age verification

That was still the question I had from the recent thread on AR'ing someone claiming to be underage. I would be concerned that someone would claim to be underage to get to the Teen Grid.

The implication of your question is that your friend will be prevented from doing "cool" things like engage in pixel sex with adults or wander through areas in which explicit adult activities are on display.

I hope to hell he is banned. It's exactly this kind of situation that has created the nightmare of Age Verification and that creates liability for residents.

LOL!! Any kid can see worse on the internet. Hell! I've seen worse BEFORE the internet existed!

What would be sad is a kid who thinks "pixel sex" is "cool". Its just sad really.

Turn off the PC/Mac. Go out into the real world. Get a real life Girlfriend/Boyfriend. MUCH MUCH Better than any bunch of pixels will ever be!!

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.

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.

In the US I have a rather extended family member. He's over 21 (age of purchasing/consuming alcohol in the US). He was buying beer when he dropped his car keys. He handed the beer to his college friend (whom he didn't know was under 21) to hold for a second while he picked the keys off the floor.

Neither individual walked a step.

The police officer did. Asked for ID. Busted one for underage possession of alcohol (the friend) and the other for giving alcohol to a minor (the family member).

QED a law where it is a problem for the adult if the adult was unaware of the underage status. Fallacy: hasty generalization? I know it isn't slippery slope.

perhaps just silly, but not without reason: under 18 is not allowed to be on the main grid.

The implication of your question is that your friend will be prevented from doing "cool" things like engage in pixel sex with adults or wander through areas in which explicit adult activities are on display.

I hope to hell he is banned. It's exactly this kind of situation that has created the nightmare of Age Verification and that creates liability for residents.

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.

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.

Hmmm. Tell all this to someone whose boyfriend of the time ended up being hauled off to jail a while back, not only for messing about virtually online but she found a load of kiddie porn. Turned out that he was involved in a distribution ring involving children as young as three. I always thought he was a creep but never would have imagined this.

He's out of jail quite soon actually.

If the news / news shows are remotely valid -

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

Um, the question here is whether innocent adults need to be paranoid about having cybersex with someone they didn't know was under age. I don't see how the arrest of a guilty person is relevant.

It goes without saying that if someone finds kiddie porn on your machine, you're likely to be investigated and arrested. But that's not the situation we're talking about.

The problem is that it's rarely as simple as this. There have been cases where a teenage girl has had consensual sex with a boyfriend (even another teenager), only to have a parent tell them "if you consented, you're out of this family; if you didn't consent, he raped you, so you must want to cooperate with us to have him put in jail for as long as possible; which is it?"

Thus, if it actually gets to a lawsuit, the minor will usually be forced to claim that the adult initiated contact with him/her even if this was not actually true.

hmm interesting. But My point had nothing to do with consent of the minor. You post makes good points but its a bit different than what I meant.

In London a 16 year old can't go to a Strip Club, right. However, foremost the reason is licensing drink laws. Being a bit devils advocate here, can a 16 year old be arrested for accessing Pornography on the internet, at this point it is the onus on the provider to prevent the 16 year old accessing it, so I do understand SL's stance on the subject.

I'm just trying to point out that reporting someone in SL who is on the main grid and who might be underage is a waste of time and really isn't any business of the players, it's SLs problem and people reporting it are just snitching.

Well, what you said is that authorities would only step in if the adult had contacted the child. The problem is that in reality, the child will be under pressure to claim in court that the adult contacted them, even if this wasn't true.

(Or were you talking about authorities posing as children to see if adults attempted to contact them? That's the only situation I can think of where the authorities would become active immediately, as soon as the contact was made, rather than needing a complaint to be made first.)

Sorry Dekka I disagree fundamentally for the reasons in my post above.

All that needs to be proven by any company is that any REASONABLE measures have been taken, in order to avoid prosecution.

Do any of us want SL crippled and shut down during an investigation, or any of the other possibilities? No.

It's a fact that kids are all over the net. It's out of control. My feelings on this are detatched from the personal, I can't have kids and there are no kids of that age in my family (though in a few years the kids will be of that age).

I wasn't exposed to anything dodgy growing up, beyond finding a few pornographic stories (which I remember verbatim of course) and at 15 I was wandering round clubs in fet wear - I'd have got in a strip club no problem at all, to play Devil's Advocate

I don't think people should go off on a crusade ARing people willy nilly - however there is responsibility for anyone in the face of a minor to say to them "you are endangering stuff for the rest of us - come back when you are old enough". By the time most of them are old enough they'll be gone into the world of underage (in the US anyway) boozing etc.

The problem is that it's rarely as simple as this. There have been cases where a teenage girl has had consensual sex with a boyfriend (even another teenager), only to have a parent tell them "if you consented, you're out of this family; if you didn't consent, he raped you, so you must want to cooperate with us to have him put in jail for as long as possible; which is it?"

Thus, if it actually gets to a lawsuit, the minor will usually be forced to claim that the adult initiated contact with him/her even if this was not actually true.

In the US I have a rather extended family member. He's over 21 (age of purchasing/consuming alcohol in the US). He was buying beer when he dropped his car keys. He handed the beer to his college friend (whom he didn't know was under 21) to hold for a second while he picked the keys off the floor.

Neither individual walked a step.

The police officer did. Asked for ID. Busted one for underage possession of alcohol (the friend) and the other for giving alcohol to a minor (the family member).

QED a law where it is a problem for the adult if the adult was unaware of the underage status. Fallacy: hasty generalization? I know it isn't slippery slope.

If the facts were as stated, then the outcome of the case should have been that the police officer was dismissed.
That sort of blind application of the letter of the law should be stamped on.

That wasn't the point I was making either but never mind.

The point I am making is that innocent people are the ones who have to end up verifying because of the guilty.

I agree, but that kind of thing is not all that uncommon. For example, it is not an uncommonn practice where I live for the police, when they pull someone over for drunk driving (a serious offence in my view), to ask anyone else in the car to get out of the car, and once they do so, they are cited for being "drunk in public" (also an offence in many places in the US). The idea behind these kinds of things is to underline the seriousness of the laws in question, although I don't agree with the technique.

The problem is that it's rarely as simple as this. There have been cases where a teenage girl has had consensual sex with a boyfriend (even another teenager), only to have a parent tell them "if you consented, you're out of this family; if you didn't consent, he raped you, so you must want to cooperate with us to have him put in jail for as long as possible; which is it?"

Thus, if it actually gets to a lawsuit, the minor will usually be forced to claim that the adult initiated contact with him/her even if this was not actually true.

...
You never hear about stings where they just arrest men for talking to "teens" on the internet, it always contains the contact element.

I just think if arrests were made commonly over adults talking about sex with teens on the internet, we'd hear a lot about it.

I am sure like you said if the adults filed a complaint .. definitely something might happen. Its just you never hear about that happening. Maybe because parents rarely find out?