Bad news of the day: They're thinking of merging the Teen Grid into the main one

There is no realistic way to discern who is behind an avatar on a large, grid-wide scale. The only responsible method of verifying the age of a user is doing exactly what adult websites do:

"Are you 18 or older? Yes / No"
...because that method is the only honest solution. Identity verification is just like DRM, while useful in a limited amount, it ultimately ignores the reality of digital platforms and content. If a user lies it's not the fault of the provider.

Content should be taggable as adult on every level, including whole parcels, regions, and estates. The feature to block out mature content should've been in SL years ago, because even among adults not everyone wants to risk running into carnivore slave tentacle rape porn.

The teen and main grids should be merged if SL ever wants to grow up (hahoho) and become more like a true web platform. However, the onus of correct implementation lies on LL's shoulders, because this could be a major f*ckup if done wrong.

Actually the problem is the adults would not be protected from the children anymore.

The only way the grid can be kid safe is by making it like WoW and the like, no user content.

But the issue is right now on the adult grid the adults are safe from lawsuits based on a minor getting access... because of the little check box about age.

A kid that bypasses that, lies and therefore is where he shouldn't be. A place where it is assumed that all are of legal age. Combined with LL's hard handed slap down of any account listed as underage.

That is the legal protection that goes bye bye if they merge the grids.

There's a sort of contradiction in your post, you point out that websites do ask if people are old enough. Adult websites would love the method Linden Lab have encouraged, kids over that side, adults over this side, it's a winning forumla.

If they want to make a merged area, do it on a new grid. If those are the rules from the offset then they'll just run into the sort of issues that chatrooms, myspace, facebook etc. already face, however they could impose a no adult content rule and then just deal with the mess that other platforms have.

I Endorse This Product And/Or Service.

+1.

Agreed they ar ethere. But they are empty or anyone using them asks for your identity and kinda snoots off. Much same as real universities and profs. I can't honestly say I am enamoured with them. That is why I didnt go to one. However, good luck on your tour. Does "Naughty School" count as "Higher Learning" - in which case we may have a lot of graduates in sl itself.
And on that thought, there are plenty of high schools in sl though I somehow doubt that parents are gonna enrole their darlings in any of them

Kiss any freedoms in SL goodbye. Anyone looking to maintain a region that strickly contains a mature demographic will be forced to become gestapo and be on guard 24/7 to protect themselves from losing their account via abuse reports....or worse the real life lawsuits. Linden Labs is attempting to push any legal responsibilties they carry as a company on to individual owners of venues and regions in SL.

i don't agree with mergeing the teen grid with the main grid, its trying to merge two differrent age groups, with much different maturity and morals, conflicts will arise, situations will occure that will have legal implications. it will be as if linden labs is seting the stage to create endless lawsuits.
if it does happen, exspect more that half the grid to go under adults only lock down, if not just up and loosing large ammounts of users.

That is the most sensible thing anyone's said so far.

It's the only thing that would work for everybody, and it would probably be a huge success for LL as well.

very probably.. in some parts of japan the age of consent is 13.
It has changed to 18 in some urban areas due to the very high occurrance of middle and high school prostitution .. thats a major problem.

How are they going to monitor japanese chat? a translator program wont work becuase modern spoken japanese bears absolutely no resemblance to standardised japanese...
young in japan in very desirable.. very very young

In this case, SL is a dangaerous place for children and parents has a reason to sue LL to get it close down SL completely.

Any politician will see this as a chance for them to do something for more vote

I see this as LL is playing with fire again

The same reasoning is why parents can sue to get the internet shut down...

It's dangerous to let kids on it!

out of all the reading i had done on this ..the one thing that sticks out the most is when a teen from the teen grid mentions how hard it was to get on the teen grid vs how much easier it was for them to get into the adult grid so they go to the adult grid because it's a breeze to get in..

i'm not a teen anymore so i don't know..i missed it by a couple of years when i first joined sl..
why would they make it easier to get in here?
why not the same effort to get into the adult grid as well?

Because they want to make it easy for companies, like Coke or similar, to build "Metaverse Websites" using the SL engine. So that you can click on a link from Coke's page and moments later have your SL account set up, and be on Coke Island. If they put too many barriers in the way of that, it won't work, and if they ask people for credit card details they will run screaming for the door. But, what if you're a teen who likes Coke? Well, that's likely one of the main reasons they want this merge.

Bear in mind that the main value of the adult/teen grid distinction is not that it absolutely prevents any possibility of teens being on the adult grid (LL actually _say_ this in the TOS); it does however - I believe, but IANAL - lay down a firm legal line that they are not supposed to be there, and so they are not protected if they go there.

SL is no more dangerous than RL, in fact it is much safer. However you are right with the way things are going parental responsibility is out and witch-hunting a scapegoat is the hot new thing. There are people who would like to completely sanitise or shut down RL too because it is dangerous and don't want to take parental responsibility

In the country where I live, prostitution is legal, in fact in my city there is a well known red light area. Prostitutes have on occasion been found stabbed to death after working there. Despite this there are *NO* restrictions on teens going down that street at all. Not a single sign even and due to the legality of prostitution, police don't even patrol there, they certainly don't watch for teens endangering themselves in that area.
Parents and guardians are expected to either prevent their teens from going there and/or instill an education about the dangers of such places so that teens don't feel the need to put themselves at risk there.
We would not hold the police responsible for not watching the area if a teen were to disregard such advice, frequent such an area and become harmed, nor would we hold the local government responsible for not sanitising the area or at least putting up signs banning teens from such areas. We would blame the parents, person(s) who harmed them and the teen themselves.

The parallel here is that in RL we try to resist such attempts to have a sanitised, nanny-state where big brother is watching you and everyone around you for you own good. It is a road unfortunately we are travelling down but we should be resisting this where ever we decide to spend time as free individuals, SL or RL - makes no difference. If we don't, SL will be the least of our troubles ahead.

SL is not a democracy... LL owns it ... therefor they will be held responsible...

I've been seeing a contradiction in a lot of the postings so far.

I read, "OMG teens are going to lie about how old they are when then get on the grid and be able to get access to Adult Areas/Sims and then AR us all or SL will be faced with horrific lawsuits!"

But then I read "SL is what it is because we're all assumed to be adults here and if they here, they are lying and they are not granted any legal protection."

If a teen *lies* about his age and bypasses age-verification process, then they would have no legal cause to AR someone or subject a person or SL to lawsuits, right?

Obviously people don't really care about about how "accurate" the age-verification process is because it is EASY to get into the main grid now if you are underage. The current thinking seems to be, well, it may be EASY.... but since it is made very clear upon signing up, that one must be 18, then we have legal safeguards, in place. Otherwise it's fraud.

My question is, why would we suddenly NOT have legal safeguards, if somehow the grids were merged, and there was an age-verification mechanism in place, and that age-verification mechanism process were defrauded?

If a teen lies about age in a merged grid, gets propositioned for furry vampire BDSM sex, then one could apply the same logic/legal defense... "I didn't know, and can't be held liable, because that person/teen committed fraud."

Funny, I don't see that.

There is no usable age-verification process in place.

It has nothing to do with democracy at all, just sensible governance.

i think you are seeig so much contradiction because some are talking about current and then some are talking about after the merge..

Because the fact the kids committing fraud will not be able to file on that account.

But the one they have under their real age can file an ar, or they can bypass the barely there controls and report it was in voice chat.

By mixing the underage accounts on the adult grid, there is no longer an assumption that you are dealing with an adult. Everything has to be considered as if you are dealing with a child.

The way things work in EvE as a good example. A report of pandering or propositioning a youngster is an automatic ban till they can get around to looking into the logs. (heaven help if it was done on voice since there is no log files)

The onus is not innocent till proven guilty when it comes to children in any nation/state. You are treated as convicted as soon as the child says you did something, and then have to prove otherwise.

i'm gonna buy a sim out in the middle of the ocean with battle ships space ships and any kind of ship and every kind of trip wire and death ray and nuke i can find that will kill even a roach sized anything that gets close to the perimeter..pffft home they go...

then with the 5,000 remaining prims i shall live in my paradise i call my SL and build in peace

I *think* I was in your city for new year (and my 10th anniversary) - had a splendid time!

I can't read through 35 pages so these points have probably been said before ...

If the two grids are merged wholesale I think one of two things will happen - either there will be a HUGE media hooha about paedophilia which will endanger the future of the entire grid, or, as Brenda says, LL will attempt to disneyfy the adult grid. This means the entire sex industry will go. That is one HUGE chunk of an already ailing economy. Then all the people whose sl includes enjoying the sex industry will go (and I don't just mean escorts and clubs, but furniture, animations, detailed skins ...) Then LL will have to go through all the assets - every single one, purging all adult content, while simultaneously making all new content pre-approved only. If SL somehow manages to survive this, the only people left will be teens (and a few paedophiles) in any case. (ok, there'll be the education institutes and the religious people too). In either scenario, all the people who simply, and quite reasonably, prefer to have a child-free space in which to socialise will also go elsewhere.

Are they considering this because they can't get the teen grid to work (signup still broken outside the US after 18 months) or because they can't get age verification to work?

A new, separate grid where very carefully vetted adults (educators, parents etc.) could mix with teens might be nice if they could get the vetting procedure to work, but going on how useless the age verification system is, they won't be able to.

How about this:
Under 18s are only allowed on PG sims, and by faking their age to get into M sims, they commit fraud. They can't AR for child abuse without exposing themselves as being minors.

As soon as this rumour turned up, I assumed minors would be restricted by sim rating. It's a much simpler, more effective way to go than removing all adult content from the grid (which would be impossible to do anyway).
Why would anybody think otherwise?

Would make it a royal pain for minors to do shopping, that's all. Creators that care would make outlets in PG sims I guess. Actually... no, with the purchase of Xstreet that would become the popular option anyway.

Do not want to talk with children, do not want to interact in any manner with children. Been watching TV and it shows the clever police going online to get the perverts. Suppose that will be the new thing in the blended SL. Being in SL would mean being in the ultimate cat and mouse game only a lot more at stake such as ones job, bank account, freedom, etc.
get fracking real! I have enough to worry about and know minors on the main grid only means trouble! One would have to be very mindful of everything they do and say. In RL I do not want to talk to children anymore than needed, I do not want them around me.
If Linden Labs does this and makes SL "family safe" how many of the private islands would be left?
To sum it up, I want nothing to do with children in real or second life. They are someone elses problem, their parents, family and government can take care of them. Blending the communities is a sure method for Linden Labs to commit seppuku.