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

No doubt this one will drown along with the rest of our yet unanswered questions..

Nonetheless, I strongly feel that all SL residents need to unite on this one, somehow.

All our differences aside, I think this entire issue warrants a Leader (obviously apart from LL), whom we feel we can trust to voice our opinions efficiently.

We have our hearts in this (I can see that we are many in number). But we can't all sit around and stare at the screen all day long for the next 6 weeks or more. I feel we need representation..!!

Anyone out there with me on this?
Someone who has been around for long enough to cut through the BS?
Someone who speaks the corporate lingo?
Anyone out there prepared to help us through this mess effectively?

They are STILL using Aristotle for age verification. See Jeska's comment in which she says (quoting from memory) "...our provider does not keep any of your personal data on file". She's obviously talking about Aristotle. LL has continued to spout this party line, but based on Aristotle's track record, there is some reason to question this.

LL uses your credit card or PayPal for PIOF, but NOT age verification. Blondin (I think) said that these methods would also be used under the new system as alternate means of age verification. Again, I think there is reason to question this...not least because credit card companies themselves say that their cards can't be used to verify age.

Once again, LL is long on reassurances, short on verifiable facts.

You know, the more "forbidden" you make something, you just make it that much more enticing to the individuals who you are trying to keep away from it. You're presenting them with a challenge to find a way around it, and rise to that challenge they shall. You make people agree to a EULA, how about making them agree to a waiver of liability as well hmm? That way, if they try to cry foul on content they found to be "disturbing" or "inappropriate", you can wave that little piece of paper in their face and say "Sorry, you agreed to this..."

Even if they argue that they didn't read it, they thought it was like the EULA, then that's their own damn fault. A judge won't let a murderer go free if they were ignorant of the law, so why should you cater to the ignorance of others?

I never said a no admittance sign*, I said not allowing people in is a padlock, IIRC. But legally, yes, such a sign would be. Would you prefer "no trespassing"? I don't know what your local laws are but LL is an American company (thus why the ban on gambling on the 'net most likely was concurrent with laws here being passed against same). At any rate, here if you have a no trespassing sign, let alone a fence, padlock on it and as you put it "no admittance," the liability is NOT yours if some goober strolls in anyway. In fact they would be breaking and entering.

So, how is INVITING people in any type of a lock?

Remember, teens will be IN Second Life - so will kids - and so will anyone who can't get age verified. Do you think the pedophiles will age verify and put their info on record - or do you think they'd rather hang out where the kids are?

--

*ETA: I went back and looked - what I said was "there already is a padlock - it's called no admittance." (Not "a no admittance sign." What I meant was, kids are not allowed in SL at the moment. Why should I be pulled into defending analogies I did not create? But I was trying to go with your "lock" analogy since you were persistent with it. I never said a no admittance sign IS a padlock though...this skimming my posts to fit them into weak analogies does neither of our arguments any good. Can we put the analogies aside please Tegg and discuss the practicalities and dangers of this allowing teens into SL (which Philip Linden has stated publicly is a goal). They might leave the teen grid alone (maybe for parents who do not want their kids in regular SL?) but I haven't noticed them saying teens are not planned to be in SL.

If teens are not planned to be in SL soon, then who is the cleanup for? Who are 'educators' hoping to have on campus? Kids and teens, I'd say. I've also seen a Linden interview that says having kids spend time with their family in SL would be good. I don't see talk of the potential dangers in those same articles though. Some parents may think being over their kid's shoulder will be enough, but then they'd better chain themself to the computer desk, because at some point little John or Jane will sneak back on.

Tegg, the thing is, the only age verification will be done for those who wish to visit the adult 'shame island.' Anyone on a PG sim will not have to...so that means adults won't have to either, and again, where do you think the pedophiles will go? Will they want to give their info to LL and go where only adults can go? Or will they prefer to be anonymous and hang out where the RL kids are. Think about it.

Unfortunately I think this is leading up to everyone having to have RL info on record, and that will drive away innocent people too, because as someone else pointed out, people have a lot of reasons to protect their RL privacy and RL data. (Not just the criminals!)

Linden Labs, et al;
(PLEASE excuse the typos here - I am not a professional typist)
After spending 2 hours (literally) combing thru the posts here, I have noticed a repetative theme:

1- YOUR 3rd party provider DOES NOT WORK - and despite what you may believe and spout, they do IN FACT sell info. They have sold mine, and I am STILL dealing with those repercussions despite repeatedly telling those companies who bought my info from them ( yes, I said they sold it in public forum) to stop calling me

2- Your Age Verification system does not work either. I personally know of MULTIPLE people who have either not verified and show up in age verification areas without ANY problems ( hence, your age verify button is broke - as in hasn't worked lately) and those who HAVE verified..and guess what? they CAN'T go into a age verified area at all...because, wonder of wonders, your age verification system and checks is broken.
I own multiple properties and I can not and will not turn on the age verificaton or the account verification choices because they dont work, and can not be relied upon to assist me in my security efforts as a land owner. As they stand now, you are forcing whom and whom I can not befriend because I personally have friends who have verified who can not visit me because your systems are so broken if I use them, they cant get in, but griefers who are alts without any info at all have shown up willy nilly at any time without any effort at all. You might as well take those particular choices off the menu until they actually work

3- Quite a few posts state merging sims isn't acceptable. Sorry people - Gotta back the Lindens ( man, this HURTS have to say this) but NO WHERE in the area that this is supposed to be talking about have I found ( other than the residents posts) where the teens and adults were going to be merged. Ergo, drop a hot topic that doesnt belong here. They aren't and , from EVERYTHING I can read from , about, or reference to, has anyone said they were, other than those residents who decided it needed to be brought up.

4- Over reaction by some has led to the gut kicking reaction of the whole big brother watching us have sex in what we consider our personal homes and space will mean we will have to put our sex beds from our bedrooms into the new adult sim. Get a clue people. It is obvious they are talking common area adult related businesses, not adult related personal spaces. They are talking businesses such as bondage sex clubs, sex clubs, the actual "business" rooms of ( call them what they are) houses of prostitution and sexually explicit items such as anatomically correct skins and or sexual "accessories". and please, anyone with a modicum of intelligence shoudl know this list is not all inclusive, but examplar.

5- Linden Labs: Many of us like the game, BUT --- you ARE being overly paranoid. I understand your propensity to be proactive and predisposed to self protectionism, but you DO have lawful prosecution and prior cases on your side. In the admittance forms we have to acknowledge prior to installing and during installation of adult sim SL, one has to verify they are over 18 to get onto the adult sim. If someone lies on that part, anyone who has done any checking at all knows that indemnifies you from prosecution for any actual, related, or conseqential events or damages that happen or occur because of the deceipt they performed. Extreme example - That would be like the fat man suing McDonald's for making him fat because they make a good product. He is fat and eating their foods by choice, and the courts laughed him all the way out the door ( yes people, this REALLY happened. Plus, he had to reimburse McD's for the lawyers fees)

6- For those examples of adult objects being seen by PG sims next door, might I suggest a (somewhat) quick fix? Being one who has had mature (ergo) adult property on the border of a PG sim, and know how irritating it can be trying to be responsible and acknolodging the owners choice on the PG sim - Can I suggest you simply move ALL the PG sims to one mainland, and take ALL the mature sims and put them in their place? Mixing the PG and Mature sims thruput mainland wasn't a bright idea in the first place. Defeats the purpose of the segragation from the start.

Just a few thoughts from someone who isn't into long debates about repetative statements. For those who read this - PLESE - Unless you have something to ADD to what I said, don't repeat me. It uses needless space and just compounds the issue with clouded disinformation

http://rezedhub.ning.com/forum/topics/philip-rosedale-teen-second

Recent denials that the teen grid will 'merge with' the main part of Second Life *could* simply mean that the teen grid will be left standing. Lindens have stated that having kids/teens as part of Second Life is a goal.

(ETA: Also scroll down the Wiki page to 'separate grids' it says a bit about this also.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

"Merge grids" may be a misnomer, the question is: will kids be allowed onto Second Life (not Teen Life) or not.

I'd like a little bit more clarification on this. By "payment info with Linden", do you mean payment info used, on file, or both? As far as "payment info with XStreet", do you simply mean having used a credit card (via PayPal) to purchase $L and/or items?

What I find had to comprehend is the number of people against this policy that refer to the new continent as 'Shame Island" or a "Ghetto" so obviously have a problem with this adult/X-rated content now, but are afraid by moving it all together to a new continent it will somehow be harder for them to avoid?
Yep, a lot of tolerance for other users of SL happening here. The main grid will be PG'd eventually like the rest of the internet, it evolves, netter to do so now before it doubles again in size, get used to it and go with the flow or fail.

So the purpose of this proposition would be to only protect those 18 and over from having their morals offended? Would this move not be redundant to the system already in place? Don't those adults already have the option of leaving the offending sight/store/land? Just as they have the option of changing an offending television channel or clicking away from any other offending internet site? I have managed to do this for myself for many many years without the intervention of anyone. And now for many months without the intervention of LL. If it's offensive, I leave. The offended also have this option.

Most of the people complaining about their morals being offended also have the agenda of legislating MINE.

I think you have a much bigger issue in underage players coming into the game. Age verification would serve you there, if it was possible to do so, and let the adults police their own morals and not inflict them on the rest of us.

Yes, that is what I'm referring to.

Direct quotes from Philip and M Linden have been posted, along with links to transcripts.
There's no sharp bright line between "this is a sex business" and "this is a private home".

No, they're against the PERCEPTION that isolating it to a separate continent PROMOTES.
The Internet isn't split into X and G sections. There's porn everywhere.

This idea seems pointless again, and a poor use of resources. Those people that don't want to see adult content shouldn't even use the internet let alone SL, if they're that sensitive.
Sex is easy to avoid as it is in game. you have to go looking for it.

I think people are saying that by lumping it all in one place you create a seedier environment than how things work now. If you look at how this has implications for island land, a whole island will have to be flagged, how many landlords are going to be happy with that due to a sex animations store on a 1024M parcel? They're more likely to suggest the sex animations store moves to Pornoville.




What internet are you using I made a typo of google the other day at work and received a message that the site was blocked due to sexual content!

Actually, the "adult web agree" system user to allow people into an adult website does NOT normally protect the site owner from prosecution under the law. Nothing does actually.

What it does is give the option to COUNTER-SUE for fraud if the parents of the minor try to sue you in civil court.

It's legal backmail. They sue you because they could not watch their kid's access on the internet, and you offer to ruin their lives if they don't backoff, since parents are responsible for their kids actions in most civil cases. (ask the parants of any kid caught in a negligence car crash).

IANAL, but this seems to be the only info I could dig up.

It really doesn't matter how much we complain or object, in the end LL will do it anyway.
Not like SL is a democracy...
Personally I don't trust that Aristotle company at all. No way they will ever get any personal info from me.

You haven't noticed the attempts by governments and religious groups to PG the internet, just because you still find porn on google & other search engines easily doesn't mean they are going to leave it that way

The UK already operates a cleanfeed.

This comes as a great relief. As a European, I was very concerned about the sort of information I was being asked to provide Aristotle -- quite simply, I was being asked to submit to some perfect strangers exactly the sort of information and documentation we in the UK are frequently advised by our law enforcement authorities to be very wary of providing online because of the clear risks of identity theft if such data and documentation falls into the hands of fraudsters, perhaps because of the activities of a disenchanted or corrupt employee of a reputable company.

There remains, though, the problem of what people should do who can't or won't, for whatever reason, indirectly verify their age by having some form of payment info on file.

A partial solution, perhaps, would be to ask for suitably anonimized verification by a trusted third party.

For example, I get a special reference number (unique to this transaction) from Linden Labs. I then take this number to my bank and ask them to write a brief letter to Linden Labs saying something like, "we can confirm to you that the customer who has asked us to write to you quoting this reference number is over the age of 18". I then forward the letter (on the bank's letterhead) to LL, who match it up with my av or avs.

That seems pretty robust -- a child might fraudulently use a parent's credit card but wouldn't be able to get a bank to write a letter like that -- and no one really finds out much about me other than that I play in SL and that I bank with the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Certainly this wouldn't be for everyone -- the bank would presumably want to charge a fee, for example -- but it's a partial solution, perhaps.

Yes, this is defiantly a good thing.

It was attempted by LL in the past, but it didn't really work out the last time, I seems to me that the two biggest obstacles that killed the last round were the choice of verification systems and the difficulty of managing and enforcing it.

If I was the decision maker here, I would implement a simple verification method that only required a nominal credit card transaction that would come across the bank statement as something like "SecondLife Adult Verification"

That should be effective in keeping the minors out of it, as there parents will see it in the bank statement.

The con side of this idea, is many people may avoid verifying because they don't want something like that showing on there bank statement. Although, personally, I feel that anyone who would be ashamed to have that show up on there bank statement probably shouldn't be getting involved in some of SecondLife's adult content, lol


Anyway, good luck on this, and I truly hope it works out better than the last round.

This. Simple, easy to implement, and and agreeable to a good percentage of people I'd think. It would at least be a good place to start.

Well all you guys are jumping up and down about ID theft and being traced etc etc etc... what you don't realize is, and from personal experience (someone approached me about it), that it already has gone on and even after a few upgrade measures ...anyway there are a few people on SL (one Mentor I know of) who uses "tools" to find people, apparently it's their job in RL -- or so they say, and they "track" people and their answer when asked "WHY" is >>> "they like to know who they are talking to" .. kinda beats the idea of being "incognito" don't you think ???, so all this about age verification is moot, BUT if LL try and help us and help keep the younger peeps off the main grid (even if by accident) then let them try it at least...but hackers will be hackers and they get more and more craftier as things get harder.
I agree with a lot of what everyone has been talking about, and yeah even some of us DON'T have a CC or Pay Pal etc etc, originaly it took me a month to finally log in back in 2005, I woulda been "born" in September/October 2005 instead of November (original avie named Bob Hartunian..I changed it to Frodo in December 2005)... I didn't have a CC and back then you needed one EVEN for the "free" trial. if you cancelled before the month was up you didn't get charged then it was USD$9.95 one time rego fee ... anywhooo, I can understand everyone's dilemma and frustration etc...but again lets see what happens OK.
We as human animals don't really like change much, but that's the same with any species >> change = new things = re-learning = panic and/or frustration = "OMG what am I going to do now" <<< been there done that.
Alrighty then......I think we are all intelligent peeps and well, I think THIS is sposed to be for SUGGESTIONS RIGHT???? sooooooo instead of bitching...make them, come on, get those heads working, lets see some suggestions thrown around the table, I think LL will listen to them, so c'mon guys pull together as a team on this one, a family, a community, lets help make this world good for the rest and for any newcommers, and I think some new HI's with lots and lots of HUGE notice boards with lots and lots of pictures to "show" people what to do >> oh yeah and in diff languages.. ummmm ok drifted ....... anyway guys.... work together ................. Frodo Hartunian....old hairy footed rouge Mentor..
PS:: have I said too much ????

i understand linden want to merge an child grid to this grid ,
an child game merged to an adult game , this is the most weird idea i ever heard in my life .
and then talking about being concerned how bad it can be for the kids.

i think it is an financial problem , so we pay for the kids grid , and linden want to have an better name in rl, and try to create an famely grid .

but do we want kids in this grid , do we want kids running around our property,? o sure we can use securety orbs , but orbs are awfull for flying around in fly machines , you crash all the time, and fly higher is like flying in nothing . , soo
what is left . in the future , no flying , no freedom to go where you want , and securety ore acciswalls are eve more worse for sailing and moto boats .
i think this cost an lot of fun ,
i think the best thing is we can do . is ban the childeren if you see one
just right click and ban, no warning , no talking, and owners of parks and other public places , hire seccurety ppl , and ban the childeren , if you cant ban , then be verry unfriendly , and make clear they have to stay in their own sims , that childeren here are very unwanted .

dear linden i think at least 70% of us dont want childeren in our world , we build this world ,
you better listen to the ones who pay you , we are the big spenders , not the childeren , and not the the teachers , and not the concerned parents .
and not all the orgarnisations outside second life ,

and keep in mind , many come here as escape for the rl , in rl they restricted by kids , famely , social , and now they are restricted again
it is really an weird idea , i think linden should have an better look to the avarage member here .

or better yet, what happens if ALL of the residents in SL decide to move to the new "Adult-Adult" land, and leave all the puritans, intolerant, and bigots behind, and alone with each other in the shattered remains of the mainland....

I mean LL, couldn't come right out and say we want all the aforementioned losers to move to a new grid, so they tell us that all the "Adults" have to move. very clever indeed, but no one will want to be in what is left behind.

What business university, or other organization would want to setup shop in such an area, filled with nothing but groups with agendas and views that they try to force on others.

We should all pass the word and embrace this change, tell everyone that this is the opportunity to get away from the bigots and other small minded people and go to an area that supports and embraces the freedoms that we came to SL for in the first place.

So lets all move to the new "Adult-Adult" sim and leave all those who practice hate as a lifestyle behind.

While my place doesn't technically qualify as "adult" I would rather live next to those who suuport freedom and choice than in a mainland dedicated to bigots and special interests.

i didnt go through and read all the posts in this section but read alot of them and kind of scanned though but here are the problems with making you give personal information to "verify" your an adult.

i do alot of role play in various characters depending on mood, and have several alts role play/fantasy is alot of what this whole game is about so alot of people that i know have several alts some more some less than others right now you can have fun and no one really has to ever know who you are in rl...now if you have to verify lets say you play out your fantasy play here.... 5 years from now you decide to run for political office as we all know they will dig up anything they can to make you look bad... even if you were just playing for fun and on adult sims it can now be traced and found who you are and what you were doing.

also i am sick of adults being punished for minors... parents need to watch their own kids instead of punishing adults because they want eveyone else to babysit for them.

i think all you need is a simple check box in your profile much like is already on xstreet i certify i am an adult and wish to see adult content... yes a minor can check that box and go to adult sims...however that takes the blame off of Linden and the other adults who wish to enjoy a break from the depression that is currently the real world without having to give out personal information. as rampant as identity theft is now a days why should we need our information "on file" in another place to be stolen just so we can have fun.