Minors Minors Everywhere...

In the past week I have encounterd about a dozen players in very mature places who have admitted in private to being underage. Does the teen grid even exist anymore? Aren't the owners of these adult establishments concerned that LL will hand them over to the authorities the moment some prosecutor decides they need to make a name for themselves in the press?

How are the owners supposed to filter out the minors if they don't admit to it openly...?

The Lindens will not be held responsible for residents lieing about there age. Soon enough age verification though your credit card will be introduced. Not sure how this will effect free accounts with no CC info, but I am sure that they will be restricted to pg sims only.

I will not age verify with passport/Social Insurance BUT DO AGREE with a required credit card verifcation after a reasonable amount of time. That should be as strict as it gets.

The owners I'm sure are operating under the Linden Stance that SL is an Adult area, and don't know they are underage. If they told you, you have the option to report them to Linden via AR.

Something... anything that keeps minors off the main grid would be more than welcome. We're supposed to AR minors so they can be transferred to the Teen Grid. But what's the point when everyone knows they'll just make another unverified alt and be back in 5 minutes

there must be someway we can keep them in the mines


how bout we put a sploder at the mine enterance


that used to work till they banned spolders

I know in RL businesses that carry adult content are required by law to protect minors from seeing or obtaining it. I'm just curious for how much longer this content will be able to be out in the open with no restrictions before someone does end up getting pulled into court as a test case. Look what happened with gambling and that is far less serious in my opinion. Just the fear of getting prosecuted made LL ban it.

Well, from what I've seen "Are you a minor? Yes? Then go away." seems to be sufficient 'protection'. LL are by far not the only ones on the Internet using such flimsy methods.

If you were a teen, which grid would YOU go to?

First, LL is protected under the law. The data entered at signup for your age, relieves LL of legal repercustions. Silly to us, but that is all the law calls for. This also protects the merchants as all their customers provide "proof of age" by simply logging into SL. They alreayd have done all they can to protect minors by being here on the Main Grid.

Second, it is easier for a Teen to make an account on the Main Grid because the Teen Grid still REQUIRES account verification. The "logic" behind this is to keep ADULTS off the Teen Grid. *decides against even going into a discussion of the FUBARed "logic" of LL on that one*

Third, Since these "minors" have "admitted" to their age to you, did you report them? Stating knowledge of a crime without reporting it might be concidered accomplice through negligence.

~Jessy

It does seem rather odd that the minors are so attracted to you, and seem so honest in telling you they are minors, when they supposedly lied to get on the Adult grid in the first place.

I am not saying that there are not minors on the adult grid, just that it seems odd how you manage to 'expose' a dozen of them in one week.

What's happened with the whole "age verification" thing anyway? If, as Jessica says:


is it even necessary or was all that talk just LL blowing smoke up Fox News' ass?

I'm in a pedantic mood so I'll point out that they haven't done all they can, but they have done all they need to do

Second Life users had to be verified by CC until 6/6/2006. As it's pointless from a legal POV (VISA say their cards must NOT be used for age verification purposes) they were supposed to be using an AVS called Integrity Services but that feels like a distant dream now.

stop offering them candy.......

Doesn't matter if it's pointless or not. There is no law that says you have to go to extensive measures to validate an age of a person.


Thus why almost every adult website says "You must be 18 years or older to enter click continue if you are" and it's fine as can be.

The "Age Verification" is a PR tool. It is also a tool for Residents who want to use a tighter means of control for verifiy the age of another account.

IMO, LL ran into the roadblock with it when they went to see how to let the world outside of the US be verified and found out that many countries (some of which have a HUGE fiscal impact on SL) can not verify as easily. Even US residents are not that willing to give SSN#s out these days due to all the ID theft.

Basically, LL had a great concept. Mouthed off saying they could do it. Then ran into the brick wall of reality. Par for course.

Will it still go in? Prolly. After LL comes up with some completely unnessicary and complex form of doing it. It'll be buggy and won't work right, then will get pushed onto the side because it's not really needed and if it ever goes full blown, LL will lose a large percentage of their customer base (Adults not able to verify, not the kids).

Are Teens on the Main Grid? Yup. If you think you can out-think a teenager, think again. Lock it up and they'll go under the lock. Think I'm wrong? Think about how many Teens you see that drink/smoke.

Want Teens off the Main Grid? Easy enough. Re-instate Account Verification for the Main Grid and REMOVE it from the Teen Grid. *sends out pamphlets to LL for how to preform a "Reverse Cranium Rectumomy"*

~Jessy

Probably both, i suppose i could do this now by making an alt that is underage but havent really thought about it.

Anyone know what the teen grid is like?
What are land prices like? do they have land barons and land bots?

What about sex beds etc? i presume that sort of thing is banned but whats to stop someone from creating it anyway, or is everything just toned down a whole lot?

Trust me I was surprised too. I think I am friendly enough that maybe they felt comfortable telling me. All of them were furs so maybe that is the reason why there were so many. The funny thing is, they all asked me my age first. I never ask unless I am asked. As far as exposing anyone, I haven't since it really should be LLs responsibilty to enforce this and not the residents. Besides they will just make another alt and come back anyway.

Having run a MUSH on the internet, which included adult areas, I have to tell you that there's no good way to detect who has lied about their age to gain access. There is no good way through internet interaction to gauge someone's real life age. In fact, some of my internet friends whom I thought seemed very mature turned out to be real life teens, and some of the most immature internet people I know are 40+ in real life.

I do know this: It's hard for me to do anything about it if no one reports anything to me.

In eight years, I once had a case in which someone did not admit to being underage on the MUSH but someone had reported a suspicion to me that the person was underage, I was able to talk to that person enough to convince myself conclusively that the person was indeed younger than 18. The only reason though that I was able to figure out this person was because this person went overboard in making up lies about his/her real life in justifying age to the point that the lies were internally inconsistent and incongruent with any objective reality. This incident, to me, is the exception that proves the rule that it's impossible to tell someone's age without an admission. Most teens, on average, are sophisticated enough to lie plausibly to seem older.

As an aside, it amazes me how many men are caught in chat rooms trying to find underage girls to have real life sex with. If someone tells you in a chat room that she is a 14 year-old-girl, you know that person is F.B.I. or an F.B.I. informant. The real 14 year-old-girls are all pretending to be 18.

Linden Labs can't do much to enforce adult status after someone has already successfully gained access, if no one makes reports as to an admission by someone that they are under age. Sure, it's hard to enforce the age policy, but the Lindens can't even try if no one makes obvious reports.

The problem with Integrity Services is that they wanted some highly personal information (SSN's, I think) in order to verify. The other problem is that it wouldn't have worked for some countries - in the UK, for example, the equivalent of the SSN is the NIN, but it's actually illegal for companies to use them for identity verification unless they are banks.

Also, as far as I'm aware, even if a user is ARed for being underage, they are not necessarily sent to the TG. This is presumably because, if they were, an adult paedophile could create an unverified account, lie about being underage, get ARed, and thus gain LL-sanctioned access to the TG.

They can't enforce what they don't know. These people are lying to gain access to the adult grid, as far as LL knows they are Adults. By not reporting them you are adding to the problem.

Of course reporting someone leading to an automatic temporary ban until proof of age is received leads to another problem ...

Since it can be used as a tool to cuase people grief.