Important! Adult shops, clubs and services in SL

Gummi, thank you for this info. I fervently hope people will keep this sort of thing in mind when their next local elections come up, and start electing people who understand the net instead of fear it.

It's as good a defense as posting additional warnings round your stall. Which may, you are saying, be no good at all, in which case, 0 + 0 = 0, so we don't need the extra 0.

At the moment, the hysteria is about child porn (as in your link) and I'm not aware that there is any of that in SL. If someone hit on the idea of using SL as a distributing point for child porn, then we might be in trouble ...

Just cause LL puts that in there UA dose not get them off the hook in any way. They are the ones providing the means for it to happen so they are still legally responsible to make sure it dose not happen. they better hire new lawyers.

Well, the problem I see is that 'little Johnny' from the mid-western bible-belt zone of the US stumbles into a strip bar that is loaded with these new features. Little do we know that Johnny stole his daddy's paypal account and bypassed the restriction put in place by whatever new scripting command to check for payment information.

Little Johnny goes into the strip club, sees adult content (use your imagination) and mommy walks into the room to see her only son copulating not only with a strange woman, but her son posing as another woman in some homosexual orgy with a bunch of 'women'.

Little Johnny's mom has been saving up her pennies for this. She's waited her whole life to take down the Video Game industry as she sees them as a hive of villiany. So, she hires the best lawyer she can and puts her massive 50 year savings behind a lawsuit with LL and the creators of the content.

LL responds by changing the TOS so it's basically The Sims: Online and users drop off faster than Marines in Iraq.

Just a senario.

Little Johnny can equally go to any adult site on the net.

Bad Momma for not keeping a better eye on Little Johnny.

Incidentally I like the story that if they managed finally to clean all the porn off the net, there would be one site left, which would be called bring-back-the-porn.

(Post edited to remove a made-up url that turned out to be real.)

Well, despite the tastelessness of the South Park movie, I direct you to the lyrics of the song entitled 'Blame Canada'..

[ begin lyrical score ]

Blame Canada
Shame on Canada
For...
The smut we must stop
The trash we must bash
The Laughter and fun
Must all be undone
We must blame them and cause a fuss
Before someone thinks of blaming uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuus!!!!

[end lyrical score]

Little Johnny's mom won't blame herself for poor parenting.

It's that devil LL's fault.

You can say this, but this doesn't protect you if it turns out that the lawsuit works. Unless you have the RL political power with judges and similar to arrange or guarantee that the above doesn't happen, then we need to discuss how to deal with it if/when it does, not why it is wrong.

That's why non-verified accounts should be ended. If 'Little Johny' had to use a credit card to activate his account, it shows a couple things.

1) Consent by the parent or adult to allow the under-age to access content where under 18 are not allowed (Must be 18+ to access the adult SL).

2) For parents that don't keep a better eye on their kids, the credit card also contains a record for them to look into. There is also a chance that when asked for the CC, the parent will actually look into what it is they are handing the card over for.

In my example, Little Johnny stole his daddy's paypal account information. Bypassing that parental control.

So, in the situation, mommy wouldn't know the basis for his access to the 'adult' content and much hilarity would ensue.

Now, as it has been so succinctly stated, we must discuss what sort of contigencies would be in place in case this senario would to come to pass. And I think it will, very very soon.. If it's not happening already.

USA is the land of the lawsuit. People will sue anyone for anything at any time no matter how baseless or frivolous.

If he 'stole' the parent's information as you suggest, there is still a record of it for them to review.


Lawyer: "Why did you give Little Johny your payment information without researching what he was using it for first?"

Johny's Parents: "I didn't, he stole it from us. We were totally unaware."


That's a case closer right there. It's no different than an underage using a fake ID to get into somewhere they shouldn't be. Once the owner of the establishment can show they have done whatever they could within reason to prevent under-aged from entering their establishment, they are in the clear.


Regardless of the people who feel McDonald's should have paid out for making people fat, this particular case you have presented is a no brainer. Johny is somewhere he is not supposed to be. You look to make sure everything was done to prevent him from being there by all parties within reason. The only party that failed at this was his parents, for not keeping their paypal and credit card information secure.


I still think verified accounts would help this case alot.

Ok now This is the First Real arguement in Favor of CC Verification that Makes Sense.
----->A Liability Guarantee.<-----
It still does not absolutely prove the age of the person actually using the card However it DOES prove either Parental Consent, OR Parental Neglect, AND it Cements the "Adults Only" stipulation for membership by making membership Contingent on posessing something ONLY someone over 18 Should have.

Based upon THIS arguement Alone i Could support the return of CC verification If it were deemed Necesary.

As an aside, Can anyone from any State (Or Province) Tell me of an existing Lawsuit where a Minor used fraudulent information to gain access to an Adult Website, and the site was Later SUCCESSFULLY sued by the Minors Parent or Guardian? I pay attention to such things, but i have never heard of such a Case.
Anybody?

Angel.

False.

Credit cards are no proof of "age of maturity." and an increasing number of minors possess them.

Um, I think you miss the point. I'm being hysterical about thirty-three dead Englishmen; the issue of whether child porn was involved HAD NOT EVEN BEEN TESTED IN A COURT OF LAW. All of the crap that happens is BEFORE any due process of review takes place, and BEFORE your arguemnt can be tested. What's more, your argument is worthless when once the death threats from crazed religious gorups start piling up on your answering machine (and you can bet your last zloty that they will; I've listened to the tapes from people who merely appeared in a tabloid expose, never mind actually DOING anything).

The people who will wreck your life have FAR lower standards of proof than are required even by the slipshod, time-serving forgers who put together the Operation Ore dossier. Marching about in a bikini somewhere that there's shorter-than-normal avs is enough for them...

Gummi, I'm not accusing you of hysteria. The "people who will wreck your life" are the hysterical ones.

Hmmm. Remove the adult content huh - the thing which made SL so popular (like it or not this is true) = massive MASSIVE fall off. Maybe that's what Microsoft would want tho, huh?

The real answer to this should be, who cares? Why would you care if some kid comes in disguised as an adult? So what?

Does anyone actually believe some or most of these kids are ignorant to sex in any way, shape or form? Please!!!

Come to sl for your own enjoyment and forget about what age the person next to you is. If they happen to sneak in, so what? It's their choice and there's nothing anyone can do to stop them since in most cases you don't know who anyone really is in sl to begin with.

No one can be the games police, so why worry about what others do or don't do.

Gotta be 18 to have a CC. You can have a DEBIT card under 18 or in some cases a CC that has a parent co-signer. But you missed something there. A CC, owned by the under-aged, will SHOW they are under-age when their information is verified.

I've tried explaining this, but no one listens.

Care to back that up with a link? (Just because a minor possesses a credit card doesn't imply that it's in their own name.)

If credit cards don't stop minors from getting into WoW, it won't stop them from getting into this "Game" either. SL at first blush looks more like just another online game.... not a porn site. A parent could easily be fooled unless they looked much more closely.

Depending upon CC's for age verification will just lull us into a false sense of security. At best, it might reduce minors by 55%, is that good enough to say "problem solved"? (% is based upon the COPA commissions's estimates of effectiveness)

LL has to pay to verify CC's.

CC's don't want "no charge" transactions.

The flow of new paying residents would be adversely impacted if required to pay just to see what SL is like.

Is a half-effective solution worth the ultimate cost of implementing it?

As I said on the blog a few minutes ago... I'd rather put up with the consequences that come with having unverifieds on the grid than try to do business inside some snobbish gated community.

And what are we worrying about anyway?

RL porn may be guilty of setting "unrealistically unattainable expectations of perfection"... but cybering? Sorry that makes me chuckle... and imagine some newly mature adults fooling around: "Hey, uh, could you put this box on your hand? I can't get all hot'n'bothered unless you're wearing prims."

I think others have posted it (I've not read every entry) but here's a link to the Second Life Terms of Service that everyone has to accept in order to join either the main or teen grid...

http://secondlife.com/corporate/tos.php

... It is crystal clear.

Is it possible that people (minors or adults) violate the TOS? Of course, but that is neither the responsibility of LL or people in SL who have mature content. Parents need to be the parents, not everyone in SL or Linden Labs. End of story.

In a perfect world yes. Read back a few pages on what can still happen regardless.

If you back up over tire spikes and sue for damages, and the owner says "Sorry, it's posted 'severe tire damage, don't back up'." But you complain that the sign was too small to read... there are courts that would probably award in your favor.

I agree... parents SHOULD monitor their children, and be ultimately accountable for failing to do so. But lawyers and judges may very well see it differently.

It is neither crystal clear, nor is it the end of the story.

That's probably the best analogy I've seen used.

Aww, shucks, thanks! =)

I still think this whole issue is slightly ridiculous... (for reasons already stated with regards to comparing adult material in SL to RL)...

But I also recognize that absurd and illogical things often happen in the name of "protecting the innocent".

--
Talk is cheap... until the lawyers get involved!

That's why I've always stated and repeatedly, it isn't a matter of who finds pixel sex realistic, it's what is found objectionable.

Frankly, the cases against McDonald's and against the fast food industry as a whole that were allowed to trial, should never have been. If common sense doesn't tell you french fries are fattening, then you have no right to bring a case based on ignorance.

Or take the Philip Morris lawsuits that have won on behalf of smokers that started AFTER the big lie. (I will concede that a smoker who gained an illness when they were told that it wasn't harmful at all in the 60's could have a case.) But some cases being brought against them, even with the warnings smeared all over cigarettes and annual inserts plus all the media throwing how bad they are in your face, the person still smoked and has sued and won. A recent case was of a 10 year smoker that was 37 years old and died of throat cancer.... I'm sorry that someone is dead, but it's of thier own accord (this coming from a 11 year smoker).

Can you imagine someone trying to sue Jack Daniel's for making whiskey that someone drank and got in a car accident and killed someone else? It's crazy, but it's not that far off...

P.S. Just to clarify, I wrote this up to prove that it's not an issue of intelligence, but what others or a judge interprets and since jurisdiction is America, I used American cases. If a judge who is fully aware on smoking can rule in favor of 'victims', then certainly most judges wouldn't have a clue how to interpret internet laws and nuances.

You can't throw cartoons having sex up in the store front window, not because of realism, but because it's objectionable.