Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Account Verification for Accessing Adult Content

Sure seems to be. I think I have asked over 100 questions now, granted quite a few are repeats, and no responses yet.

Shall I keep asking? I will be happy to show up and repeatedly ask them at your in-world events as well.

One statement seems to me to say that Kids will be coming to the main grid and that rather than keep them out the thought is to move the adult content away from them on to an adult continent. So expect SecondLife no longer to be "adult only".

Then in wrap up you state that Second Life is an adult only environment. And it is more about keeping the adult material away from those who would prefer not to see it.

If it is the latter then all that is needed is just as in the search engine the need for those who are pervy to select the Show mature content to protect those adults who prefer not to see it. There is no need for "Verification". If it is how ever that they kids are to be let in as Philip Linden said recently then say so.

Most adults do not want the kids any where near them. It will change how we deal with SL. I for one do not want to have to deal with them. To have to worry about them. Worry for them. They are not ready for the ideas of Gor or of the Furry community let alone those adult kids. They are going to want stuff and that requires lindens to buy it. If parents won't give them money to buy then they will most likely end up working in a club doing something that their parents really don't want them doing.

But hey they got a prepaid creditcard or a verified PayPal account and are an Adult and no one will care any more.

So what is it. Many lindens have hinted that the kids are a comming but in this discussion it has been pushed away as secondary to protecting adults who don't want to see ADULT material. Not very clear as to what LindenLab wants other than residents financial information.

One other question about your reply. You said that there would be no charge for verification. So jsut giving a creditCard number would be enough. Not even a nominal 1$ charge? So a kid could use parents CC with out any record to the parent or owner. Seems pointless to me and potentially dangerous given that VISA stated in its rules that cards can not be used for age verification.

Many countries consider violence as adult material. So that would mean that weapons are a no no and Role Play is no no.

How about building a PG continent rather than displacing those who have established locations. Allowing those who want to be in a clean envronment be in one that is 100% G. Make the arrival point there. 75% of the people will click the mature box the sims there should be fast and very friendly. Newbies whould not have had a chance to access mature content and items yet.

Drop the whole verification thing and have a secondary window pop up as is used everywhere else that "you hereby accept that you are of a legal age to view adult content and you would like to. Please do so by tyeping in the following, "I (use your Real name) hereby state that I am leagly an adult and I want to enter mature areas/content". Have that line with the date stored in a database.

Please also remember that age of consent is not the same in all countries. 18 in many but 16 in some, 17 in others and in some 21.

Belldandy, as stated previously in this thread there are no current age verification systems in existence that are fool proof. We are aware of this, but as a platform that is focused on the needs of individuals from all over the world who are 18 and up, we are looking to implement an account verification system that works for as many Residents as possible. This will most likely include several different industry standard methods.

LoL @ Ann - you always make me laugh! Let's hope we can build our exit strategies before they take away our permissions to create! o.0



And here I was thinking the Lindens idea was as unworkable as it could get.

Who will be responsible for the costs of moving to the Adult Continent for existing landowners... Linden Lab or the landowners?

Any one of any age can purchase a Pre-Paid Credit Card over the counter. I really do not understand what all the fuss is about. Are we not all Adults here? If Flagging Adult material is not enough, then you may as well just give up. There are holes in all systems large enough to drive a truck through, and everyone knows that.

Worth repeating until someone actually answers the question.

A simple request: Can we PLEASE have LSL / Mono scripting commands that will allow scripted objects to check an avatar for "adult verified" status? PLEASE?

What use is a "national ID card" if the bouncer at the bar can't look at it to check ID?

So far, LL has flatly refused to allow any resident-level checking of adult verification status other than the faulty and not reliable means of setting a small parcel to allow verified adults only, and visually confirming that the suspect avatar can actually step onto that land, at ground level.

We need to be able to change security scripts and group access controls, so we can eject those who are NOT age-verified from areas of our land that are beyond the pathetic ban line limits. We need to be able to set up a secrity orb in our 3000M high sky box that will eject and TP home any person who is not age-verified, or "Adult Verified".

NOT estate-level tagging of the whole region as "Adult Only", but the simple ability to protect the private bedroom in my residence from intrusion by individuals who have not somehow been "Adult Verified".

And no, the current check box for age verification required doesn't work, sinvce all that does is keep them (maybe) out of the area 50M above the terrain surface. It's useless anwhere above that, and 95% of our buildable volume is outside of that thin blanket on the ground.

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-205 or http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-2390 would get you this.

As for a viable alternative to the draconian "age verification" process, there is a much simpler solution that respects privacy rights: 1) make customers have to check a box that reads "I hereby state, under penalty of law, that I am 18 years old or older." 2) Require only credit card info on file and nothing more. That's all that is required.

I have already verified I am an adult by signing up with Second Life, providing credit card information and paying tier of $292.50 per month plus my annual membership fee. What more do you want? Why do I have to be carded twice? All of SL is POTENTIALLY adult content. The end.

If there is concern that minors are accessing SL, work on THAT problem. Find some way, or several ways, to verify someone is of an acceptable age.

Segregating certain "adult" content serves no purpose but to punish, annoy and drive away YOUR customers and will do nothing to assure that tech savvy or sneaky under 18's won't figure out how to get around anything that you do to keep it away from their precious eyes and probably in way less time it took you to think up ways to keep them out.

Did LL absorb the costs incurred to people during the OpenSpace shakeup?

I'm asking. I don't know.

Frankly I can't see any major company choosing to incur costs however. People will be expected to eat it, suck it up, or move on.

Jeska, why not simply use existing methods to identify who IS a teen, and change things for them, rather than for existing players/customers. Instead of forcing people to give up the land they invested time and money into, lose customers who feel strange about being shuffled to a 'ghetto', why not restrict the teens this is all supposed to 'protect'? I'm still unclear why bringing in teens/tweens is a 'good idea' to begin with, but since LL plan to regardless, why change things for who is already here.

Let the new people adapt to what exists not the other way around. Less painful for all, I think. (Let *their* search be affected, let *them* be legally liable if they lie about being underage, do not make the entire SL world their babysitters. Do not force everyone to lose privacy or circumvent their nation's privacy laws because some kids want to come and play.)

Also as others have pointed out, if anything this makes kids an isolated target...the unrestricted areas will be the PG ones! That means anyone can get in, and bother the kids THERE, so I don't see how any of this is constructive change.

I like that they are having more restrictions because way too many underage people were getting through to sl.

I can have a little peace knowing that my boyfriend may actually be 30 instead of 17!


I also may not always want to see adult stuff. It is good for people that many not always want to see it all the time.

Which is it, we have half saying they can't verify because many adults can't get a credit card and half saying any kid can get one?
Locks don't stop theives either anyone can smash a window, we might as well just give up and flag our houses with "do not rob my house" signs on unlocked front doors.
We should just get rid of all adult verification on all X-rated internet sites too seiing it doesn't work 100%

Both are true Tegg. Adults not getting a CC may have more to do with job loss, credit overextension or bankruptcy. Reasons like that. Also it depends on the country people are in. Some countries use a form of direct deposit and money spent comes directly out of the paychecks/income deposited into the person's bank card. It's hard to explain but not all people want or use credit cards.

Around the Internet there is more pornography than anywhere else. You can access those websites by simply clicking the YES, I AM OF LEGAL AGE button. The parents can protect their children by installing software to their internet browsers which will filter those websites.

Now let's come back to SL. Naked avatars are not pornography. According to your rules Second Life is for adults only. So maybe parents should filter secondlife.com website from their browsers to protect their children.

So we assume that everyone in SL is an adult. Should we still protect adults by filtering adult content? Well, this sound really stupid but if you really need to do this. This is how it should be done. Here is my proposition:

1) Do not move anyone to the gettho. This has been done by Nazi Germany, and we as a society decided not to follow this path ever again.

2) Since everyone is an adult in SL, there is no need for more filtering of adult content than what is already done over the Internet. Remember that there were plans to create the special domain name .sex for adult content, but it didn't work.

3) People who do not wish to see naked avatars they should have the right to choose. Let's give the island owners, parcel owners the choice of flagging adult content. Make a new feature: when the owner flag their parcel as adult, any other avatar who will try to enter his parcel or teleport to the parcel should have his second life client screen frozen for a moment and the system should display the message window warning about adult content, so everyone will have the right to say 'no' I do not wish to proceed.

4) Create SLNanny application wish will automatically filter all adult content. Anyone will have a choice to turn the filtering on and never see adult search results to come up.

5) Do not ask people for credit cards, paypal accounts , bank accounts, passport numbers in order to allow them to enter the parcel where naked avatars dance, because teens who want to see porn can use google where they don't need this kind of verification. Nobody bother to install Second Life client to see virtual nipple.

6) Do the marketing research and ask your customers if ANYONE installed SL client in order to browse adult content. I can assure you that 100% of people will say NO. So stop this hypocritism.

I was under the impression that anyone inworld in SL was an adult, as this is an adults version....isn't there a Teen Second Life? How about taking the simplest route...and keep the kiddies where they belong...in Teen SL ....
I have no desire for my SL experience to be cobbled by a bunch of teenagers running around being a pain in the ass.If you really want to start a verification system....there is nothing anyone can do to stop LL.... but we can walk away.
I dont think that it is wrong to implement a verification system, but if i am understanding this right... merchants and clubs that contain some adult content will be unvisitable by those not verified? Sounds like you are sticking a knife in an already dying venue....clubs are experiencing traffic problems already...and the majority of avatars inworld have no payment info on file.... so the amount of traffic going to these areas are going to decline even further.... the impact of implementing this system is more far reaching than just making sure adults can view adult content...it has the potential, if implemented improperly, to devastate the SL economy....simply because patrons cant get to the merchants....
Think very hard and long before pushing the GO button on this one Lindens......you could hinder, or completely wipe out what you have worked so hard to create and balance....The SL Economy...and we all know it is out of balance right now anyway...don't kick the SL merchants while they are down....especially if the whole motive for doing this is to allow teens inworld...we don't want them there!

Rouge:

They already tried to implement verification system, it was optional...And it didn't work. That's why they now want to force people to do it. But guess what...It will fail again.

SL economy is failing already but not because of adult content. We as a users are not important for them. Big corporations look at SL community and they cannot stand that people are so creative, that they do not need big corporations to buy products. Many of those corporations tried to invest in SL and they ended up with huge empty sims. Because they do not understand SL. This is why they are angry, they are so angry that sooner or later you will see next post on second life blog: "Discussion about IN-WORLD tax". I bet my cyber nipple on that!

first they came after in-word bankers.But I wasn't a banker so I did not care
then they came after in-world gambling. But I wasn't a gambler so I did not care.
then they came after homestad sims. But I did not buy homestad sim so I did not care.
then they rise tier. But I did not pay the tier so I did not care.
then they took over slexchange. but I did not use slexchange so I did not care
then they turn off the slexchange independent linden currency market. But I did not use it, so I did not care
then they moved adult content to the gettho, but I did not wanted to see naked avatars so I did not care
then they implement optional verification system, but it was optional so I did not care
then they came after furry avatars, but I wasn't a furry so I did not care
then they came after non-human avatars, but I was of pure race human so I did not care
then they came after me, but there was nobody left to care.

I have a question for Lindens, I never really noticed.

If a person age verifies by adding an avatar to their credit card, does each avatar name show up on billing statements? How is it billed or listed. Since "at least for now" LL will require each avatar to be separately registered with real life information, does this mean anyone with access to credit card receipts/records for bookkeeping will be able to know who the real life person is in Second Life??

You know some people do not wish their public and private ID to mingle. Or to ever take a chance on that, not necessarily for some 'dirty' reason but some people just like keeping 'their self to their self'.

QFT.

Clarity please LL - If I have a verified PayPal account already on my account, then I am:
a) Already considered to be Age verified.
b) Not required to input any further Age Verification info.
c) Able to roam the grid at will regardless of the PG, Mature or Adult rating.
d) Able to do this WITHOUT having a Premium account?

I have a big concern about this. Most private estates are already flagged "mature", mainly for what can go on in peoples' bedrooms in these residences. The land itself is not in any way sexually explicit, so child avatars who live with their "parents" are frequently seen playing on these sims. Not a real problem right now, because, on the main grid, all child avatars are presumed to be played by adults anyways, and there is nothing sexual going on; they just happen to be on a sim flagged as mature.

Now, allow the teen grid to merge with us, and all assumptions about child avatars are off. That child AV you see playing in a mature sim may be an adult, or may be an actual child. Nobody knows anymore!

Now, if what you say is going to happen actually happens, then it leaves child avatars in a nasty lurch. Either they will be forcibly evicted from their homes and families because the land on which they were living is now flagged as "adult-only", or the child-AV age-verifies, and now LL is left with the image of explicitly allowing children to play on adult-flagged land (because, again, nobody will know anymore if that child-AV is an adult or an actual child).

Additionally, since it takes very little effort for a child or teen to age-verify with their parents' credentials, something truly disgusting and revolting can come of all this: A new kind of age-play, where adults and teens "play around" with each other using child avatars!

Or, we can just heartlessly rip every single child avatar away from their homes, their families, and force them to live in child concentration camps, where they can never be adopted or live with a virtual family ever again.

Any way you slice it, the whole idea of merging the grids has NOT been well thought-out whatsoever!

Understandable. However, this whole age-verification hooey is not needed! The grid already has mechanisms in place right now that are designed to achieve that very goal! That mechanism is called PG/Mature region marking!

Oh, it's not working? Well, how about FIXING it, instead of creating draconian measures that ALSO won't work?

The age verification on internet porn sites works as intended - to absolve the host of responsibility if their site is accessed by minors who fake their credentials in order to get in.

It works that way for LL as well; however - and this is a point I raised earlier in this thread - it does NOT protect anyone in-world who may inadvertently expose a minor to adult content or acts based on the assumption that said minor age-verified. Nor would it protect the creators of the adult content used in such a manner.

This whole age verification thing was ridiculous 2 years ago and it is still ridiculous. Linden Lab KNOWS it's ridiculous, they're just caving in to the legal department (again) which is probably one of the worst places outside the Vatican to go for intelligent decisions about mature content and age verification.

As a long time resident of SL of several years standing (I was there when they celebrated their first million) I have seen all this before. It's still the same old tired misleading rhetoric and it's still the same old tired, hideously US-centric ideas about verification that almost everyone knows (many of us by long experience) DON'T WORK.

Back in 2006 LL tried to push credit card verification supposedly to keep minors from getting exposed to mature content. It didn't work and they know it didn't work.

Back in 2007 LL tried to push an optional mature content flagging system with the same excuse (and I'm sorry, it IS just an excuse; if they really cared about minors they would do things differently). It didn't work and they KNOW it didn't work.

Now here again we have an oh so reasonably sounding proposal couched in terms that most of us can't help but agree with (I have children and I care deeply about their healthy development, tyvm). The problem is that I don't see anything new about their proposed implementation of age verification. They talk about "credible" (their word) age verification systems, but the two examples they give are the VERY SAME ones that have already been tried and were abysmal failures. Everyone KNOWS they didn't and still don't work.

In my nearly 3 years in SL I have met and come to know more than 300 people who are not age verified and are not able to verify their age by any of the INcredible (sorry but it's the right word) verification methods so far tried by LL. NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM IS UNDERAGE. *NOT ONE* Every single one of them has been (and continues to be) unable to verify because of their nationality, professional status, legal constraints, or other issues related to the inadequacy of the age verification system that in practice discriminates against almost every feature of their RL identity EXCEPT age.

I hate to sound cynical, but at this point in time I find it very very hard to believe LL are doing this for any other reason than covering their asses. Remember the last time they tried covering their asses? You know, the gambling ban that nearly wrecked the economy? (and lost me personally early a quarter of a million L$, even though I hadn't even put any of my money into gambling, but that's by the way)

I am all in favor of protecting minors from harm, but this is not what LL are doing with this proposal, and they know it. Before foisting yet another inadequate and discriminatory requirement on us residents, they need to come up with a truly CREDIBLE (let's hold them accountable to their own words) age verification system. I'm not optimistic they can do this in a hurry, because in 2 years they haven't even come close (as in "barely on the same planet, let alone the same ballpark".

In the meantime, I suggest there is a very simple and perfectly ass covering solution. As other people have suggested, just ask people to declare when they sign up that they are of legal age, and keep a record of that declaration. A simple popup window with a simple question and a simple checkbox "I declare I am of legal age and I am aware that by using SL I may be exposed to nudity and simulated depictions of graphic sex and violence" Check the box, end of story. It can't be that hard, they're doing it with survey questions and ToS changes all the time. And if someone clicks the box and they LIED, believe me I'll be the first to cheer when they throw the book at them.