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

Yes, they won THAT suit, THAT time, but how much did it cost them in attorneys fees for all that just to defend themselves? It only takes one incident and one multi-million dollar lawsuit, and this country's lawyers seem to have a lean towards grabbing money in the deep pockets theory that the companies with the big bank accounts are the ones they go after first, even if they have 1/10th of 1% of a secondary minor responsibility or connection to the case- I.E. you sue and include Ford, the Ford dealer, even the SALESMAN who sold you your car for installing what turned out to be defectively manufactured tires on your car made by Firestone, when the culpable company is Firestone exclusively- they MADE the defective tire.

As we all know, court cases are a crap-shoot gamble game, you simply keep trying it in another court with appeal after appeal, till you eventually get a judge or a set or jurists who rule in your favor or overturn another court's ruling, happens all the time.

I really don't know the answer to your question, I don't really care, it's not money out of my bank account to pay a suit or lawyers no matter how something like that goes, I'm just citing what I have seen done out there in the legal area and the risks.

On the Myspace thing it says;

" and the Doe's claimed MySpace should have had technology in place to make it impossible for someone as young as Julie to create a profile in the first place."

Me thinks the Doe's are 100% responsible for what happened, it is up to them as PARENTS to ensure THEIR kid does not access their computer improperly, not up to a company half a country away to figure out how to prevent their kid from being an idiot, but as you know, if a kid is KILLED, the media will have a field day and the public will be outraged and flood the legal system with demands the DA does something- ANYTHING.

After teh Fifth Estate on CBC I think we can be sure that we wont be seeing teenagers in sl.

I believe the grid merge is a good idea, Many of you probably have not seen both grids...

The teen grid is much more mature then many think. The underage people that you are seeing on your grid is the people that we don't want on our grid, the people that are inmature jerks.

Anyways, it is not as bad as it may seem.

PS, I am on the Teen Grid (never been in the MG)

Darn Second Life wont switch me over after multiple tickets, maybe some day LL will fix the issue of me being on wrong forum....

mikey: it doesn't matter how mature the teen gridders are, it only matter how immature the laws in the USA are.

Well while you are stuck here...... If you have ever been curious about learning anything take a peek down in the Content Creation forums here.

Because of the fact the service is meant to be adults only then there is an assumption that all on the service are adults. Anyone that admits to being underage is gone as soon as a responsible adult ar's them.

Mixing the grids would result in the same hassles and legal difficulties of Playstation home, WoW, and the various myspace/faceboook clones.

It actually protects the kids in a way if they lie or commit identity theft to get onto the gird... since there shouldn't be kids there are likely far less predators looking for them. Which is why the ones seeking kids turn to the mixed games/sites for their prey.

IT also protects the adults with the assumption that all on the grid are supposed to be adults.

There is no way to actually verify who is at a computer short of an implant chip that transmits id data through the keyboard to the service... but LL does do what is reasonable to keep things taken care of.

It was just a matter of time.

I don't see this has a big deal. We know kids have illegally been on the main grid for some time now. This just makes it all legal.

Cat

Making it legal is a BIG DEAL.

It's not illegal for adults to interact with children.
It's what SOME people do with them that makes the entire concept a bit harder.

Linden Labs want no responsibility in taking care of children.

So they build that teengrid to hide all the children, put a big warning sign on there, and they are safe from dumbass parents that let their children fall into some trap, and sue people who are not at fault.

Yeah, they lie about their age, join the main grid, and Linden Labs doesn't feel sorry. They put up their warning. The user lies to Linden Labs, and they are again safe.

So if they want to merge the maingrid, child users must be easily identified as a teen user. So adults know who they are talking to.

The adult users must follow the rules, children solely exist to break rules adults thought up.
It's out job to minimize the amount of children not listening to their parents.
And of course instantly ban them, and the IP range from that location if a teen did join the main grid.

We know people have been illegally driving drunk, stealing, etc...

so why not make it legal?

That puts me at ease a little bit then. I never saw anything about Phillip Linden actually saying it was going to be done before though...just rumors.

Smart adults simply do not interact with other people's kids or minors on the net-period-, it is far too easy to say/type something either by accident or it's taken wrong, and in today's paranoia state one line of text or comment, or a wrong image handed to one by accident out of your inventory can bring the police and media to your front door.

Teachers and others have been fired or worse for a simple so called "inappropriate" word or remarks a kid nearby heard and told a parent about, that is the level of paranoia that exists today, who needs that BS or risk in their lives?

Probably half the people on the chat/forum/SL part of the net aren't even the gender they claim they are, it's the only place some fat 60 year old fuddy-duddy can sit in his underwear smoking a cigar and pretending to be 16, blond, buxum, slim and people believe it, conversely a 14 y/o can pretend to be 21 with ease.
SHowing up with a female name guarantees you will be hit on by men or "men" too, so many women simply choose male sounding names to avoid that as well.

Yeah, it would be annoying to have somebody ask you what goatse is after your sim got griefed...& while your explaining it to your friend, somebodys parent walks up behind their computer in the next sim & reports you for obscenity after seeing what you typed lol.

That's a pretty funny example, but there are probably hundreds of similar situations that could get you at least banned for accidentally just exposing some kids' av to an adult level of conversation. Call me paranoid, but just a 20 minute sim-hopping spree could give a good amount of visual examples why kids wouldn't be able to just come into the grid, the way it is right now. ...so of course it couldn't stay as "free" as it is...

...even now you have less freedom in some ways than in most MMORPGs, but the amount of building & scripting creativity we are allowed makes up for it at this point IMO

There are fairly obvious technical solutions that would allow people
to be partially and safely segregated from each other, so that kids
could only go to kid-approved places, and only authorized adults
could go to kid-places. The entirety of SL's content (including
searches, IMs, Profiles, objects...everything) could be segregated
into zones that are managed by the residents. This would not
require changing any existing content or lands - it would all be
done in the system.

Otherwise, yeah, obvious disaster that I can't see anybody buying into.

I would ask, "Why does everyone assume LL will try to foist some
stupid non-workable situation onto the grid and ruin everything?"

But I know better than to ask that.

repeat after me:

1 : There is no technical tool to verify who is using an account at any time.
2 : There is no safeguard system that will work 100% of the time.

1. Verification for government entities (schools) would be done in person
by government agents.
2. Passwords and accounts can be physically stolen, yeah. So what?

Those aren't really technical problems, but they have as much
of a solution as anything in the world. I do think I covered
all this stuff waaaay back in the beginning of the thread.

Yes, that is why we have a TEEN grid and a mature adult grid, it works pretty well and separated like that it's like keeping the primary school kids in one building and college students in another building- that's done for many great reasons. There are places and scenarios where minors and adults do not mix well, a poker game at a bar, strip joint, and SL's mature grid are three places they dont, and places where they do- Cub/boy Scouts, museum tours, art classes etc.

Wrong they are technical problems with no solutions.

The 2nd refers not to the verification but the inworld systems to try and segregate the populations.

It's like saying a filter will get out all the bad stuff... there is still going to be bad stuff getting past it.

There are systems in place in wow, playstation home, and even yahoo... and yet they still have problems with people finding bugs and loopholes to get around the systems.

Here is a message I gave a long time ago about verification: When it becomes too cumbersome or invasive, it results in a dead SL.

When they have to provide a government grade verification to use an account... SL loses most of the accounts in a heartbeat.

Why do you think so few schools and others interact with the teen grid: The damn hoops they have to jump through combined with the legal issues they have to worry about (best description of the legal issues from a school teacher : "you have to consider every move and word carefully, because you're on a pogo stick in the middle of a minefield and carrying enough explosives to put a battleship into orbit" )

I completely agree with that. I have an open mind about this, and I'm only hoping (emphasis) LL can go about it in a smart way. I don't think this will happen anytime soon either. LL has been hinting at wanting to make a merged grid for a long time now.



Indeed. The current safeguard system does not work 100% of the time either. What are you trying to say?

It doesn't need to. The current system is enough to legally protect linden labs and the users of SL.

That is why it's in place, not to protect the children... but to protect the adults from the outrage of parents and politicians.

A mixed grid will not have the legal protection of LL not allowing minors onto the grid and banning those that get onto it as soon as they are AR'd or out themselves.

What I think some people have been saying (and I agree with them) is that there "may" be more than one solution. There may be other solutions that are enough to protect adults as well.
I've read a few ideas I thought were good ones, some that could be disasters, and none that would be perfect 100% fool proof.

Limiting teens from mature regions would definitely be part of the solution. If teens somehow get there (by lieing) you could AR them, just as you do now. LL would ban them, and you wouldn't be held responsible. As for the whole camming into other regions. That can be technically fixed. Mature regions can just appear to be nonexistent like a sim border.

Now the one issue I don't know how LL is going to fix is the mature content. Figuring out how they will keep teens from getting mature items, will be a big issue. Until LL figures out how to fix that problem, I don't think the grid would be ready for a merge.

Yes, but the fact that they are merging the grids would be known. They made the teen grid to pander to parents and politicians. It had no real meaning, as kids could get on the main grid anyway through deception, but having the second grid gave LL plausible deniablity. The act of merging the grids will draw unwanted attention, and LL will happily ban adult behavior in SL to get the parents and politicians of their backs.

When they made SL, they needed the allure of adult fun to attract press on SL and woo early adopters. Now that they want to take SL mainstream, animated adult content becomes a liability to being taken seriously. If they merge the grids it's only to create this drama, draw some final press out of adult content, before bowing to 'community standards' and publically Disnifying SL, so mainstream institutions will take the plunge.

There...

It's disneyfied... and ready for it.. same with playstation home and others

Hell sims online was ready for it...

And look what happened there!

Look at just about every MMORPG out there, while you're at it. They're all rated "T for Teen" yet there's places in every online world where all you have to do to get a solicitation to engage in adult behavior is stand there and wait about 30 seconds.

I'd personally opt for an open Disney-fied SL over a semi-pornographic adult only game that locks out creative younger people (my small and insignificant opinion). I'm not saying that LL should go completely down the disney road. don't attack me