Recent Comments:
Acting your age - or some other age.
Second Life Insider
May 18th 2007 11:11AM "You can say your avatar is under 18, just as long as your under-18 avatar is not engaged in lewd behavior."
So - if your avatar appear to be under 18, but you state quite clearly that they are older than 18, then your avatar can engage in lewd behaviour?
What would stop someone from claiming (when pushed) that their character is meant to be a 21 year old pygmy, dwarf, etc.? There is actually an old report in the SL Herald about a manga-style character who appeared to be an 8 year old girl but was 'really' 400+ years old (and was a virtual sex worker.) Is this character covered I wonder?
Perhaps you might want to question the Lindens again on this issue since there is still so much ambiguity?
Another point: it seems to me that the Lindens are treating sexual in Second Life as pornography rather than participatory sexual interaction between partners. The choice of 18 as the minimum age of consent for an avatar seems related to the widely used minimum age of consent for legal pornographic appearances rather than the disparate age ranges for sexual consent in the developed world. Age ranges for sexual consent vary widely (especially in Europe and Japan) with differences between states in the US too: while there is a much more uniform age of consent for pornographic appearances.
In the real world it seems to me that a porn actor or actress can appear to be any age they can manage to appear; as long as they are actually 18 years old. Does this rule transfer to Second Life?
Another question for the Lindens: how private are privately owned islands? Simulated sex between declared child avatars and other avatars, and Nazi symbolism are both banned; but would the Lindens chase this up or are they only concerned when they appear on the main grid? After all, neither are illegal in the United States and many other countries, and the main concern with both of these is the offence that they will cause on the main grid. Are private islands ever visited by Lindens without the owners' permission?
