Age verification, Failure or Success?

It will never happen. Humans will not subject themselves to that level of control and accountability, because once you have achieved such a thing, the level of corruption will become absolute for those in control of such systems. As such, there will always be those who refuse to be part of the system, and they will continue to act as monkey wrenches in the gears, precisely because of this situation.

It all comes down to a matter of honor and trust. If I give my word on my honor, for all things which solely affect me, that's all ANYONE ever should need. It's called "being responsible for oneself and the exercise of one's freedom". It is a foreign concept to most modern people, and the source of a great deal of unnecessary conflict in society because it is foreign.



In some places, the use of such devices is being outlawed, precisely because the cost outweighs the benefit, as they are unashamedly touted as revenue sources. Ticketing the vehicle and not the driver often gets these cases thrown out of court as well, because all it takes is a credible alibi to escape them.



If you can show me credible evidence that is true, then I might be inclined to believe you. Still, even if you do, you won't convince me of the *need* for those sites to do so. It is not and should NEVER be their responsibility to protect YOUR kids. Period. If your kids are trespassing, then they are in violation and it is their and your responsibility and yours alone as their guardian. I also still submit the question what "harm" are they being protected from? There's no credible evidence of ANY harm coming from kids viewing "adult" material. I'm not advocating that they should be allowed to see it without restriction, but I believe it is the PARENTS' choice, not the governments' or society's.



It is good enough for me. I shouldn't need a mile high electric fence with a passcard entry system that accepts state/federal ID to get onto my land in RL; all I need is a sign that says "NO TRESPASSING". That should be good enough for everyone. If it isn't, I submit it is because people have an unrealistic expectation that it is society's responsibility to protect and raise their kids for them, and not wholly their own. Which stance do you think is the more mature one?

date of birth form fields

And credit cards do not mean jack.

You have a good portion of the world that doesn't have them, thus cutting out a large portion of the possible userbase (something LL does not want to do)

You also have kids with them through debit cards, pay as you go cards, etc...

There is a reason all the porn site verifications relying on credit cards got dropped, didn't work. Plus it means someone had all those lovely cards linked to personal information and the mandatory security and screening related to it

Yes, wasn't that foretold in Revelations?

I sincerely hope I am long gone before we reach that point. We are too close to it as it is for my comfort.

/me checks the calendar... checks for tatooing supplies.

Not sure they understood the concept of barcodes back in those days..................

Honor and trust is great unfortunately when you can't trust others you need more than just morals and an axe to protect you and your property.
The same no tresspasing sign also means you need no door locks either because the sign protects you by using the moral responsibility of others?
We souldn't need restriction of underage alcohol usage either as parental responsibility protects them and us from the xconsequenses of it's use.
I guess the question of harm depends on whether you think theres no harm in a 12yo to frequent an explicit sexual mutilation site, or something similarly offbeat.
I am also yet to see credible evidence that "over 18" checkboxes prevent more underage access than Credit Card requirements, it really just seems commonsense to me which one takes more effort to bypass, I wouldn't think a university paper on the subject is required.
yeah sure kid can get prepaid credit cards, in some countries, in others it still works, but if a parent lets kids have free access to their credit card and SSN then somehow I seriously doubt a "over 18" checkbox will be more effective.

Thanks to those who have fessed up to their positions of strength (and more to the point, ignorance) on this subject. If anybody else wants their views to be seriously considered then you might consider posting your status.

Lord - Was the internet text-only when your kids were kids?

Windsweptgold - Have you said how you "manage" your teens' internet access; I'd be interested.

Tegg - So you are an armchair critic, as I suspected.

Talarus - No kids eh? What a surprise! You sound like my sister-in-law, who was full of BS about kids before she had them.

My situation is that I have a preteen daughter and a newly teenage son, and I do not monitor anything that they do on the net, nor have I done so since they were old enough to understand that "you" is spelled "you" not "u".

After I discovered three years ago that my daughter had registered herself as a 24 year old ("I thought of saying I was 18, but all the girls that say they are 18 are obviously not, because they can't type or spell" so that she could access more facilities on the games site she was using, I sat down with her and her brother to discuss their use of the 'net. The conclusion we came to was a principle of WWDD, ie "What Would Dad Do?" which eliminated any questions of hypocrisy (my 10 year old son's favourite word at that time) and meant that they were self-censoring, obviating the need for me to look over their shoulders all the time, or for them to worry about me looking over their shoulders. It also means that they treat everything on the 'net with cynicism and mistrust, as I do, which is great training for them in their real life.

My attitude has surprised and shocked several of my wife's friends; it has annoyed their children considerably, since my kids keep it strictly PG (in the ridiculous SL sense of the abbreviation) when anyone else is around, as they understand that our liberal attitude may not be universally acceptable.

And what "terrible" things have happened to my kids as a consequence? Nothing much, except that my son now doesn't use the adjective "gay" in a pejorative fashion and my daughter has confided in me that she doesn't ever want to get married.

I sometimes let them look over my shoulder when I am inworld, until their laughter at the generally moronic antics and conversation of the inhabitants attracts the attention of their mother, who *is* a sort of social worker and feels sorry for the sort of people who have to get their kicks out of SL - yes, including me - and believes they should be helped not laughed at.

The result of this is that my son has absolutely no interest in getting on sl ("What's the point of chatting up girls who are actually men?" whereas my daughter wants me to make a female avatar and get lots of clothes to dress her up; her desire is not sufficient that she will hand over her pocket money to me to buy stuff though!

So that's *my* attitude to kids on the net. They are smart cookies though, and I guess that is the crux of the potential problem regarding kids on SL; most of those that want to get on are probably blessed, as my daughter has just explained to me "with IQs below room temperature". Add that to even more crass social and cultural ineptness than the norm in the nerd-dominated SL (which makes the "Big Bang Theory" look like a documentary) and you have a recipe for disaster. It will certainly put me off; where's the fun in winding up people who will *never* work out what is happening?

Pep (It isn't age verification that is required to divide up continental access, but dumbness assessment)

PS Don't expect any response to your replies until after the Masters finishes.

Aha so apparently unless we currently have kids or have kids for under a minumum number of years we are not qualified to discuss age verification?
Thanks for clearing that up, I bow before another internetz egzpertAnd I assume sisnce you didn't answer my questions and one of your own you agree completely

If you confined your comments to the process of age verification then I wouldn't want to ask your qualifications for commenting on how parents should or should not manage their kids' internet access. Stick to your knitting!

Pep (Funny - I get my assumptions right and you get yours wrong)

PS Getting a bit excited towards the end of your tryping?

Seems like if anything, the opposite ought to be true. Children are to be seen, not heard. They might be the future, but today belongs to us.

Presumably parents who aren't running age verification services should confine their comments accordingly.

Until kids can get gainfully employed to the point where they can get a line of credit and become paying customers of SL, I don't see why it would be in anybody's interest except whole families who are on SL to have minors on Agni. And if family bonding is the goal, perhaps going out and doing something as a family is more appropriate than picking up a feed bag from the McDonalds drive-thru and chatting at people online with whom you share a house with...

Or non-parents

Pep (If they are discussing technicalities which would need experience and first hand knowledge to be understood)

Sorry, did I miss the bit where you had to pay to use SL?

Pep (A different discussion, I would have thought?)

Careful with those stones around your glass house.

There are some truths which are self-evident, and much of the rest have been confirmed/refuted by many parents. I don't live in a vacuum; I have enough family and friends with kids to know what the score is.



Nice anecdote, where's the part that is conflicting with what I have been saying? I mean, if I am supposed to be so full of BS, that is?

You weren't initially responsible for your kids on the 'net, they exceeded their allowance, you found out, you finally fulfilled your lax responsibility. You couldn't offer a better exemplification of what I said.

Thanks!

Now you are sounding like all the childless teachers I know.

On the contrary, they didn't "exceed their allowance"; when the matter came up because my son told me what his sister had done (he was annoyed because she had obtained more facilities than he had, having told the truth) I confirmed our understanding of the way they used the 'net, reassured them and myself that the universal paranoid and draconian consensus of their friends' parents and most other supposed authorities were irrelevant to our situation, and we happily carried on. Considerably different, it seems, from your projected approach described below!



Pep (That's going to work! )

Yep. I use a gun. Never bring an axe to a gunfight. >.>



I lived out in the boonies by myself for a decade. Rarely, I would lock my doors, because my doors were mostly glass, and if someone wanted to get in, it was trivial for them to do so. In the last year before I moved, some local teenagers decided to help themselves to my home whilst I was away on vacation. They didn't break through ANY of the glass doors, they went around the back to my finished garden room, which was 10 feet off the ground sitting on 4x4s, shinnied up one of those 4x4s, took the screen off a storm window, got it open, climbed in, and helped themselves to my stuff and trashed the place. They then left the same way with their loot.

In short, I lock my doors, not as effective proof of entry into my home, but as a sign; a simple notice that says "don't enter without permission" to those who bother to respect it. For those that don't, it provides no significant barrier to entry. I suspect that is the same for the vast majority of "locked" forms of entry to what people call "home".



Let me know when we can drink alcohol out of our 'net connection, k? It's not even remotely the same kind of situation.



As opposed to the mutilations in "R"-rated slasher movies? What is it about "sexual" mutilation that makes it so much worse? Don't hand me that crap about "kids are prevented from seeing R-rated movies without their parents", either. Kids regularly get into R-rated movies at theatres, they can get the DVD from any number of sources, or even watch it online (either legit or pirate; check out Hulu or The Pirate Bay for examples).

It still doesn't address the point that I keep making. It isn't *MY* responsibility if your kid exceeds his allowance and exposes/hurts himself on my webpage. I'm not talking about kids falling into pools and drowning, nor am I talking about kids being handed liquor at the local package store. If a kid orders booze online with Daddy's credit card, gets drunk and kills himself and/or others, it isn't the fault of the online booze store, any more than it is the fault of the local package store if the kid presents fake, but credible ID, and the clerk has no other reason to suspect the kid is underage. No, I don't expect a clerk to hand a 12-year-old with obviously fake ID a bottle of booze. However, that level of verification isn't available online, so the option is either 1) don't do business online, or 2) absolve oneself of the responsibility of verification.

In addition, the reason you don't see a proliferation on online booze stores is precisely because the standard for "harm" is completely different.



That's because no one here is making such a statement, your creation of a strawman notwithstanding. I'm just maintaining that credit cards and age verification services are not the panacea that they are made out to be, being nothing more significant than the lock on the glass door, or the no trespassing sign on the front lawn.



It certainly won't be significantly less effective.

Coming from you, that's a compliment.



Oh, I see, you ENCOURAGE your kids to go to porn sites. I should have figured.



Works for a majority of the people out there. Worked with my parents for me. Worked with my friends and their kids. Gee, I guess it just, well, works!

In your idiocy, you fail to point out where I said it was the ONLY way it can work. But since idiocy is your main selling point here in this forum, I guess it can be overlooked.

Trust me, it isn't, however much you might like to believe it.

Your logic completely escapes me, but why is that not a surprise?

If you are an example of it "working" then I'm glad I'm pursuing another way.

Pep (I see lots of birds in the sky, but I don't claim to be able to fly)

Yes, but, that COMING FROM YOU, PROVES it is. So, again, thanks!



Doesn't come as a surprise to me, either. Not sure why it would to you. Oh yar, I forgot, you're the self-proclaimed "educator of the forum masses", and are, thus, "perfect". Ass.



Me too. We need more roadkill on the information superhighway.

Yet more rambling illogic.

Pep (Do you think before you type, at all?)

"Is not!" "Is too!"



At least as much as you do, for sure.

There you go again.

No, my brain gets involved in the process.

Pep (Maybe you are an expert on dragon kids?)

A more snappy comeback I could not expect... from a rock.



Well, that certainly explains your continual epic fail here.



Sure. Whatever floats your cork, mate.