age verification

I say let every one enjoy their slippery slopes

Its because pornography isn't viewable to people under 18

Isn't it the same in Europe?

It was people in France who complained about SL's verification process IIRC.

lol..so do I personally, but LL can't risk the legality of the issue... would you prefer to have SL as it is now, or prefer somebody getting offended that their kid saw a badly rendered tit, and end up suing LL and having it closed down entirely cause all the kids in the US have found out that when you have sex, the guys penis shoves through the stomach of the lady he's banging....


(Random generalization >.>

It's kind of a "tweener" as with so many other aspects of SL. It's kind of like porn (but not really, because the images are not photographs or videos of real people, they are cartoons, and cartoons that are being interactively controlled and manipulated by people). So in some ways in can be viewed as "interactive cartoon porn", but that's not a particularly well-established part of "pornography". And as to whether it's real sex or not, a whole can of worms is opened by that question.

The key, though, is that although none of this is really clear due to the sui generis nature of SL, there is enough legal risk for LL under these laws that it makes good prudential sense for LL to limit SL to 18+. Even if courts were to find that what takes place in a typical free sex area of SL, just to take a more egregious example, is neither porn nor sexual contact within the meanings of the relevant laws, nevertheless most parents would frown on their kids being exposed to this without some kind of protection (even though it's all over the internet anyway and they should be monitoring their kids' internet usage, but hey buck-passing is a parental tradition currently), and the publicity hit would be bad enough.

Age of consent doesn't extend to access to "adult/pornographic" content.

<random guess>
I'd guess that allowing minors access to adult content in whatever form is seen as corruption so in order to protect them it's illegal until they turn into a legal adult.

The age of consent likely has to be lower for practical reasons since teens will have sex at those ages regardless of legal status and could cause all kinds of drama for their peers if the basic premise is that the teen couldn't give consent so they committed assault/rape by default until shown otherwise when the parents find out.

Online things tend to blend together but since there is still a high risk of actual corruption or harm the system seems to lean over to the potentially overprotective side and make interaction between an "age of consent" teen and an actual adult (or content) highly suspicious at the very least.

Whether the teen is actually mature enough to be exposed is also not terribly relevant in my opinion. Their interaction with unknowing adults can cause problems for the adult, never the teen, regardless of who suggested or said or started what.
</random guess>

It probably does. All i know is that young teenagers get most of their pre-sex experience from pornography or other teens who's parents are up front about sex, in my experience many moons ago.

Another experience I have had in RL is that a child from a family that thinks sex is 'dirty' is more likely to end up with pyschological problems or with one member of the parents being found in a hotel bedroom with a plastic bag on their heads.

Pixel sex on the grid is not confined to a pornographic image; it is accompanied by explicit sexual language. In fact, explicit language often takes place even without the use of pose balls.

Engaging in sexually explicit conversations with a minor is pretty far down that slippery slope of behavior that can create liability for a resident if someone reports the conversation, just as it would if you engaged in this kind of exchange in an internet chat room.

As far as the law is concerned, it doesn't matter if the minor is 12 years old or two days shy of their 18th birthday. So any minor who comes on the grid has the potential to create serious problems for the adults on the grid. This transgression isn't going to hurt a teenager psychologically, but it could legally hurt the adults around them.

Oh! so it's a law to protect the adults, right I geddit.

You may be referring to one of my posts, where I mentioned someone who was banned after someone else reported him. It took a few days, I think less than a week, for him to get his info to LL and get reinstated. So, while it was very annoying, it wasn't an overwhelmingly bad experience for him.

I have no idea what information was provided to LL by the person who file the report, so I don't know how good the evidence needs to be for LL to just take action.

I doubt that's the reason. In some countries, it's not a criminal offence for, say, two 14 year olds to have sex - for the very reason you give here - but it *is* criminal for a 40 year old to have sex with a 14 year old. The idea that if the age differential is low enough (say three years) does cover kids experimenting without being criminalised.

However, the age of consent is a different thing altogether. In Europe, the age of consent is 16 (15 in France, I believe). This means that it is perfectly legal for a person of ANY age to have sex with a 16 year old.

Americans, presumably, are more fragile than Europeans and need "protecting" for another two years.

It's illegal to provide pornography to minors, but I doubt that a minor is committing a crime in most states by viewing pornography. Laws about sexual contact are a bit more complicated, but in most states it's not illegal for two seventeen year olds to have sex. In many states, it's not even illegal for a nineteen year old to have sex with a seventeen year old.

I believe that in most, if not all states, it's only illegal for a person to furnish pornography to a minor if the person either knew that the recipient was a minor or else ignored or recklessly ignored evidence that should have made him suspect it. Thus, in the typical SL case, a person engaging in pixel sex with a minor would probably not be guilty.

Pixel sex most assuredly is not sexual contact. Sexual contact requires physical contact. It may or may not be pornography, depending on the specific instance of pixel sex. Is Catcher in the Rye pornography? Is simulated sex in prime time TV pornography?

Just to complicate matters, remember that in SL, different people see different things. Unless mom or dad walk in while junior is playing around, it could be impossible to prove that junior was actually looking at any such images.

However do those ages of consent apply to Adult Materials on the web?

Here in Ohio the Age of Consent is also 16, but a 16 year old can not go to a Strip Club, can not purchase Pornography, Nor can that 16 year old access Pornography on the internet.

For this to be the case, the person reporting it would have to know that one of the participants is a minor. It seems unlikely they'd figure out just by spying on the sex. So why wouldn't that person have reported the minor before then?


Actually, it does matter. Under federal law, it's illegal to use the mail or interstate commerce to transfer to obscene material to someone under 16, not under 18. Furthermore, the person providing material has to know that the recipient is under 16. And note that the definition of obscene material is much narrower than the definition of pornography.

See http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00001470----000-.html

(Aside. I'm not a lawyer, and in particular, there may be other federal statutes that don't use the 16 year old limit.)

That is a distortion of my intent and the context of my statement, so let me clarify.

The OP and others appear to be under the impression that a teen about to turn 18 isn't hurting anyone by lying about their age and getting onto to the adult grid. I would agree that practically speaking, a few weeks or months is not going to mark some sea change in their emotional ability to handle the activities on an adult grid.

This is not a harmless transgression, however, since their actions do put adults who are unaware of their underage status at risk.

The law exists to protect children, but it can't do that if poeple are winking at the kids who sneak in anyway.

All it takes is a parent finally figuring out that their child is logging into Second Life and checking out their IM or Chat logs.

Well.. true, minors can view pornography technically I suppose, but most of the time I believe that LL would be held accountable for 'providing' it if they didn't have the rule about noone under 18.

My point was that the laws in most states in the US would make LL responsible, at least in part, for illegal activities, or at least very, very immoral, and LL would prefer to not get that kinda publicity. They already get bad publicity because of the concentration of 'odd' kinks and such, so that would just add to it.

They don't.

The usual meaning of "age of consent" is the age at which a person can give valid, legal consent to engage in sex. This distinguishes statutory rape from rape.

The laws are often written with an explicit age in each place. So one law might say that it's illegal for an adult to engage in sex with a minor under 18, and another law might say it's illegal to furnish pornography to a minor under 18. But by writing the law this way, it's possible for the two ages to be different under the two laws. So you need to look them up separately. And it's a mistake to use "age of consent" for anything other than consenting to sexual activity.

I suppose it's possible for a state to write their laws so that they define "age of consent" to be some number, and then just refer to it everywhere. But that's less flexible, and makes for poorer laws.

Now a question for you: If a 15 year old living in Ohio searches out pornography on the internet, have they committed a crime? Or is just the web site providing it recklessly that has committed the criime?

I have yet to see any examples of laws where it would be a problem for the adult if the adult was unaware of their underage status.

"Problem" can take many forms though.

Taking Beebo's parent example a bit further, when the teen is questioned the parent hears their own worst-case version and rushes off to the police raising hell about the online pedophile that's been corrupting his/her daughter/son.

They take it seriously enough and start an investigation that involves a search warrant and questioning the adult. The police show up during the day and encounter the landlord and/or spouse or significant other and aren't too specific on what they're there for, but enough to leave plenty of room for imagination. Worse, they show up at the adult's work.

At the end of everything the adult will be cleared if they truly didn't know it was a minor, but a lot of potential damage could have been done by then that is merely a side-effect of events, not a direct result of any specific law.

It might sound far-fetched, but the only thing that is needed is for the initial reporter to make it sound convincing or threatening enough to have police start to look into it.

Let's fill in more details.

Before they can get the search warrant, they need to subpoena LL for the identity of the other person. So they give some info to LL, which turns it over to their own attorney to decide whether to answer the subpoena or try to quash it. Let's suppose they cave in. Their attorney will nevertheless be concerned about their own liability, they review the records, and find no clues that the person was underage until parent showed up at the police station. They still need to protect themselves, so they pay close attention to the proceedings. They also need to worry about their obligations to the adult being accused.

In the meantime, the assistant district attorney handling the case has to go into a court room and convince a judge to issue a search warrant - for what? In order to get a search warrant, there needs to be some reason to suspect a crime. Now I suppose a judge may say it's ok to go hunting for evidence that the adult knew this person was a child, with nothing in advance to indicate that. And maybe, just maybe, a handful of cases like that will make it into the media. But enough judges are becoming internet savvy, and enough understand that the real risk is in adults using the internet to meet up with kids in RL, that they'll recognize the situation for what it is - a child trespassing in an adult area of the internet, not an adult consciously stalking a child. Remember that whatever chat logs are shown to the judge as evidence will, if anything, lean towards proving that the adult had no idea the other person was underage.

Of course, if the ADA is at all competent, they'll recognize this too, and won't even let it get this far. They're already focused on adults trying to meet up with kids, they're much less interested in this sort of stuff.


So yeah, it's conceivable that a minor engaging in cybersex with an adult in SL could lead up to a nightmare for some adult. Does that mean that all underage people on the adult grid are putting the adults at risk? Obviously not, if the underage person isn't doing anything sexual. If the underage person is engaging in cybersex? Yeah, there might be some risk, but not huge. This could be useful as a scare tactic for some teens, to keep them from doing this, but do you really think they'll listen?

But the real question here is whether the adults need to be paranoid about it. And all I'm saying is a) don't overstate the law if you're not sure; and b) don't blow the risk out of proportion as regards other adults here. Don't use this as an excuse to AR people on flimsy suspicion of them being underage because of the slight risk of creating a nightmare for some innocent adult. Time would be better spent learning how to spot underage users reliably (without going on hunts), and educating others on spotting them.

Now you have taken my question a bit out of contest since the person I was asking was referring to laws in EUROPE .. I was asking if in European countries whether or not those over the age of consent but under 18 can view those materials.

Since that was the question people were asking.

As far as the 15 year old and responsibility question you asked -

I think that it works like this --

Websites on the internet with adult content are required to tell you the site can only be accessed by those 18 and over .. you basically are agreeing that you are over 18 if you continue to view them.

But its the 15 year old breaking the rules if they continue to access Porn at that point.

Much Like how SL does it now with Unverified accounts.

I think as far as "sex talk" in chat rooms ....

If the news / news shows are remotely valid -

The laws kick in when the adult initiates/attempts RL contact with the minor.

Beyond that I haven't heard of anything happening. Though I imagine there could be a case for a Civil lawsuit.

Though I do not know for certain. I am just going based on what you see being shown on news programs as reasons for arrest.

I imagine is chatroom sex talk was immediately prosecutable there would be a lot of that on those news shows too. But maybe thats not as sensationalized and not shown,

so when does all the verification start anyways?
i'm curious to see how many people i know that have been under age hehehe

Don't wory about it, by the time its actually rolled out they will all have aged past 18.


Were nearly at the 1 year anniversary of the plan now.