SL Discrimination

This actually seems to be an issue of property rights. They're not really rolling back functionality so much as extending it. If the horde of unverified bozos turn out to have a lot of the unpleasant of character in their ranks, then the only current option would be to set your land to "no entry at all". This allows people to be a bit more discriminating and allow some of the people in.

So, yes, it is a form of discrimination, but only for personally owned property. In real life it's nice to be able to keep motorcycle gangs from riding their Harleys across the wood floors of my home, so I discriminate against allowing people on motorcycles into my house. If you want in you have to leave your motorcycle at the door. It's nice to be able to do a little of that kind of thing in SL, too.

Does anyone know what the difference is between "Payment Info on File" vs. "Payment Info Used"?

*waves at Neb*

sure. back when you and I joined SL, it cost money, so even if we were basic accounts we paid to join and thus they have used our CC info. Anyone who joined when it became free to do so may have supplied CC info but that CC was not charged necessarily (for example if they never upgraded to premium).

It goes something like this

no verification - people who joined and have not provided any cc info

kinda verified- people who gave a CC# but LL have never charged it

verified - people supplied a CC and LL has processed at least one payment on it

Actually, if i had kids and they came here they lied. That should be dealt with by the parents, not so much a game company. We assume someone is 18 because this is the mature grid if they are off lying about their age that is THEIR problem. Why is the blame put on a game company? Thats the problem with the government they try to place blame everywhere else but the parents and the kids themselves. I find it kind of funny the FCC doesnt need to exist if the parents actually parent their children.

Your kids are going to get exposed to it either way and we arnt really promoting it. There has never really been a solid age verification setup. Any kid could steam mom or dad's cc or use a paypal accout belonging to their parents.

Not necessarily true. For starters. There are quite a few productive freebie accounts out there. This is exactly what this thread meant. You proved to be discriminatory just based on payment status. Not everyone is a griefer. Get a firewall password protect it and enable parental controls so your kiddies cant acces the second life site qutie easy to do actually. It doesnt matter if they are a public Charity or not they opened it up so more people could have access to it. They offer the free accounts and it wasnt that viable to charge for the baisc accoutns because they wanted more signups.

Even more so now. I say bring back the basic stipend and stuff for basic verified if your going to do it in this methodology at least that way you have a way to encourage basics to provide the info. Right now there is zero reason why they should provide the info except fear of being discriminated against which really isnt fair. So a few greifers are in the group that makes them all bad i mean what kind of logic are you thinking this thru with?

Yes, freebie accounts can be quite productive. But how many people can't afford a one-time charge of $10? Teens basically. My Internet connection costs me $40 every month.

True, not everyone is a griefer. But how do you tell beforehand if someone is? The only way is to make them put down a form of payment. That's not completely effective either ... but it has now been proven that it is a sufficiently effective method.


Life isn't fair.

I have no problem with such info displayed. I was wondering nonetheless why such info is displayed.

It now makes complete sense when you look at it from the standpoint about responsibly restricting content. If someone underaged got through to adult material not only is LL liable but so is the resident who provided that material!

Though people might (and likely will) use it to discriminate, which I rather they not do, it is in the best interest of those that provide mature content to use such discrimination to prevent legal repercussions.

That is, if you are a supplier of mature content be it a poseball, skin, or show DO use the status indicator to restrict it to those who have verified payment methods. It's not a perfect screen against minors but at least you have a legal foothold.

I too am at a quandry as why its being displayed, kids that are on their parents credit card would have a method of payment shown, so im not seeing how we can determine underage persons by this method. I for one see it as an invasion of privacy, its no ones business how you pay your bills, anywhere...much less here.

The only thing i can see is possible in the manner a Linden can acess your information in a fast and relialble way for whatever reason, either in a abuse situation, or to make us think they can. I do see it as a way for ppl to discriminate..like i said how you pay your bills or if your in free, should be no ones business but the bookkeeping dept at LL. I think its just kinda cheesy if you as me..but then they never ask me before they do anything anyway...lol why would this be any different...i am laffin

I don't bother discriminating residents, based whether or not they're basic, unverified basic, or premium. I don't equate "tourist" = griefer/underage kid, neither do I equate premium = decent trustworthy SL players. Hell, just look around you, some of those who pompously claim that they pay premiums are absolute ignorant assholes in and outside of Second Life. Give me a n00b on basics any day.

Actions speaks louder after all.

If you'e going to think about it, before the unverified accounts, kids have as much chance being in SL as premium users as basics. Why? Working, independent adults, particularly those who earn barely enough to support themselves will more often than not are going to be on basic--due to priorities and all that. Kids today priveleged enough to be playing PC games usually don't have to pay for food, electricity, house, DSL/internet connection, a souped up PC etc are most likely already using Mom or Dad's credit card to get into any game they feel like going.

However with the whole unverified account thingy, has just made an already existing not so bad situation only worse. Exponentially worse.

How you pay your account in reality doesn't protect you from griefers and pimply kids who have parents who don't care if their 11 year old kid is playing prostitute Barbie in Second Life or hacking their way to I337ness in WoW.

In the end what the company can only do is give responsible parents a chance and a choice to put their kids in a kid friendly environment (like the Teen Grid) and what not. The company has to work with the parents in making sure their kids are safe and still have fun. The company can't do everything, and expecting them to babysit your kids is frankly silly and lazy.

Now whether or not the company has done it's share to protect kids is another issue altogether. And frankly I don't think the company has, not with this whole no verification thing going on. At least with account verification there's still some semblance of control, but that's too late for that now.

In a commercial environment I don't have a problem discriminating between and against those who can pay and those who cannot.

However well meaning the recent LL approach to verification is, though, I can't help but wonder if they've taken the wrong architectural tack. They're making what I'm going to politely describe as an understandable mistake in trying to rule people out based on certain criteria.

We know that successful security systems are generally that way because they rule participants in, rather than out. By default, everyone is excluded from a privileged class unless and until they can provide the means to justify their membership in that group.

In the current case, one approach might be to provide an age verification service, possibly via an outsourced mechanism, to a firm specializing in that sort of processing. The primary issue, after all, isn't supposed to be whether you have access to credit, but your age.

Once you've proven to a trusted third party that you are of legal age, your avatar/account could be set to display a floating marker indicating that you are, in fact, old enough to play. Add'l controls would be added to access and commerce lists to provide the owner with the ability to discriminate based solely on whether you were old enough to legally participate.

LL hands off a big chunk of liability to a specialty firm that might, I point out, also provide this service to other MMPORGs for a small but profitable fee.

People like me who have a horror of interacting with the underaged would be able to absolutely ban anyone not willing to prove themselves of age, and the issue of credit cards would go by the wayside.

LL, if you're reading, I'd be happy to provide you with a free day of consulting to examine this approach.

The diference between verified and unverified to me is that a verified account is one that is linked to an actual person with a credit card, which means that that person can actually *lose* that account if they grief with it.

An unverified account on the other hand, only requires someone to make up a name and email address, and remember a date that makes their age greater than 18. Which makes an unverified accound as disposable as toilet paper for someone who wants to grief.

Once LL grants us the tools unverified accounts will *absolutely* not be allowed on land under my control. I don't think it's asking too much for someone to give a credit card number, and buy a couple of bucks worth of $L or something to get a confirmed, verified account.

If they think that that's to much of a burden, then they can find other places to be other than my land and the land of people who feel the same way that I do. Presumabley the people who think that that's "discrimination" will make them welcome on *their* land, and will be willing to deal with all of the disposable griefing accounts that will wind up on their land as well.

Yes,I think this should be changed because one time this guy shot me and he was like "you sucka fool" so I caged him. After that he was like "I have witnesses you cant get me in trouble." I was like yes i can.....then i reported him.

So he told the witnesses to look at his profile to see he is a payed player and he said that he would pay them if they take his side.

Anyway i always felt that Lindens take the side of the paid and not the non paid. Well first to support this argument.

One time a guy attacked me on the sim then reported it and then A Linden said TO ME in IM "Stop attacking him." When this happen a was logined in for like 2mins and i didnt have any guns out. So I was like "I didnt attack him." As you can see i feel that paid players get picked as favorites most of the time if not all

what do you propose we do for the minors then that know more about the system then the adults do? I worked IT support for a community college and ran across adults 10,20,30,40,50,60+ years my age that could barely turn the system on and panicked when it beeped or thought that "opening the case would allow them to "see" inside the cdrom drive and pull the stuck disk out" then turned around and showed you pictures of their 10,12,13,14, etc year olds. I learned html when I was 13, by the end of that year I was knee deep in perl scripts to install onto a server for a company I worked for. i'm now 21 and have setup alot of servers, wireless access points, etc.

I think the whole purpose of all those functions anyway is to allow people a chance to slow down the griefers starting to run rampant on their lands. I know I have no fly, no build, and no scripting enabled on my property from a attack I got from a griefer, now I have a security system installed that in one click takes care of the problems I got.


this guys payment info? "no payment on file" I suspect 98% of griefers just look for the quick grief, you start having to dig out a credit card and it creates a messy trail if they decide to become more malicious in their intent to harm people in the world....

i elarned html at 9, took C++ at 11

i am not sure about the truth of what you are saying however, it sound abnormal to you?

I was an inetrnet minor just a few months back. and you are all WASTING your time trying. I tested getting onto the main grid with a VERIFIED account. guess what???? I SUCCEEDED!!! this whoel unverified thing has nothing to do with age. I cancelled said account a day later . then after I turned 18 i made this account. but underagers CAN get verified without the help of anyone over 18. jsut thoguth I'd rock your worlds. and the inetrnet's signifigance really DEPENDS ON THE MINOR. I highly dobut an immature 11 or 9 year iold will have the patience or devotion to play sl, then again I was running a clan, website, and forums at age 10, I was always ahead of my age and had unrestricted access. my pc has only been virus infected twice, has been adware / spyware free for about a year and three months, have never "ACCIDENTALLY" been exposed to porn. Nor been contacted by an internet predator. I have never had filtering software of any kind on my PC. VIa much trial and error with coding i foudn a way to bypass basically all filtering sioftware, its called a php webpage coded to be a browser inside a browser. everything falls to it, I had my own placeholder credit card, a used visa giftcard around 14 or 16 that i used to convince others i was older. I built my first gaming rig by hand @ age 12, current rig carting an amd 2500+ barton core, a 128mb geforce6800OC, 1gb corsaiXMS3200C2PRO ram, 80GB WD inetrnal drive and a 120GB(built @ 16) external, and a hell fo a lot of nice software, steam (also faked age with CC) , EVE Online (also fake), firefox (IE sucks), teamspeak 2, ventrilo, celestia (for scaring my chool techers with my nerdy knowledge), zone alarm pro, skype, xfire, windown lvie messenger, REALVNC, avast antivirus, orbiter, and alot of other crap. my rig has a saitek x51 joystick. SO this ahs proven that people under 18 dont have virus ridden crappy computers with cheap and flimsy periphials. granted, im 18 now but ive ahd the rig since 16. nor are all fo them stupid annoying asswipes, as under 18 i basically hated the world because it and all mmos treated me like a 2nd class citizen, thus was born the diea to fake my age. I always was ahead of my age mentally, so I'm not sure I can speak for more than 0.1% of all teens, maybe your right and they are all ass-wipes. but I wasn't. I got into the habit of not giving my age and peo0ple always guessed I was over 30, so everything's been great. anyway on with your pointless annoying spam that will unlikely have several stupid teens and even more stupid "adults"


EDIT: oh eys I ahve much mroe etchnical knowhow than 99% of the world, I was qualified to work in IT and computer repair at age 13, never could get a job ebcause of my age, remember. it ahs nothing to do whether or not your QUALIFIED, jsut that your over 18.

Yet you still struggle with spelling, grammar, and punctuation.

Oh, no I speak eprfect english. I'm just a terribly lazy and bad typist.

I don't see why a feature to keep non-paying users out exists, let alone labeling them. Why allow segregation based on payment info? Perhaps there should be a labeling system based on how much land someone owns (land barron repellant anyone?), or how about how much L$ someone has sitting in their account (the gold diggers need a way to smell the platinum plus). In my opinion all payment info should be kept between LL and their customers, only LL employees should be able to see if a user has payment info on file or not, WHY DO OTHER USERS HAVE TO KNOW? This stinks of commercialism.

Actually it wont have any consequences for LL.

Why?

because they are not the ones banning anyone from lands in Second Life.
The players are.
One of the features in SL is that *I* can own land - and *I* get to say what the rules are on that land, and who gets to go there.

LL has just given a tool that says you can filter out who can go on your property based on a certain criteria - and players can choose to use it or not - LL isn't responsible for people using the tool.