SL mod that allows others to see you nude causing small stir in forums

Superman could see through clothes with his x-ray vision and now Second Life developer MC Seattle is selling the SL Nude Mod which essentially offers the same powers:

SL Nude Mod is an addon for Second Life that hides clothing layers on avatars. The changes are only visible to the person running the modification and do not have any permanent affect on appearances. This is accomplished by running a special proxy on your computer that modifies information coming from Second Life, so your client thinks they are not wearing any clothing textures.

Sorry Linux and Mac SL users, this is a Windows-only deal and requires .NET 2.0. Interesting from the screenshot that the digg crowd isn’t digging it … yet.

The SL resident forum thread is abuzz this morning with primarily negative commentary including things like it’s sick and will be used to look at child avatars and even more extreme. A few samples:

Sky Eclipse: “Thats just wrong……… sick infact and rather pathetic.”
Strife Onizuka (Resident Moderator and marked the thread for Linden review): “I’m inclined to stay away from this, there are a lot of folks I don’t want to see naked.”
Wilhelm Neumann: “… bottom line are you getting the consent of the avatar to view them this way? because i’m tempted to see what the lindens thnk about this stuff i’m thinking its boardering on the edge of the abuse policy.”
Jak Mathy: “lol, sounds like this is going to sell like hotcakes.”

Before going further, I did not drop L$3,500 ($12.25 USD at current exchange rates) to buy and actually test out this mod so do not assume I’m going to be seeing your avatar nude in world. To flip that around I don’t really care if someone else can see my avatar nude since I haven’t even outfitted with a penis (for the uninitiated: Second Life male residents don’t come with penises). A few folks have sent me the equipment but it has stayed in my inventory. Frankly I find the whole idea of avatars having virtual sex non-erotic. So to my SL resident friends, don’t worry about me running the nude mod, but will freely admit being fascinated by the angry reaction from others.

In this case we aren’t even talking about sex, we’re talking about nudity of virtual avatars. Let’s not make the way we all come into the worlds — both real life and virtual — sexual. I’m not a nudist but I don’t have a problem with those who are. That’s their thing and it’s not always about sex which I would think most rational thinking people can agree upon. Using a mod like this does seem a bit peeping tom like to me though, so I understand others who choose like I have not to partake in mods like this.

One of the most engaging things about Second Life is the undercurrent; it brings up situations — sometimes more dramatic than they need to be — that may someday happen in real life. Imagine somebody creating glasses or perhaps contact lenses that could see through clothes? I’m sure the minute something like this was created somebody else would create the anti-xray vision device. Would you buy either the nude mod or glasses like these if available in the real world?