This was interesting to me, and I will describe the news program for those who do not speak German:
The Report Mainz news program began with a description of Second Life as very popular worldwide, and in Germany also. There are all kinds of things to do in SL, it said, even pedophilia. Then it described how it is very easy for adults to criminally mishandle children as avatars in Second Life. The report followed an adult who approached children in a playground, asked a girl some questions, paid her the equivalent of a couple of Euros and took her away for such a purpose. They said because there are real people behind these avatars such practices in this online world could be a big influence on the participants in real life. This is true for both the adults (who could get ideas for how they could abuse children and become accustomed to it) and the children (who could be introduced to abuse and become accustomed to it). The news crew went to places in SL where these things were happening and was able to make films there. They described how they had seen shocking scenes including a 13-year-old girl who was raped three times as others watched. They showed these films to Oberstaatsanwalt (Attorney General) Peter Vogt, who said under German law Second Life is providing child pornography and he is working to bring a case against it in the Bundeskriminalamt (Federal Criminal Office).
Then the reporters visited Linden Lab in San Francisco and spoke with the Assistant Director of Second Life, Robin Harper. She admitted it was true they had received reports of such things a couple of times over the course of the past four years. The reporters also spoke with child protection expert Friedemann Schindler, who said in the game Second Life representatives are known as "Gods." They have total control over the game and could easily stop these actions by creating a program that would make it impossible for children and adults to have sexual contact with each other.
In the process of their research the reporters met an SL participant from Germany who gave them pornographic photos of real girls, which they also showed to Robin Harper. She said this was terrible, and these were not avatars but real children. She said everything possible would be done to find out who this person was and arrest him. The reporters also showed these photos to Peter Vogt, who said he would also do that to the best of his abilities. This person could receive a child pornography prison sentence of 3 months to 5 years.
At the end of the report it concluded this issue could bring about the end of Second Life. It said a recent decision by Linden Lab to separate the areas where adults and children can be in Second Life is not nearly enough.
To be fair to everyone I have described this news report as accurately as I could.
My own view of this news report is that it was overly harsh toward Second Life, illogical and inaccurate on many points. For example, it made no distinction between child avatars and real-life children. I have looked around in Second Life for three months now and do not remember ever having seen a child avatar. It is possible for any adult to make a child avatar. It also seems to me probably most children participating in SL would not make a child avatar anyway, but would choose a beautiful lady, a soldier, a cat, a dragon or something like that – although naturally this would depend on their age. In addition, I feel most of the responsibility for such actions would be with the people involved in doing them, and if children are involved then also with their parents for not looking after them. This is the same as participating in anything else on the internet. It is not at all my intention to say here expressions of pedophilia in Second Life are not a problem, which I believe they are, but that in my opinion this report was made with a particular motivation against Second Life, like propaganda.
It might be of interest that a very similar news report to this one was also shown on Swiss television. This can be seen here, the third entry from the top: http://www.sf.tv/sf1/rundschau/index.php
I have not viewed this news report. Next to the entry is a notice: "For copyright reasons we are unable to post this video report on the internet."
Also, an article about the Report Mainz program has been published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper. It is titled “Second Life Loses its Innocence,†and can be seen here:
http://www.faz.net/s/Rub475F682E3FC2486 ... ntent.html.
Although I do not want to go all the way through this article, overall it is much more fair than the television report. It gives a short history of 3D worlds in the internet, and describes how they have been mostly only a reflection of the people involved in them. In this way it is somewhat critical of Second Life and Linden Lab for describing Second Life as being more than this. At the same time it is also somewhat critical of the [i:1d5ajvyw]Report Mainz[/i:1d5ajvyw] program for presenting its “discovery†as very important when in fact it did not actually say anything most people do not already know about the kind of activities that take place in the internet.
In addition there has been a post about this topic by Linden Lab in the Second Life blog: http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/05/09/a ... cond-life/ (Wednesday, May 9th).
