thought-crime?

[tamaranth]

Second Life 'child abuse' claim

I agree that the exchange of 'real' (as opposed to virtual) pornography is criminal and immoral: but I'm less definite on the criminality of virtual abuse and virtual pornography -- "so called "age play" groups that revolve around the abuse of virtual children", in the words of the feature.

Is virtual crime victimless? Does it harm others? Is it a safety-valve? or preferable to people committing (or planning) those crimes in real life?

There are a great many things that are illegal in reality and legal (even favoured) in game-worlds: mass murder, theft, reckless driving, cruelty to animals, slave-trading, prostitution. I am thinking about what makes virtual pornography a real-world crime.

Comments

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

Where's the dividing line between realistic CGI representations of illegal acts and grainy video footage of the real thing?

The answer is that UK law makes no distinction, and the issue has existed for over a century: images can be created by hand as well as by camera, and anyone can hire actors who look a lot younger than they are - who can of course simulate rather than commit an illegal act...

So the law is about images depicting illegal acts, and a Second-Life sequence that depicted underage sex would be in clear breach of the law.

As for the morality of it all, English law has a sound moral principle which is difficult to define in practice: we forbid material likely to 'corrupt and deprave'. I believe that an immersive reality that allows people to develop and act out fantasies of sex with children is doing precisely that.

If someone has a fascination with children that has sexual overtones, that's the worst thing that they could do - and by the time they sought help from a psychiatrist, they would be thoroughly conditioned to sexual arousal by children - 'real' as well as virtual - and very difficult to treat. Corrupted and depraved, indeed.

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Where's the dividing line between realistic CGI representations of illegal acts and grainy video footage of the real thing?

The law may make no distinction, but the dividing line should be clear: whether or not an actual person was the victim of the illegal act depicted.

As for 'the law is about images depicting illegal acts' ... I'm not convinced. Does that mean the recent series of Barnardo's adverts, including a child injecting itself with heroin, were illegal?

One person's corruption is another person's creepy fantasy. I suspect there are quite a lot of sites (words, images, video, music) on the internet that are neither legal nor moral, but nevertheless allows someone to get a thrill from imagining the behaviour described.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

The existing law already criminalises images where nobody has been harmed; photoshop a girl's head and torso onto a woman's nude lower body and you have created an indecent pseudo-photograph. But proposed changes to the law (see my other comment) could widen the scope for this enormously.

There are two usual arguments for criminalising such material:

- It is liable to reinforce paedophile tendencies.

- It is used for grooming children prior to sex abuse.

I am not sure how much the first argument has been validated (the counter-argument is that it could act as a relatively benign substitute) but the second does seem to be a serious concern.

[andrewducker]

So surely criminalising the use of it to groom children would be the answer?

(I'm sure that's already illegal, of course)