Open registration: is it no longer safe to provide "mature" content?

I guess I'm arriving at this party late, but I'm very concerned by reports that LL intends to remove the requirement that one have a credit card to register for SL.

First, I'm not impressed by the argument that this new system is no more flawed than the old one -- i.e., that credit cards are an imperfect tool for verifying age. Yes, they are imperfect, but they are far more effective than simply requiring a user to assert that they are 18. The use of a credit card is a standard verification tool on the internet now.

Second, there is a legal dimension to LL's decision. It may be the case that providers of "mature content" are currently safe from criminal prosecution under various state statutes that prohibit people from knowingly making available "harmful-to-minors" material to minors. The courts have construed such laws narrowly and struck others down as violating the First Amendment. At the federal level, the Supreme Court has twice struck down congressional efforts to regulate indecent material on the internet.

Still, none of that can prevent an overzealous prosecutor from at least trying to enforce a protect-minors law against a purveyor of mature content in SL. So how should a "mature" content provider protect themselves now? Signs only admitting 18-and-over to strip clubs? Signs warning customers not to buy naughty items unless they're over 18? Disband your mature content entirely? Do nothing and hope for the best?

I am curous as to people's thought on this too. Are we mature content creators, just screwed over? Is there anything we can do to protect ourselves?

The only thing I can think of, which has no real support, other then it sounds good to me, is that LL is still an over 18 game, and as far as I know it is still advertised to the over 18 crowd. Someone will probably correct me on this, but I think that because we are "supposed" to be an over 18 crowd, we are still protected, and it is mostly LL's ass on the line. Either way, I am not really for it.

Personally, if I were providing M rated content, I would set all my vendors to check born on date to before the verification, and prevent new people from buying.

Hopefully, in a week, Linden Lab will provide an LSL command that will let you automatically check verification.

When I signed up, I had to put input my birthday. I assume had I inputed a year corresponding to teen grid access I would have been taken there instead. I had to virtually agree to the terms of service.


What kind of verification would back up my birthdate claim?

LL is pretty upfront about the rules, if you are 18 you go to MG if not you go to TG. If someone lies is LL liable for the account creator lie?
I think their liability begins once it is a known minor and nothing is done about their access to SL. From what I have heard when they find out you get sent to TG.

It is a good question for LL's legal team to actually answer in writing for all of us.

In the meantime I would say just to be on the safe side, anyone selling or displaying mature content should put up a sign in their store stating that you must 18 or over to enter. Then (using the land owner tools Phillip has stated are in development) deny access to your land to unverified accounts.

It really isn't fair for us to treat all brand new accounts suspiciously, but that is what LL is asking us to do. It was relayed to me in skype that one of the things Phillip described was a 3 level system.

Level one being someone who has given absolutely no verifiable information to LL.
Level two being someone who has given information (ie a CC) but has been charged no money so it hasn't been proven true yet.
Level three someone who has given a CC and used it to either pay for a premium account or purchase L$.

That is my understanding at least. I have my doubts about it, I'm not quite ready to jump up and approve of it but there it is.
I do wonder what impact it is going to have on some people who have been here for a year or more and would technically qualify under the second level.

But at any rate, I have a feeling it may be awhile before we get a definative answer on this so it would be safest to assume we are liable for the content we create and should protect ourselves as much as possible.... though how much is necessary, perhaps someone with more experience in the laws (international and otherwise?) can answer that.

Thanks for the thoughtful responses. I see that Phillip's most recent remarks have been reported in a blog (linked in a separate thread here), and he did mention something about making account-verification status visible on a person's profile. But he didn't say whether we'd be able to grab such information using LSL. If we can, that would at least partly address my concern, though it still astounds me that LL is foregoing the best age-verification tool available -- checking for a credit-card at signup.

In the meantime, it appears that creators of mature content (and owners of strip clubs and the like) should get busy making some over-18-only signs. Or maybe over-21 signs; not sure.

Mature content sellers are about as responsible as a minor breaking into a porn store and viewing adult content for themselves. I do understand your concern though, as it seems personal and parential responsibility have gone out of the window over the last few years.

How long do you think it wil be before all the TG residents completely move to MG? i know someone must still play over there.

Yes, it's called self control and discretion.

teens like dongs too!

LOL! Getting advice on self control and discretion from the real Ann Coulter is kinda like asking Tammy Faye for make-up tips!

Oh Christ, why did they make that last name available?

So someone can spoof Ann Coulter right down to her inanities, that's why!

Thats nice and condescending. Mature content CREATORS are business owners selling a product. The person was asking how to protect themselves while doing business.

Perhaps you did not understand my reply. Protect yourself against those evil children who want to peek at your porn by being discreet just like real people in real life do. I hope that is clearer for you.

There isn't any advertising channel they can use which isn't as completely open to underage players as much as adult players. There is NO way a store can be discreet in SL which does not amount to financial suicide.

I dare you to show a way in which a store can avoid teh eyes of a teen player in SL whikle stil remaining as accessibelt o adults as before.

Eh.. not even worth it. Look at the name, the join date, and the general theme of the total 4 posts "Ann" has made. Have fun roleplaying Ann.

*lets someone else feed the troll and wanders off to bed*

Ni night all

The vast majority of services on the internet that do not allow children to participate have one defense mechanism: What is your birthday?

By essentially signing an agreement that you are of age to participate, when you are not of age, you are breaking the TOS. So LL wouldn't be liable for any people basically frauding them.

Next point; a credit card or a cell phone does not an adult make. I for one am twenty-two years of age and do not have either credit card nor cell phone, and am forced to use a close friend's credit card just to have a basic account. If it weren't for them, I wouldn't be here, and neither would the stuff I've created.

Credit cards and cell phones aren't even a reliable method of proving that adults are adults, let alone prohibiting kids from getting access. Hell, there are probably hundreds of kids out there who had an easier time getting an account than I did and I actually am of legal age.

For the record, I think that there should be restrictions on age. The teen grid is a great idea and I applaud LL for their efforts in providing underagers with their own place to be. And I think that if there was a reliable way of seperating kids from adults on the internet, we should use it. Except that there isn't. And until there is, I think it's a pretty naive assertion that credit cards and cell phones are the way to go.

As it was, billing information really was keeping a lot of people away. I have seen people say that they would have tried it out if there wasn't required billing information. People aren't keen on providing their credit card number to some game company that claims to be free. That's just the mentality of a lot of people.

Yes, I think the topic of registration needs to be discussed, openly and honestly. But I will say for the record that the recent 'protest' at the birthday party was revolting, and everyone involved should be absolutely ashamed of themselves. They want to 'prevent griefing' and 'keep kids off the grid' and then go and grief the party and act like a bunch of kids themselves. So many residents, residents like you and me worked so hard setting up that party so that you, me, all of us as a community could celebrate, and some people had the genius plan of trashing it like it was going to gain them any sympathy from anyone.

Ugh.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on the matter.

- Harle

Am I the only one here who doesn't see this as a problem?

As far as I am concerned, all of these new post-6/6/6 accounts still clicked "I Agree" to the same Terms of Service as I did less than a year ago. Therefore, anybody who would come after me for providing adult content to these residents must first explain what they were doing there in the first place.

If anybody gets the lawsuit, Linden Lab does.

I am so sick of hearing this. Saying that by sitting together in matching tshirts staying far away from the parade and other festivities and just chatting, we were griefing, absolutely blows me away. Some of you have a pretty loose definition of griefing. While we were there, we talked casually, we joked with Lindens, we caused absolutely no trouble at all. At one point I even personally asked one certain Linden in IM if where we were sitting was ok and out of the way enough and he said it was fine.

Look up the definition of griefing again before you flat out insult a large group of actually well established people in the community. What we did by being in a place we would have been in anyway doing nothing more disruptive than wearing matching clothes was NOT griefing.

There was someone griefing the event, someone dropped prims on Phillip while he was talking. That is griefing. We were actually sitting trying to listen to what he said. If anyone was disruptive, it was never us.

And for the record, I for one was there to also celebrate and I had a lot of fun.

What I see as a major difference is that even if a child is caught lying about their age on the new streamlined form, there is no way to really deport them to the Teen grid or kick them out. They can just create a new account and come right back in.

Under the old system, if you lost an account that was tied to a credit card, that account slot could not be re-used. Create three, and that was it. If you had three in use, and did something truly horrible, it was easy for LL to ban all three of your accounts, as they all shared that identifying credit card info.

With the new system, that is impossible. Here's a ficticious example:

Let's say a ten year old creates an account as "Hawt Twin", gives "Hawt Twin" also as their legal name, and "Hawt-Twin@hotmail.com" as their e-mail, along with a fake birthdate that says they are 22 years old. They are in, they fool around, they get caught, they get kicked out by the Lindens...

Well, THAT ACCOUNT gets kicked out, sure...

So they log on again and create a new account as "Kool Twin", give "Kool Twin" also as their legal name, and "Kool-Twin@hotmail.com" as their e-mail, along with a fake birthdate that says they are 23 years old. They are back, less than 5 minutes later.

How can Linden Labs keep them out? The second account shares no identifying information with the first. Neither account has anything to do with reality, as all the information, including the e-mail addresses, is completely false. Even if they locked out the kid's IP address or MAC address, there's ways to change that, and nothing preventing the kid from going to a friends house, or to the local library, and logging on from there to create yet more free accounts...

I have a ten year old daughter. I monitor and restrict her net access, so I'm not terribly worried about her. But she has a friend her age that I KNOW has repeatedly lied in the past to gain access to hardcore porn sites. That ten year old girl has been punished more times than I can count for such behavior, and her parents, one of whom is an SL user, have had to lock down their entire home network with passwords, to keep that kid from doing it again.

It isn't just hypothetical. It's a real problem, and sooner or later, Linden Labs is going to be facing a major lawsuit if they don't take serious steps to restrict access.

Personally, I'm refraining from developing or selling any content that is more than PG-13 rated from here on out, until Linden Labs proves to me that they have effective means for keeping kids out. I would never consider running an adult-oriented business in a public mall, with no doors or walls to keep kids out. But that is what you're doing if you run a mature-rated business in SL today.

I think you have made some good comments but I don't feel that the responsibility for age verification is on any resident of SL except for one example.

When we all enter the game we are given rules to adhere to, to me this seems like a contract. If I am not breaching the contract I am not breaking the law. I think I am making many assumptions with this opinion but nevertheless this is how I take it.

We see a new rise in SL escorts that solicit inside SL to do business outside of SL (phone sex, cam shows etc) when the SL escort takes their client to RL, when they see that person is a minor they have a responsibility to not offer that person services. My opinion though is once it's outside of SL , SL can't do anything about that. Let's say someone solicit's minor's somehow specifically inside SL for RL services and becomes known inside SL, then that seller should be removed from utilizing SL infastructure to further that business. (did any of that make sense?)

Other than that scenario I can't see how someone can get in trouble for offering adult merchandise or adult services, because we all are party to the "agreement" or the "TOS".

It's a good question.

I like your idea to post a sign in your store. I wish there was someone who could tell us legally where everyone stands, that is unbiased in this issue.

This is the last time I will post on this subject. If a minor gets onto the main grid and the parents sue, it's LL's responsibility. They are opening themselves up to it by completely removing the verification system, even as poor as it was. There's not even the token effort, it's all reactive rather than proactive now. It's LL's job to keep them out, not mine. I'll report it if I find one, but if they are engaged in a sexual act with a known adult, it would probably be a good idea to reporting it to the authorities too.

CYA on our part, given how it's becoming our responsibility to weed them out! It was different when there was verification. Sure, a teen/kid could get a card, via whatever means they wanted, but at least it meant that LL was trying to prevent the problem and that it was kinda just community service to round up the strays that got through. Now? LL has given the signal that they don't care, and it's shoved off onto our shoulders to 'find and report.' Which will do a squat bit of good, since as several have already posted, that same teen will just take the 3 minutes to create a new account and be RIGHT BACK IN.

I know it sounds harsh. Unfortunately it will sound even harsher if someone does sue LL for it. *shrug* But they'll do what's best for the company, right?

No, they aren't.


No, it isn't. You obviously don't visit enough adult-oriented websites. The vast majority of them require you to click that you're 18 or over on an intro page. Relatively few require anything more than that.


Is it safe? Tough question to answer, but it's certainly no more or less safe than it was last month.

The law is an ass and responsibility is often held to be collective. Personally, I wouldn't produce anything more "mature" than Carebear statues. And I'd leave off the flowers - too much Georgia O'Keefe.