Sunday's new blog entry on Age Verification

I am curious when this is going to become a public thing the age verification and
how are they going to enforce it.
Are they going to track down all the sex clubs and make sure they are age verified and
only allowing age verified people in?
I don't see them doing it.
I still see adult images in profile and classified ads and they don't seem to do much about it unless someone says something.

yeah, not to put to fine a point on it, but have you read the various proposals? I think the intention is more to LOOK like it preserves a level playing field... but then isn't that the way with all politics?

well we've had sex and politics in this debate, how about some religion? if a catholic priest sets up shop in SL, and takes confessions, where is LL on that? assume for the sake of argument the confession is of a child of legal age in their home country, but not in most of the world, engaged in selling that attribute in a sexual environment?

yeah now we have all 3 in one question + international law :ats self on back::

You pat yourself on the back so hard, your tongue snapped out!

It is now part of the client and it is in "Beta" testing which means it is live and being fiddled with. If you verified back when they opened it up to sim owners month or so ago, Or now then you are in the system.

Currently it is free. There will be a charge in the future but they are not saying when that comes into effect or how much. Aristotles' CEO stated in a meeting that was videoed that they expect to get 50 cents per user.

It is vollentary to flag your land and verify your self they say.

Enforcement is up to the residents. See something that is adult and no verification one is to file abuse report. There is no definition of where the line is as far as adult vs PG. That apparently is up to each person to decide.

Want to get your competition removed to a place where 50% of the residents can't get to them. Have your friends and alts Abuse Report them. Nasty nasty.

Search just PG land for "Free Sex" and find hundreds. I asked a linden if that was ok and they said yes. So the standards are all over the place.

From what I understand, the main reason for age verification is to protect landowners and LL, not so much to protect minors.

What's at risk isn't the idea of virtual worlds, or of adult content in virtual worlds; what's at risk is the idea that you can run an adult business or adult club in Second Life but then log off, walk away, and go back to your regular life unimpeded. Many people here have pointed out in the past, that most adult websites do far less strict age verification than LL are demanding - but they are run by professional pornographers, who accept being taken to court as a risk of their job.

It's a difficult tradeoff. It's very sad to think that SL could lose a critical part of its appeal - the idea that you're free to express yourself however you want to - but at the same time, RL politics will always strike against a loophole allowing illegal expression and LL have to work in the real world.

Non-video porn sites can also be effectively filtered by existing parental control software, which relys on text filtering and porn site cooperation. SL's content cannot, unless LL takes steps to do so - the simplest of such being keeping the teen grid and alerting whenever a non-adult attempts to access the main grid at all.

Anyone can cam to see something obscene on the main grid. If you're going to allow any visually sexual or violent activity on the main grid (and it would be economic insanity NOT to allow it), then your only hope of preventing children from finding it is to bar them from the grid. Not to mention the risk of exposing them to predatory adults. Region-level access controls are hopelessly ineffective.

So yes, Yumi, I agree: Verification is an attempt to protect the few from lawsuits, at the cost of exposing the entire populace to both inconvenience and identity theft.

There isn't any particular reason why LL needs to take those steps - the parental control software should be able to prevent SL connecting to the main grid (assuming it works within the network stack rather than the web browser, which would be sensible)



Bear in mind that for this kind of thing, it isn't just children. Essentially, there's a really awful political wave sweeping many countries at the moment - the UK in particular, but it's occuring in the US too. And that is that pornographic images are being judged purely by their content rather than any details of what occurs in their production. The theory is that this is needed to close a loophole: essentially, if someone is caught with images of women being horribly abused, they simply say "that's staged, it's all fake" and unless it's actually possible to prove that it isn't, then they have to be let off because they are innocent unless proven guilty.

That sounds like a good loophole to close, and child pornography was always considered that way - but the problem is that it introduces all kinds of weird issues, such as (for example) Casino Royale being considered illegal pornography because after all, it certainly _looks_ like Daniel Craig was subject to genital torture, so maybe he really was... (And if you think that's an exaggerated example, bear in mind that the UK government actually had to introduce an amendment after a pressure group pointed this out to them - they effectively agreed that the original unamended law would indeed have had that effect..)

And unfortunately SL is squarely in the line of fire of such things.

I think you hit it squarly on the head and I've have believed that from day one also. Its mainly about LL not being held libial thus saving the need for probably very costly insurance and secondly data-mining. It wouldn't supprise me in the least if LL was either getting some kind of kick back from Aristotle for helping them build new databases or if LL itself wasn't thinking of perhaps taking over collection of date at some point so as to amass their own "lists" which they can market. I can't think of any Corp. decission in recent history that wasn't made on the basis of increasing profits. I don't believe LL cares about protecting childern from the evils of porn in SL any more than i care about the termites dinning out in the woods behind our house!

Since I really don't care one hoot about age verification, and not once considered doing it since CC's to my mind serve as well, I don't really care what happens to anyones data who is niaeve enough to verifiy. As a community we could have put this issue to rest day one by simply saying "No" but... Oh well if old Aristotle gets my personal info it won't be because I gave it to them.

And who's supprised that this has turned into such a cluster f*%k??? LL is doing it aren't they? LOL

While I agree with Aeslyn wholeheartedly about the flaws in the Aristotle/Integrity system. I would like to remind you all what the current system is, which is being replaced.

The current system goes like this. Avatar A overhears avatar B state in open chat or IM that he is under 18. Avatar A suspects this to be true, Also, avatar A is for some reason motivated to report it. The reasons for doing so are long and varied; lets just say that it is up to avatar A if he wants to report it or not. That's the point. So, a special abuse report category is in place. LL receives the report and (they say) they check the chat log. However, I have some (admittedly somewhat weak) evidence that they do not do this step. In any case, subsequently, avatar B's account is suspended. Avatar B's email receives a notice that he must SCAN his or her DRIVERS LICENSE and upload it to LL through the support ticket system. This scan is verified visually by an LL employee. It takes several days. It takes much longer if the action is taken on a Friday after business hours. The whole time, avatar B is unable to log in or talk to anyone, and he no longer appears in the people search, as if he were deleted. If he had the foresight to create an alt, at this time he logs in as the alt and tells his friends what happened, so they don't worry about him. Neither Avatar A's identity nor the text chat that raised the suspicion nor the time and date of the original report is ever revealed to Avatar B. That is the current system.

I agree that LindenLab chose most likely because Aristotle offers indemnity against litigation where minors are involved. I am not sure if that protection goes as far as the landowners. So far LindenLab hands over to lawyers on receipt of a court order your private IM's, your group chats and pretty much anything the court wants.

I do not see LindenLab or Aristotle coming to the defence of a landowner who is accused of have knowingly allowed a minor to engage in adult activity. I am sure there will be a clause in the TOS or something out there that explains that Verification is not perfect and that the landowner is still responsible to ensure that minors are reported which gets them off the hook and leaves the LandOwner in the pan.

If there is not that clause somewhere I would expect in the near future a parent to use their kid to access and verify just so they can sue. Knowing that LindenLab has insurance, Aristotle. Just a matter of time before someone tests the Indemnity.

cause the name is "integrity"

and stuff.

"Aristotle International, a political consulting company that maintains a database of publicly accessible personal data on 150 million registered U.S. voters, is drawing the attention of privacy advocates and others concerned about online privacy. Aristotle markets the data it collects to politicians who use the information to target highly specific segments of the voting population via pop-up ads on the Internet. Aristotle's clients include 45 senators, more than 200 House representatives, 46 Republican and Democratic state parties, and top presidential candidates. William Dal Col, manager of Rick A. Lazio's campaign to represent New York in the Senate, says Aristotle is one of the first firms to exploit technology for political purposes. Aristotle combines its data with other types of information that it finds on the Internet; privacy groups such as the Center for Democracy and Technology believe this tie-up of data could harm the election process. Both Microsoft and America Online have abandoned plans to partner with Aristotle during the past year due to privacy concerns." (New York Times, September 9, 2000, copyright 11 September 2000 EDUCAUSE, reproduced with permission of EDUCAUSE)

Is this the company You want to give your information to???