Help us deal with minors!

Can you explain why several posts (all concerning the issue of your new TOS as it affects your assurance that minors would not have access to the adult grid), written by myself, and at least one other resident.. were simply deleted without comment?

Linden Labs, in establishing your new terms of services, you have placed all adult content providers on your service, in the untennible position of being liable for criminal prosecution, simply because you can not, or will not, give us the tools with which to screen customers/visitors for age. You furthermore have refused to do this screening yourself. Put succinctly, the phrasing in your Terms of Service now makes it "acceptable" for children.. minors... to wander into SL, and get a job in a sex club. as a prostitute.

Meanwhile.. it will be the people who hire these minors, even unknowingly, or who sell mature content to them.. who will now be named in lawsuits... and I have no beleif that you will protect the anonymity of residents when your records are subpeonaed. (can't spell it).

You have not provided us with adequate tools to protect minors from adult content.. beleive me, if you had, we'd be using it. Since you now refuse to "take responsibility" and control the gates of this world.. protecting the adults from this situation... and you refuse to provide the adults with the tools needed to screen minors themselves..

You just delete the posts, and try to keep the Public Relations image?

There are people in your world selling adult things.. very adult things. While I agree that Parents should monitor their child's behaviour.. we all know it's not happening. Since we can't have impassable doors, or impassable walls.. and we can't soundproof or cam-proof our playspaces and shops.. and you won't give us the assurance that all SL players are adults...

How is this major portion of your ecomony supposed to protect itself?
What tools will you give us?
When will you stop ignoring us, and actually respond to our concerns and needs?

I know I'm not the first person to ask these questions. And you're probably tired of hearing about it. Consider responding to them and helping us.. and I could be the last.

Hi Winter. I deleted a couple of posts which were policy arguments, but not broadly applicable questions. I did address the question about adults and minors in this post.

Let me take it a bit further.

Age verification, even with the best tools, is very difficult. There are many companies on the Internet, My Space for example, who are working to solve this problem but so far there is no really good technical solution. I hope that we will have much better forms of age verification available in the not too distant future. But for now there is nothing foolproof. It certainly isn't the case that we refuse to take responsibility or provide controls; it's more that there are no guarantees which is what the TOS says.

Currently we ask people to provide us with a birthdate and if they are honest, and under 18, they don't enter the Main Grid. Essentially this system works the same way as the gating factor you're requesting -- it depends on someone telling the truth when they push that button. When we discover that they haven't been truthful, then we remove them.

Credit cards are not particularly good indicators of age, but if you feel more comfortable that they are helping you screen, then limit access to your parcel to people who have provided us with payment information. This information will serve as a proxy until we can actually verify age. For now that's the best we can do.