Landlords: have you forced age verification yet?

Nope, just quoted a drivers license number and the system accepted it.

But, as you said, there's no way any Australian government body will release any info to a third party. So, no matter what LL do or say, the type of information they require can't be verified.

Your skybox is at an altitude of over 780 metres??????
So you have to poke it up there after every sim restart, and at random intervals?


There might be the odd resident or two using 'exploits' to push prims up over the current altitude limit, but effectively no currently existing builds would need to be moved in order to allow access to the unverified.

The suggestion is not that 'restricted' content should be banned on the ground.
The suggestion is that unverified be unable to access the very high altitudes in any way.
Then people have to option of building so high that an unverified could not even cam up there, much less actually get up there.

People might prefer that option rather than have all the nonsense on the ground with parcel restriction (yet more ban lines) and camming.
We'll never have perfection in the environment. However, this suggestion could help to avoid much of the blight on our SL experiences that would logically follow from mandatory/strongly-suggested parcel flagging.

Top idea there, maybe make limit higher though so PG Skyboxes wouldn't overcrowd between 700 and 1000m

And I'm using 1.20RC on my mature land and haven't had to verify yet, so not sure what staying with 18.1 does in that regard differently.

If you are having trouble verifying, make sure you enter a valid postcode or zipcode (or equivalent) if you have one, even if this isn't a mandatory field.

My suspicion is that for some countries this is the only information it does actually check!

Matthew

Um, I live in Australia and age verified and noticed the same problem with the age verification tester.

The only differences between 1.18.1 and the later viewers (1.19 and 1.20) are (as I recal) that

a) in 1.18, land owners don't get the options to restrict parcels or estates to age verified accounts
b) if you try to enter an age verified parcel/estate but aren't age verified (or apparently are from Australia!), you get a message not found error rather than a you need to verify message.

Matthew

According to my account page, I'm definitely age verified. If I try to re-verify, it just tells me I already am and won't let me do anymore.

Anyway, if i cant get into somewhere because I'm "underaged", it's their loss and they lose my business.

In Ireland, most of Europe and many other countries, the ID information being demanded by Integrity is simply not available to them to verify against. They know this, but still demand it. This clearly implies that contrary to LL's assertions, Integrity intend to 'repurpose' the data.

Most of the USA, where peoples private information is traded commercially, don't seem to be able to "get it" that other jurisdictions do not treat their citizens privacy as commodities so blatantly.
In Ireland, for instance, our own car insurance companies have no access to our driving licence information. They can't even insist that we tell them. They have to bribe us with discounts on premiums to try and get the information.
Even different arms of government are not allowed to share information freely.

Following on 9/11, there were extremely serious differences of opinion between Europe and the USA over access by security functions to citizen data. The idea of European (and some other) governments releasing citizen data to a piss-ant commercial operation is ludicrous.

Integrity's databases in Europe and elsewhere are largely based on electoral rolls.
These are be notoriously inaccurate in Ireland, and also exclude anyone with enough good sense to opt out of inclusion in the restricted versions that can be released to outside entities.
I have see comments from people in the Europe who have had to step back through a number of previous addresses before Integrity could match them on whatever out-dated lists it had.


If LL suddenly made IDV mandatory there would be absolute mayhem.
Impossibly large numbers of people would end up trying to verify manually.


I really wouldn't worry about bugs in the LL software for access restriction. That can be fixed if required. It's just ( Yeah - LL! ) a technical exercise.
What can't be fixed is this insane fantasy that it's possible to actually verify age online.

All one has to do to get verified by Integrity is to feed them somebody's info that Integrity can match on their database. It doesn't matter to whom the data refers. Anybody will do.

Kids don't even have to remember what RL details they might have given to LL when they signed up. Integrity have no access to account data. Even if they did, kids could simply create a new account to match whatever data they have obtained to spoof at Integrity.

That seriously about covers it all doesn't it ?

Iris scans, its the way to go. When SL age verifies you they give you a choice of specially designed eyes, which are tint modifiable of course, these eyes are scripted and you have to walk through a screening machine to be processed before you get in to a age verified area. They could also make the machine modifiable so you can add resident visitor counters, a voting system, LMs and notecards and even coffee cups or seeing it's age verified alcohol and cigarettes.

I've not enabled age-verification on my land even though I'm supposed to, because it locks ME out even though I'm verified. I'm not enabling something that doesn't work =/

If you have TP'ed after loggin in then you can't enter age restriceted land even if you are age verified, its a long standing bug.

The Lindens said there was a fix for it on the RC veiwer, but that doensn't work either.

I knew that. Still not fixed after all of these updates?

I'm of fairly mixed feelings on this whole IDV thing.

I make no apologies for being a blatant pervert. I enjoy mature adult sex type stuff and have a lot of it on my property. I've also recently been building dirty perverted sex type stuff that I'm considering selling to other perverts like me.

So what do I do? I realize that keeping minors off the main grid is futile. I do not want my dirty sex type things in the hands of minors, but I want perverted like-minded adults to be able to purchase them.

So what do I do? I realize that NO IDV system will ever be able to verify the identity of every adult in the entire world nor will there ever be a system that some enterprising young person wont be able to completely undermine.

So what do I do? I realize the system that LL is implementing doesn't work, and quite possibly will never work with any more accuracy then say, the teleport system or the inventory system, or any other system or procedure of LL's that currently only works part of the time for most of the people.

So what do I do? And what will I do when the next sensationalist 'journalist' or irrate parent finds dirty perverted sex type stuff in SL and it just happens to be MY dirty sex type stuff? LL says they are not responsible for user created content. So the blade falls on my neck.

My choices are:
1. White wash the world and make it family friendly. The way families are these days, an NC-17 rating ought to be good enough. It's just unfortunate for me that I'm a little farther beyond NC-17 in my personal tastes.

2. Use an ineffective system to try to afford myself some semblance of protection, not just for myself but for your bored kids who you cant control and leave to wander the porn-filled internet alone.

So what do I do? I don't want to ban adults from my property and I don't want minors buying my sex type stuff.

I actually like Sling's suggestion a lot. With the new client that allows building over 1000 meters hot on the starting line, it would be a fabulous opportunity for LL to THINK AHEAD and do something slightly more pro-active rather then re-active. You can't build above 1000 meters now, its incredibly difficult to cam that high and the space could technically become the "MATURE" area that Mature sims should have been all along.

What do people want in an IDV system... I mean other then it should actually work, which, you know, there is no company anywhere in the world that will be able to verify the age or identity of every adult in the whole world? Do we need an IDV system to be anything more then to be a legal band-aid, or do we actually think that we can find a system that makes it impossible for minors to access adult material?

The fear has always been that, although rationally you wouldn't be at fault for anything, that doesn't prevent someone from trying to sue you; and virtual worlds law is muddy enough that such a lawsuit might make it to court.

Once that happens, you will have to stand on the dock accused of distributing pornography to children, and even if you are found innocent the damage to your RL reputation could be considerable, and any anonymity you had in SL will be gone.

It's not therefore too surprising that some landlords requested that LL should add stronger age verification to avoid this nightmare scenario.

Yeah Age Restriction keeps everyone out. This is a bug that LL need to fix if they want to go ahead with this nonsense. Now here's a question.. If someone marks their land as Mature Content or Age Restricted on a PG SIM, is that AR'able? Sounds to me like they are admitting that they are breaking the rules.

Absolutely. And I hope you are keeping your hair covered for those in Sharia governed places. I will indeed be on the first plane to Saudi Arabia for standing with a virtual Margarita.

Maybe the whole thing eludes me, but you cannot definitely verify, the TOS has disclaimer, and if you do you are not necessarilty verified, but it's ok, though it may not be in some places but you have now given your data to a data mining corp for no real purpose ?

Yes, the advance of the interwebs thingie.

The "stronger age verification" still doesn't avoid the possibility of the nightmare.
My understanding is that LL (will) have a contract with Integrity. Integrity will pick up the legal costs *for LL* if an age-verified avatar turns out to be a minor and a lawsuit results from the minor accessing inappropriate content that is flagged as restricted.
It's simply an insurance scheme to cover LL costs in the event of a legal case.
I don't know if Integrity will pick up any costs for LL if the access is achieved by the minor looking/camming into a restricted parcel from an unrestricted parcel.

No resident has a contract with Integrity. In a lawsuit in which anybody_you_can_think_of gets sued, a resident who has flagged and restricted their parcel will almost certainly still get joined in the action. At the very least, there would certainly be discovery procedures.
*It is even possible that a resident owning an unrestricted parcel from which the kid had looked/cammed into the restricted parcel would also be joined in the suit as they would have facilitated access.*

The old defence was that the kid lied about their age to get onto the Grid.
The new defence will be the old plus the fact that the kid separately submitted false information to Integrity.
That's not a cast iron defence. It's blindingly clear that Integrity does not actually verify anything other than that they can match some information submitted online by an unknown person. There is no way for them to check that the person submitting the data is the person to whom the data refers. It's the most obvious move in the world for a kid to feed false information to Integrity. It's a complete no-brainer.
Even if the defence were accepted, the resident pulled into the case still gets "the nightmare".

Even if it were possible (and I doubt it) that Integrity picked up the costs for a resident who had flagged their parcel, the upshot would be that the case and the resident's name would become public.

If someone is genuinely worried about being named in a lawsuit, they should not be in control of or associated with material that could cause them to be named in a lawsuit. IDV is no protection for them. IDV might help to reduce the chances slightly, but it won't prevent it.
A *very* cautious resident would not own land adjoining a restricted parcel.


IDV is not designed to prevent lawsuits.
IDV is not designed to actually prevent access to inappropriate material by minors.
IDV is intended to insure LL against the legal costs to LL.

IDV is simply a complicated "Are you 18+?"



Example:
http://consumerist.com/378799/widow-sues-petsmart-for-selling-killer-hamster
"In 2005, Petsmart sold a woman a hamster infected with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus, or LCMV. The woman died of a stroke, and her liver was transplanted into Thomas Magee. He subsequently contracted LCMV and died from complications. His widow is now suing Petsmart.
.........
At first we wondered why the hospital wasn't to blame (if anyone is) for not screening the organs properly before shoving them into people. But a 2005 article (also from MSNBC) on a very similar case—no names are given, but the timeline and details match up—indicates that the donor and her organs were screened and didn't show any sign of infection. In that article, a Centers for Disease Control official indicates that pretty much everyone was taken by surprise: ......."
No matter, Petsmart still got sued.


Example:
Yes, we escorted out son to the door of Michael Jackson's bedroom, but we had absolutely no idea or suspicion that anything untoward was going on. Now we're suing.

Can I confirm with a non-age verified resident what actually happens with parcels flagged as requiring age-verification? I know that if I go near one I can still see everything on it even though I currently can't get in, is this the case for people who aren't age-verified as well?

It seems that the whole point of age-verification is defeated anyway because the future is utterly useless and stopping people seeing things they shouldn't.

I've not tested this recently - but it certainly was the case that anyone could cam into a restricted parcel, click on things, pay things etc.

LL's response was "Unfortunately, as noted in SVC-599, parcel access restrictions are limited in usefulness. Until/unless we better address this, the age verification restrictions have the same limitations. Truly private restrictions can only currently exist at the estate level."

see http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3789

I pulled together all the jira issues (such as this one, and that the ban only goes up to 50m etc.) into a metaissue at http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-3787 - basically the intrusiveness of the age verification is disproportionate to the actual protection it actually provides (or doesn't provide).


Matthew

What a very interesting idea for getting my neighbors to sell me their land cheap


Nothings ever going to stop people from filing frivolous lawsuits against each other. But here's a little blurb from the wikipedia about the Child Online Protection Act:



We are going to have to decide eventually which is more important; protecting children who's parents won't take the responsibility of protecting them by limiting their online activities or our own First Amendment right of freedom of speech.

In the mean time, the smoke and mirror campaign of IDV is all we have by way of protection. It's about the same level of protection offered you by the Coitus interruptus method of birth control.

The big problem is while some of us are willing to give our real email, credit card and drivers licence for verification. LL allows anybody in with NONE of these at all.

I don't plan to age-verify until it becomes meaningful. From what I read, the age verification system does nothing that actually prevent underage children from successfully age-verifying. However, by giving up documents to verify myself, I help to increased the already scary mountains of data about me that get shared with credit agencies who sell it to anyone.

I'm not concerned that failure to become age-verified will prevent me from going anywhere in Second Life. I have yet to try to go someplace that required age verification.

If I do attempt to go someplace, and it will not allow me to enter due to failure to age verify, then I will not age-verify. I will simply go to another sim that doesn't require age-verification.

Because most proprietors of public places in SL realize that they have nothing to gain from age-verification, but everything to lose (traffic and potential customers), I know that very few people are going to actually require age verification in the first place.

So to re-cap:
1) An SL consumer has nothing to gain by age-verifying, but loses time to the hassle of it (at minimum) or the risk of irresponsible use of personal data.
2) An SL proprietor has nothing to gain by requiring age-verification, but has potential customers (and potential money) to lose by requiring it.

Age verification does not exist to actually prevent minors from acessing adult material. It exists solely as a liability shield for Linden Labs. They bolster their stance that they are not responsible for the content creating by their residents by showing that they provided all the tools that residents needed to prevent minors from accessing their adult material.