Recent Comments:
Virtual Ageplay Still Too Real
Second Life Insider
Oct 30th 2007 4:24PM This just made my heart sink, especially reading Eloise's comment that it was the lead story on Channel5 (UK).
Unfortunately is one of those stories that is too good to pass up, to the point of getting the facts straight.
It pushes a number of emotive buttons, and plays into stereotypes and prejudices at the same time: Weird virtual world, whose members have a penchant for dressing up as animals, revealed as haven for paedo ring...the Sky reporter must have been rubbing his hands in glee at that one!
Bring in a whiff of child abuse and it becomes difficult to have an argument or discussion about the story itself. This will be a difficult one for Linden Labs to live down.
The thing is - they've been here before, when Germany's ARD TV ran a similar story in the spring. And they should have been prepared as anyone who works in the media could tell you that this was waiting to happen
Sadly, instead of combing through places like this, they've chosen to introduce heavy handed and probably unworkable policies like the much talked about age verification.
