The relation between an avatar and a human being can be as simple as "this is my puppet and I am its puppeteer"; or as complicated as "this avatar is actually me, free of any constraints, able to be and do whatever I want". Measuring this relation is hard if not impossible. I have certainly met both, not only in other people, but also in myself; I guess I have not 'invested' too much in it. My yahoo avatar is of extremely little significance to me. Should my SL or MUD avatar be killed or raped, I would have to deal with more complex emotions and it would affect me in many ways (the 2007 book "Second Life Herald" by Ludlow and Wallace is an interesting read from this perspective, also raising the economic perspective on the relation avatar-human, at least in SL). The problem in my view is the fact that we tend to think of avatars (and the technology behind them) as independent of the human element. How do things change when they are perceived as 'extensions of the self' or when the boundary between human and technological gets undermined? On the other hand then, everything - including this post - may be approached and studied as extensions of the self. So, like one participant said, does that mean one cannot look at cartoons without ethics boards' approval? I do not have a solution to propose; it only seems to me that both arguing that everything online is susceptible to ethics - and arguing that avatars or blog posts or forums are only instruments and tools used by human beings (and therefore not requiring ethics approval) - both are simplistic. Delia Dumitrica PhD Candidate Faculty of Communication and Culture University of Calgary