Age Verification: A NEW SOLUTION :)

The cost of a paper system would be enormous.

Any Verification system has to be balanced against cost.

Id personally agree to that as an option to providing dangerous numbers if the person opting that pays a handling fee to cover the costs.

Best solution ever:

Phillip Linden would be shipped via FedEx to our homes to verify us.

It's NOT A PAPER SYSTEM.

ONLY the SL user keeps ONE piece of paper. The only information that is given to LL is the randomly generated number and the notary public's unique number. Those are entered into fields on your computer screen in the LL verification site. There is ONE piece of paper involved, and the user keeps it. The notary public already has a record book, and he/she is REQUIRED BY LAW to enter each transaction into it. The system already exists. LL just has to utilize it.

We would NOT have to give ANY information re:age or identity to LL. The notary public vouches for that information. If we are found to be misrepresenting ourselves, WE are found guilty, not LL or the notary.

I deleted my post when I realized.

I dont know enough about the numbers.

I do know one thing about notaries however - In my state they only verify your signature against your ID.

You can sign ANYTHING they dont care what it is. They simply check your ID against your signature. All they notarize is it is you signing the paper. Their log book says
"Yes I Notarized that So and So signed a paper."

I could sign a piece of paper saying I was 23,465 years old, had super powers, and lived in the white house and they would not care.

Considering that they will continue to get flak until they do, I have to agree.

I also agree the implications are unpleasant reguarding the tacit approval of people not being over 18.

If any Mature material is accesable still by unverifieds- which is quite possible, the next news story is underaged peopel can easily see Nude Pictures in the "game" of Second Life.

The Media wont get this whole "next internet" dream.

About the best that could be hoped for is that LL would have it legally decided (at great cost) that somebody broke the TOS, which would constitute a breach of contract.
What happens when someone breaks the TOS? The account is closed.

Without any financial gain directly linked to the act, it would be very hard to prove fraud, and the notary wouldn't care as they verified the person themselves (not the SL account), so they have not been decieved.

If LL is absolved from responsibilty by using a system that can never actually be trusted as reliable, then they are absolved from responsibility with a simple checkbox on signup that says "I am over 18". Neither system is any better than the other, as both require honesty on the part of the user to be reliable. One just happens to be more complex than the other and keeps people in employment.

I completely agree with you! The whole thing is crazy. But this thread is for trying to find solutions.

Ah, but there is no solution. Age verification on the net can never be done 100%.

Credit cards used to be accepted with the knowledge that there would be the occasional fraudster. It was a good system because of the amount of effort put in preventing fraud.

Now we have companies like aristotle selling a lie. They offer to verify the data of somebody, selling it as if they are verifying the actual person on the other side of the screen. As we know, this doesn't work.

We could have certain areas set up where you can go and register with photo ID. Apart from the fact that photo IDs can be forged, there's no verification that the person later using SL is the one who got verified.

Disks could be put onto shelves with 18+ ratings, but that doesn't account for parents buying the disks then the children accessing them on their parents machines, the disks that go missing from the trucks or the stores, the disks that are pirated etc.

If we go to the realms of complete domination by LL over our private lives, we could have every player required to have a webcam and send photo ID, with a massive force of people to patrol the grid verifying each player against the photo ID. That falls down when the webcam is focussed at the person whose ID was used, while the real player sits elsewhere in the room.

If LL were to accept that it can never be pulled off, they could spend their money on lawyers to protect them against lawsuits (if they actually happen). Either society and judges decide that the sites are responsible and prosecute every site with imperfect age verification (all of them), or they decide that sites cannot be held responsible when a user lies about their age. Either way, nothing can be done to swing it one way or another, and this whole scheme is a waste of time, effort and money.

They could also invest in someone to do some public relations, actually explaining the facts to the news outlets who scream like hell at any sign of sleaze.

Well we could always write another open letter. LOL!

Seriously, tho, think about it. If all users concerned about privacy issues, be they sheepbot/searchbot or identity verification, signed an open letter to LL stating that we will all effectively "go on strike" for a certain period, e.g. the last 2 weeks in May, might LL notice? Or would they care?

If none of us logged in for that entire week or two weeks or whatever, and we got ENOUGH people to carry it out, we MIGHT make an economic impact. If we got crazy enough to send the open letter to the press... hmmm... I can see the bbc.com headlines now...


*shrug* I'd get some stuff done around the house, anyway.

I'm willing to knock up a polling system in world and on site for something similar to open letter if somebody can do the writeup for it.
If we can gather thousands of strictly verified signatures (by moving signing in world), LL should pay attention.

I think a list of signatures won't be enough. We need to be able to use our own economic power. Is a login strike enough? It might be a hardship for some, but then, so is identity theft...

I don't think we could actually get enough people to affect the economy or the "logged on in the past 2 weeks" stats.

One thing that would get their attention is pledges to take 50,000 items into inventories though

Yes, and as I understand it, ONE German user was attempting to sell child porn in SL. And because of that, ALL the rest of us have to go through all this mess ...

Yeah, or not

From the TOS:

In addition to abiding at all times by the Community Standards, you agree that you shall not: [...] (viii) interfere with or disrupt the Service or servers or networks connected to the Service, or disobey any requirements, procedures, policies or regulations of networks connected to the Service; [...] Any violation by you of the terms of the foregoing sentence may result in immediate and permanent suspension or cancellation of your Account. You agree that Linden Lab may take whatever steps it deems necessary to abridge, or prevent behavior of any sort on the Service in its sole discretion, without notice to you.

thawte.com (a company that deals with online security issues) already uses something similiar involving local notaries for their "Web of Trust"... if we *had* to have something, I'd much rather have something like this. Am not handing over even part of my SS# to anyone. Something like this might be difficult for player's in other countries though. Dunno...

If anything, not playing any more can only make the grid more stable, so I think we'd be alright to go "on strike" from SL, hehe. Who knows? We may discover that it didn't mean quite so much to our lives as we thought and we can get along just lovely without it.

Someone above said there is no online solution and I agree. That's the strength of this proposal. Brick-and-mortar store only. This in addition to the "Lintegrity" (lol) system. What I also like is that my verification would be tied to my account via a physical visit to a physical place, BUT MY IDENTITY WOULD NOT BE DISCLOSED.

I doubt many people want a paper or eletronic trail linking an Xcite purchase if they run for the school board some day, for instance. LOL

I predict none of this will go in anyway, and I have about a week of fun left in SL before I go bye bye. This was a last gasp to save the platform from itself.

Incidentally, the fact that the blog said (May 4th!) this would go into beta soon.....and be live by mid-May!!! I think we just got a glimpse of the "extensive" sort of testing program in place over at LL, hehe.

It's remarkable that I don't need to register my SSN, license, d.o.b., address....or even name to sleep with a guy at a frat party, but I DO in order to ROLEPLAY the same thing in SL! I daresay I have more freedom in real life than in an imaginary online one!

/me waits with baited breath for age verification to be instated for this very reason.

I miss the "4,000 online right now" days.

I have a great idea! Let's let people sell "age verification chips" in-world. We can make SL merchants accountable for letting minors into the game. Every merchant will get a stack of chips that they can sell. Each chip sold will then be inserted into the hand or forehead of the customer. Eventually, they could make it so no SL citizen can even buy or sell without a "verification chip".

If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm just kidding... (some fun for the bible readers out there).

2010:

Sure, no problem. When the government identity RFID is implanted into your hand, so you can be scanned every time you get on a plane or cross a state line...

You'll wave this at a reader on your computer and get cleared for whatever content you want.

Of course, good luck getting a job controlled by anything under the thumb of the Religion Party after that.

If LL is not Evil, hopefully by then the server and the client will be Open Source and do-it-yourselfers will have set up black nets using encrypted tunneling and off-the-shelf parts smuggled from the People's Republic of Taiwan.

Look for the broadband node with the hand...

If we were to start an inworld poll where avatars can come up and vote on this issue, what would be some questions to ask?

1.Are you willing to share private information with a 3rd party company in order to verify your age and identity in order to play a game?

2. Are you willing to provide physical evidence in Real Life (i.e. through a public witness or card purchase via ID check) that you are of age, if this does not require you to provide private information to a 3rd party database company?

3. Will you voluntarily provide this information if it is not required?

etc


...

If we are to prove to LL that we are of legal age to be "citizens" or "residents" of this new world, then should we not also have the same rights accorded to citizens of democratic nations around the world? e.g. elected officials, elected policy, elected laws?

Now consider...Law enforcement is investigating the disappearance of 13-year-old-boy C, who used his dad's identity information to verify. They subpoena LL and find that Person A had been spending a lot of time with boy C in adult areas, and they had done a lot of communicating in IM's. They bust Person B, the nominal identity of Person A.

Do you think they'll never figure out who Person A is simply because Person B got the form signed for him in such a situation? Hah. 9 times out of 10, Person B admits helping Person A get verified, and investigators are able to interrogate Person A about Boy C.

Nobody is claiming any system--including the one to be implemented in a few days--is "perfect." However, any number of systems--including the one to be implemented in a few days--will be helpful, will reduce fraud (I said reduce, not wipe it out), will reduce liability, etc.

This doesn't mean everyone will want to sell their identities to Integrity simply for the privilege of playing SL, but it does mean that Integrity offers a culturally viable way of addressing the problem.

I doubt that's anything to do with age verification as child porn is illegal regardless of the age of the person who recieves it. The newsletters seemed to indicate that in Germany, any sexual activity with someone using a child avatar would be illegal, no matter if the real person was underage or not.

It would be interested to see if LL winds up having to follow the USC2257 rule with regards to uploaded textures.

True, but the two are being widely linked, and given LL's tendency to attack problems by trying to solve a different one, it wouldn't surprise me.

Incidentally, it occurs to me that SL is a rather ineffective way to distribute porn. You can upload any image you like, but you can't ever download an image other than by taking a screen shot at reduced resolution.

You can save a texture to disk under certain circumstances..

I just don't see how passing LL my SSN or copy of my drivers license is going to prove my age. If mom and dad are giving out Credit card info for child to play SL then why wouldn't they also do the same with their other idenfications.

I think lindens messed up when they just stopped the cc verification to get in game. Just bring that back and the grid would be a lot safer. Yes you will have still an underage few that get by, but no matter what LL tries to do there will still be some that get by.
Just as their are still underage ppl that drink and smoke. YOu can't stop them all.
And to have "Big Brother" getting more of our info is not the way to deal with this. I'm totally against doing the new age verification.

I can get on any porn shop on the internet with just my credit card, why should I need more to play sl. (not that I would ever visit those places .