows such indecent photographs or pseudo-photographs, or intends to do so."

I rest my case that they are guilty ... Incidentally, before you all jump up and down on the "photograph" section, a lot of the Act refers to "images" not "photographs" ...

( Shoot them ... )

These sickos should be hung. Even worse than Second Life is this new game spreading around called "The Brain". Advertised as the "ultimate organic fantasy role playing environment", it is popluated by perverts "virtually" acting out super realistic sick fantasies. In "The Brain" people do things like kill their annoying parents with medieval torture devices, act out sexual fantasies that they would never dream of enacting in real life, and imagine winning vast amounts of money on lotteries and then blowing all their winnings on orgies of fast cars, illegal drugs, and sexual impropriety. This phoenomenon should be closely controlled by the police. I suggest giving them access to "Brains" as well. We need our guardians to be fully equipped to control these ill conceived "Thought Processes" else our children will turn into Godless demons.

To do THOSE kind of things in a virtual world is to act out a SICK fantasy, it has to be asked how many of those who defend it so visciously are the pedo's in question?! No names mentioned but lets randomly pick a poster who threw all his doys and dummy out of his pram - The FIRST Anonymous Coward, why is it YOU want people to act out sick fantasys? Do you get kicks from this kind of thing or are you preparing for the next step?

Funnily enough, I think that according to UK law they probably have commited a crime ... It is certainly a crime to edit a photo to make it appear as if a child is being abused, even if it didn't actually happen. And ...

"Obscene Publications Act 1959 & 1964

The law makes it an offence to publish, whether for gain or not, any content whose effect will tend to "deprave and corrupt" those likely to read, see or hear the matter contained or embodied in it. This could include images of extreme sexual activity such as bestiality, necrophilia, rape or torture."

I guess that pseudo paedo action probably qualifies under the above quite neatly as well ...

So, whilst I can agree that perhaps we aren't seeing "justice" per se, the law certainly has it in the bag, and on existing legislation anyway ...

( I still vote to take them all out and shoot them by the way ... )

I am not a fan of first-person type shooter games, I think they decrease our natural resistance to harming other people. But I am even less of a fan of pedophilia... I would probably enjoy shooting games more if there was a good reason to 'kill' the 'enemy'.

What about if Second Life allowed shooting (ala Doom or Halo), with a 'time-out' (for the victim, or for both parties) after someone is shot? I think a lot of people would turn 'vigilante' - go and look for crimes such as virtual pedophilia and avenge the victims. And people would quickly learn that some behaviours are really unacceptable, even in a 'virtual' world. For someone who just wanted to try it for kicks, the possibility of getting shot would probably add to the adrenalin rush (or whatever it is they get out of it :-/ )

Nobody who has posted here wants people to act out sick fantasies, as you put it. Many would like people to BE ABLE to act out their fantasies in VIRTUAL space, sick or otherwise, without fear of persecution.

Violent/sexual video games provide an outlet for anger by allowing us to do things we'd never do in real life. It's amazing how stress-relieving a good round of gaming can be; for my part, I enjoy playing Age of Empires II (an old classic) because it feels good to be able to run my huge and merciless army over an opponent's town murdering all their villagers. It's a great stress relief after a rough day at the office; I might set up a computer opponent and give it the name of a rude customer, or the RIAA, and then rape its arse off in the game.

That you want to impose limits on people's expressions of their fantasies makes you one of those "bullying self-appointed moral arbiters who set themselves up as thought police" referred to by Sceptical Bastard above. I agree with him in that post; reading yours made me want to string you up too. You have no right whatsoever to dictate to me or anyone else how we may choose to express ourselves in virtual reality, or to judge others by your arbitrary moral standards.