False Underage ARs - A suggestion

If someone continually files false ARs against you, that's clearly harassment and stalking, which are TOS violations. It is entirely possible LL is taking action against AR abusers, and it's simply showing up as "harassment" in the incident reports. They don't go into extreme detail in those things.

A court would certainly take the reasonable man standard into account. Taking action against abusers of the AR system would in no way stop a reasonable person from filing a legitimate AR.

Failure to take action against AR abusers, on the other hand, could also lead to obvious legal issues.

I'm also not sure how big a deal it is. I don't recall ever encountering a user I knew to be underage. Some I've suspected, but they may just have been spazzes.

I've never witnessed an ageplay incident, either.

The teen grid is where problems are likely to be. I'll bet most of the "teenagers" on the main grid are going on fifty years old.

I long time ago I saw an adult male avatar going round a store telling everyone he was only 16 in RL. He was probably just trying to wind people up, but if so he was being very foolish because he was doing the SL equivalent of a making bomb joke at an airport check-in!

The problem is, it's a huge legal mess.

Technically, anyone under 18 is breaching the TOS by being on the main grid at all. But this isn't a crime, because since they're under 18, they can't be held to a legal agreement. If they lie and use a parents' credit card, that would be illegal as fraud or identity theft - but they don't have to do that.

But anyone who has a minor wander onto an adult build is subject to a lawsuit from the minor's parents - and it doesn't matter if they lose, because their employer and all their friends know that they were playing adult games on the internet. That isn't going to be something many people are keen to have happen!

My son got me into trouble last time we flew. He saw a friend of his sitting a couple of rows down from us after we got airborne and shouted "Hi Jack! " to him . . .

Pep (Really!)

Which is it? First you say that not all states require physical contact, then your very first example specifies sexual contact - which is presumably physical, unless you're prepared with an explicit definition in Idaho's law that says otherwise.

The fact you posted a long list of various jail terms and age limits, but never gave specific wording about what action is or isn't criminal suggests that you don't understand the issue here. No one is saying that there are no laws concerning sexual activity with minors, nor that there are significant jail sentences. The question is specifically about cybersex with minors, and whether it is treated on the same level as rape.


This was easy to look up because of the unusual terminology. According to http://www.legis.nd.gov/cencode/t121c20.pdf, gross sexual imposition (essentially what we think of as rape) requires physical contact, and, in the case of statutory rape or physical force has a minimum 20 year sentence. Corruption of a minor also requires physical contact or the intent to have physical content. There is a separate crime, called Luring minors by computer or other means, which requires a) that the person believe the other party is a minor; and b) the adult tries to get the minor to do something sexual in RL (as opposed to just talking about it). The maximum sentence is 10 years, but if the adult doesn't try to meet with the minor, then there is no minimum.

And this is consistent with the point that I was making, which is simply that cybersex with a minor is not the same as rape, at least not according to this excerpt of ND law. Furthermore, it's pretty clear under this law that there is no crime (as far as ND is concerned) if you engage in cybersex with someone in SL who later turns out to be a minor, but you had no reason to believe that. (I'm ignoring the separate obscenity issues for now.)


The wikipedia article is referring to a different issue, sexual ageplay, and not the issue of cybersex with a RL minor who got into the adult grid.

You're still talking about physical contact. The issue at question is cybersex, without contact.

Yet a different issue.


As I pointed out in my previous post, trying to meet a minor is a different situation.

You said that cybersex was the same as rape in your jurisdiction. But none of the examples you gave involve cybersex.

I'm not even sure about that. Doesn't fraud require an intent to get some monetary gain? As long as access to SL is free, they're not getting any value out of it, not even theft of service.

Also, even if you're over 18, it's generally not a crime to violate the TOS. It's breach of contract, which is a civil issue, not criminal.

No, but if they wanted to push it, a teen on the adult grid or vice versa could be construed as unauthorized use of a computer system, which is a crime (just ask Kevin Mitnick).



It depends on whether or not your access is intrinsically unauthorized or not. Account sharing would qualify as unauthorized use of a computer, for example.

Modern operating systems offer this by default already, and even ones that are 20 years behind like Windows offer it if you're willing to jump through hoops. (If Microsoft's serious about Windows 7, they might want to join the 1980s and make privilege separation enabled by default like the rest of the world has been as long as I've been alive now)



Impossible. LR isn't the sysadmin for it's users systems.



If you leave your wireless open, it's not being pirated, you're inviting the public in. If this is not what you intended to do, time to enable WPA to limit access just to authorized systems.

And you can have a pretty good idea of what's going on if you exclusively use software that has peer review (ie, open source, such as Linux, Second Life, Firefox, etc).

You heard it here first: Children are above the law!

Considering the reasoning behind age verification is to protect the innocent children that are sneaking on to the adult grid... by committing fraud, theft of network services, and a lot of crimes to be honest (you'll be surprised at the number of crimes committed by someone falsifying information to access a service online)


The laws punish the adults, and not the children.

None of the actually underage residents banned are punished in any way. Yet any adult that is found by a court of law (and not public opinion ) to have done something wrong in interacting with that child's avatar with out any knowledge what so ever of the user being underage is going to be punished....

So yes the children are considering themselves above the law because none of them face a punishment for the crimes... and yet they turn 18 and magically they wind up in jail or facing heavy fines as an adult and wondering why... none ever told them or punished them for doing it when they were 17...

It's completely impossible at any age if you're outside the US. It's been broken for over 18 months.

Jira here:
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-734



Just out of interest, have there been any actual lawsuits of this type?



and I'll stick to thinking that whatever consenting adults choose to do to get their jollies is none of my business. If something offends you, you do have the choice to just move along and stop picking at it. Nobody is making you join in.

No, that's the wrong assumption to conclude of what I was saying.

One can join SL for free and play for free. It doesn't necessarily mean they used Mommy or Daddy's credit card. And even if they did use Mommy or Daddy's credit card and charged stuff on SL, the parents WOULD get the bill and figure it, but that doesn't mean the parents are going to turn their child in for identity theft for crying out loud!

As far as the internet, it's pretty much considered the last bastion of free speech and a child's monitoring of the internet is up to the parents NOT the internet itself. However, it would be a better internet if games such as adult only games like SL gave some control to the parents themselves, and that wouldn't be a bad idea for all 18 and over games.

I'd think the only way for parents to know if SL is on their child's computer is to keep checking the add/remove programs since most software now sidesteps the in store buying where parents could see what the gaming software was rated whether mature, pg, etc.

You can already prevent your child from installing anything by limiting the admin privileges on their login on the computer, at least you can on Vista, and I'd imagine that any other OS had something at least as good in place. This is what I have done with my kids - if they want to install something, they have to wait for me to log in as admin and install it for them. I don't see this as LL's job and I can't think how that would work in practice.

My kids have better taste than to play sl.

Pep (Their mother's genes I presume)

Oh, that's cool. See, then it is up to the parents.

Let's see..well as far as I can tell there's no way to know if the person is actually underage or not. And even if they are, what stops them from creating another avatar and getting right back on? Linden Labs™ opened the barn door long ago, no sense in trying to close it now.

Actually, I think that anyone filing an underage AR should be subjected to the same "punishment." They should have their account locked, forced to send in age/identity stuff and deal with it every time they file an AR.

Then if the AR is proven false, then the accuser should be subject to a 24 hour ban on all alts and main.

Indeed...because every online service requires a password to get online.

So don't tell the kids the username or password, and then they can't go online without you around.

Even windows xp has had where you can set permissions on accounts... so they can't install anything (or even go online)

But most parents are going to want LL to be the ones responsible for keeping their innocent little spawn from getting on the adult grid... much like they want website owners to keep them away from content...

It isn't going to happen... the parent has to take steps... not the companies.

It's like buying your kid a movie or game and complaing about the contetn

Well, I haven't seen any evidence for this yet. Ever since the beginning of the whole age verification debate there have been a number of people saying that it's the parents' fault - that this is something parents are demanding because they can't be bothered to supervise their children's time on the web. I have yet to hear any parents saying that this is something they want to keep their children safe - perhaps because it won't.

That's why I would be very interested to hear of any actual lawsuits that have been brought against LL on these grounds.

It's why the government requires the drop down age verification in the first place, LL faces legal fines and penalties due to parents getting laws passed for the children.


Much like the bs over game ratings... never mind the fact there are ratings on the games (parents just don't bother reading them)

I realise that LL are trying to cover their backsides by bringing in this scheme, but from everything I have seen so far I think the pressure is coming from the gutter press and various governments, not parents.

Who do you think writes to the politicians?

Do a search on age verification topics, you'll find plenty of parents here that want LL held solely responsible for kids getting onto the adult grid...

Politicians read newspapers and generally care a lot about what newspapers say.



OK, just done that (it appears I have contributed to a few of them lol). I didn't find a post by a parent asking LL to be responsible for their kids. I found posts by people who may or may not be parents, but who share general concerns about what would happen if they were caught in an intimate situation with somebody who turned out to be underage. I found posts by people who I suspect are not parents, but who have a broadbrush "think of teh chillunz!!" attitude, and I found posts by people who don't seem to know the difference between an adult RP'ing in a child avatar and an underage account. I didn't find one post by a parent saying age verification is a good idea as it will keep their child safe. That's not to say I couldn't have missed something. Do you have any specific posts you could point me to?

Crazy people.