How can you possibly keep kids out?

I read Phillip's proposed speech in his Blog. It was a nice speech, and I am glad he was polite to the protesters, but he's missed or is completely ignoring a critical point on minors accessing SL. I would like to see a response from Phillip or some other SENIOR Linden staffer that indicates thet they really have some viable means of KEEPING kids out if we identify and report them. I see no indication that they can do that at all now. And I would like an explanation of how the current plans can possibly prevent kids from accessing mature content by standing near a XXX area, outside the Mature rated sim or parcel, and spying on it with their camera. No end-user controls or player labels can protect against that.

Keeping them out:

What I see as a major difference between the old registration system and the current policy 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. While credit cards were not a perfect way to track validated accounts, at least they were something tangible that an account could be traced to,and if you banned the card, they had to find some other way to get approved. Cell phone numbers, on the other hand, can be obtained for $20 cash by purchasing a cheap prepaid access phone at Wal-Mart, so that is NOT useful as validation.

With the new system, kicking someone out 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 LL somehow locks out the kid's IP address or MAC address (thus temporarily also blocking that entire household?), there's ways to change both the MAC address and the IP address that LL can detect, 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 would fully AGREE with Phillip that it is good that the new system allows more non-Americans to get in. But there has to be SOME way to attach some sort of verifiable, real-world identifier to a person's account creation, so they can't just instantly return if you kick them out. Make several options available! Credit card, passport number, Romanian State ID Card Number, whatever! Just make them something valid that can't readily be discarded and replaced.

Preventing access by minors BEFORE detection:

Tools that allow us to see if a particular account has provided valid ID or not are all well and good, but do absolutely NOTHING to prevent kids disguised as adults from standing near some XXX business in Second Life and watching to their heart's content, just by mousing through the walls with their camera. As has been pointed out many times before, there is NO privacy in SL. So it is impossible for the individual to do anything to protect themselves against being observed by minors. What are we supposed to do? Set up security orbs that push away unverified users into the next sim? Or should all mature businesses and all homes where anyone has VR sex with their own monogamous mate have to purchase private Island sims, and restrict access only to pre-screened members?

I can only suggest that Linden Labs needs to alter the client so it is IMPOSSIBLE for anyone with an unverified account to access or to see or interact with anything in a sim or parcel that is tagged "mature". Do SOMETHING to ensure that an unverified account CAN NOT stand outside the borders of a Mature parcel and interact with it.

Or better yet, make it IMPOSSIBLE for ANYONE to penetrate a walled-off area with their camera or a remote sensor. If people had some way to make their bedrooms, XXX theatres, bordellos and skinny-dipping swimming holes actually PRIVATE, and could keep people outside some pre-set barrier from accessing any information about what was going on 'behind the fence', or 'behind the locked door', there would be a lot less fuss over the unrestricted access, and the possibility of minors on the main grid. Do THAT, and you could open the entire grid to everyone, of any age. Because then, the adults who want to do adult stuff could keep any unwelcome individuals out.

Hi Ceera!

Continuing on, in response to your underage concerns shared by many Residents--Robin Linden's latest blog post:

[UPDATE] Open Registration
http://secondlife.blogs.com/change/2006/06/update_open_reg.html