Adult Grid, Payment Info, Children

I run an adult business. I've had more than one person suggest making the land available for those with payment info only, to 'save the children'. I don't do this, however, not wanting to limit traffic or potential future regulars.

My question has a few parts.

First, this is on the ADULT grid, in a MATURE sim. I will happily kick anyone and possibly even AR someone who says they are under 18, however, I don't go out of my way to ask, or even consider it my responsibility. This is why I play on the adult grid in a mature sim. What is the extent of my responsibility if little Timmy decides to come visit my business and Soccor Mom walks in and gets all irate. The way I see it, harshly, is... not my problem. Unless Timmy told me he was under 18, is this my problem?

Second. Why does everyone assume no payment info means underage? I'm sure many Timmys can get ahold of a parent's credit card, and many legitimate adults would have a reason to not enter their credit card into an online site. Or, is the general feeling more of, 'You don't have money to spend, why be here anyway?' That too, I think is flawed. Could have a rich alt, or better yet, someone exploring, deciding if they want to put real USD into the game. Why exclude them?

Finally, how many adult places actually make this restriction? Am I a minority in my opinions on the matter? What are the reasons? Is it more to save the children, or more about 'you don't have any money anyway'?

(My apologies to all the mature, adult poor schmucks who are named 'Timmy'.. -grins-)

Bane Darrow

Majority of adult places I have seen (LARGE majority) have not used any restrictions. Many 'adults' are not verified and I agree, it's not your problem.

It's not your job to do anything about it and frankly, even banning them from the land isn't required. (I do ban them as well if they turn out to be under 18.)

And to be totally frank, (Not Timmy) most adults with malls don't care if they are under 18 cause it's money to the vendors.

I know of *one* very adult place which has banned unverifieds. One. And even they did it primarily to halt griefing, not to exclude those who are underage.

If you search for 'verified', 'unverified', etc... in find->places, you'll see there is a *very* low number of places advertising themselves as 'verified only'. I think last time I checked there was a single sandbox (which, as it turned out, wasn't verified only, it was group only) and a single adult place that wasn't close to the top 20.

I wonder if there are stats as to what percentage of parcels are verified-only access... my hunch is that the number is very low. I'd guess less than 1%, but I may be wrong on that. I'm verified so I never really notice if a parcel is verified only or not.

I basically agree with you, Bane. You are in a mature *game* on mature land. If soccer mom leaves little Timmy un-supervised on the Internet... it's her problem, not yours.

Answers:

#1; You are only liable IF you KNOWINGLY expose an Under aged person to age inappropriate materials or imagery. If you have been Misled after taking all reasonable measures to determine age, then no liability attaches. Unfortunately having a No ask, No Tell Policy does Not fall under the heading of "All Reasonable measures". If you are suspicious, Talk to them, if you are still suspicious, Remove them. But Judge people as Individuals Not as a Group(See answer #2).

#2; "Everyone" assumes no payment info means underage (Or griefer) Because it is a comfortable black and white answer to a very shades of grey question. It requires No thought, reasoning or consideration, so it is the most attractive answer no matter how wildly inaccurate it is. Frankly it's the Lazy way of appearing to be socially concious while at the same time expending no effort or acheiving anything. It's been discussed to death on these and other Forums and has been shown to not work, But for some, It's a better option than actually doing anything about Undreragers On Line.

#3; I have run into a few while trying to show Wonderful Builds or Great Markets to ADULT, NON GRIEFER friends who don't have verified accounts. Places I go without a second thought, Suddenly i find my Friends are not welcome. So, I have my second thought, and strike those places off my Landmarks list, and take my friends, and my Money elsewhere. I'm not the Only Verified who Feels this way, and we do stop frequenting or reccomending restricted places. My friendships are more important to me than their Bottom Line. No, i don't think any of them will go Bankrupt, But i DO think that the Profits they Lose, and the Loss of reputation isn't worth thier Imagined Gains.

Take my Advice, Don't restrict your Business. If you do, there won't be Stats on the Money you Lose, but Lose money you definately Will.

Angel.

Taking all reasonable measures? I'm sorry, but I do not think, or hope it is not my responsiblity to ask or quiz people who walk through my doors. I consider this liability to be on the Lindens, who have better means of determining age than I do. I've also learned to not go into quiz-mode if suspicious. Some people type more intelligent than others. And, in our multi-lingual world, how a person speaks tells you very little about their character or intention.

I already took my 'all reasonable measures', and that was deciding to operate on the adult grid and on mature land.

Bane Darrow

I agree Bane. It's isn't your job to be a bouncer, when you are located in a mature sim.

most peoples won't ban unverified because well... because of the greed, who will push away potential customers?

i agree with ya bane the responsibility lies on parents watching their kids and actually knowing what their kids are doing on the internet. If little timmy is on here he lied. I find it funny the people would punish folks for it. They ask you your age on signup and also Look how many teens have cell phones these days. They could of easily signed up with that before it went totally unverified. If timmy lied to get here his parent should look into it more and if they look at this site and see that its meant for people 18 and up should punish the child and cancel the account. And Kyrah its not neccessarily out of greed its just most people in SL arnt discriminatory (the majority)

Then Bane, you should no longer concern yourself With the question. You believe that you already Have made all reasonable efforts. The Only true test now would be an actual Parent complaint, and Legal action. If your assertion forms an acceptable Legal defence in a court of Law, Then you are right. If, however the judge does not accept your defence you would have to rethink your point of view once your Parole conditions allow you computer access once again.

I agree Fully that Morally, and Ethicly the responsibility DOES rest with Parents in Monitoring their children, But the reality of todays society is that Parents do NOT Monitor their children. and in Many Instances ARE able to make strong legal cases that Others are responsible for compensating for their lack of Parental skills and concern.

Your statements Bane, and Lina don't change the sum of my First answer, they merely state your belief that you have Satisfied that criteria.

Angel.

Put 18+ or 21+ RL age into the property description/ad

Have a greeter? Add the above to its little schpiel

If LL doesn't seem to care whether people who sign up for free accounts are actually who and what they say they are on sign-up, I believe that makes THEM liable, not you. Particularly considering your good faith efforts to alert anyone of the content of your property.

For my part, I'm with you, Bane. Mature grid. Mature sim. Why would I want to lock out potential guests on my lot simply for not having their payment info on file? (If I did that, I wouldn't have half the friends I do!)

The Lindens automatically shunt anyone under the age of 18 to the teen grid, we are informed, thus adult operations should have no liability nor responsibility to age check all the "No Payment Info On File" individuals who populate the landscape, act like juveniles or sub-juveniles and leave behind cute fires, bombs, self-replicating objects and other such annoyances.

One has to wonder how much money the Lindens and SL in general would lose if they required credit information on *every* new account? I provided such on mine. Anyone not under 18 and not bent on causing strife should have no problem with doing the same.

Personally, I will not be banning unverifieds. I don't personally see it as my responsibility to keep kids out. If they tell me or I happen to over hear them tell someone else that they are underage, I will report them.

As far as using it as a way to deal with griefing, I hadn't thought of that at all until I read it here. While that makes sense that it might help cut down on griefers, I still don't want to put off anyone who just happens to not have billing info. You don't have to have billing info to have $L.

As my location is also shared with my husband who owns a hangout type spot on the same land and doesn't sell many things, making it to where only verified people could come just wouldn't make sense for us anyway.

The basic position I was told, when I mentioned this to a Linden user, is that any underage user who is active on the Main Grid has already lied to get there (since the user agreement says they must be 18+) and thus users aren't liable.

Of course, there's two problems with this: first, since it's well known that there are indeed underage users on the main grid, the impact of knowing this on a person's duty to keep underage users away from mature content they're responsible for isn't clear; and of course second, no-one wants to even be accused in real life of having distributed pornography, even if the accusation is later found to be baseless.

That's exactly my concern, Yumi. I went through all those trains of thought too and ended up restricting the access to my sim, but I'm not very happy with this solution. In other words, I'm in IM hell sometimes and do understand the complaints of my customers. I finally wish for an answer and just sent an email with the following question to the customer support:

Hello,

I own a sim and run a shop within Second Life. An adult shop, offering prim genitals and BDSM accessories of all sorts. I've been quite concerned when I heard about the changes to the signup process and had a friend check the new account registration. Since it allows free access for every minor (if they lie about their age during signup, of course, which many will do), I can't be sure if really only mature players are on the adult grid.

My business is quite successful and hence I wonder about possible legal problems now. In most countries the law says that no minor is to to be knowingly exposed to adult material. Knowingly. Well, since common sense tells that minors can easily sign up now and that you can't possibly find and ban every single one of them, I more or less do knowingly expose possible minors to wares made for adults.

I restricted the access to my land to players with payment information (either on file or used). But since I advertise the shop (and also the surrounding park and garden area, as a public playground) I get a lot of complaints via IM. Many players react indignant, and many of them are adult players with a verified main account and one or more unverified "alts". I can see that the access restriction seriously hurts my business and would rather open the area for everyone again.

My question is now: if a minor should manage to gain access to SL, and their parents sue for their children being exposed to adult material, could I as a crafter possibly run into problems? I played another adult game before where the publisher was very concerned about such a case and took great efforts to check the age of everyone who signed up, so I think there's a reason to be concerned. I can see that SL is a unique situation though: Linden Labs doesn't provide any adult content. Crafters and land owners like me do. In other words: you offer a development solution similar to, let's say, Poser or Visual Basic. What someone produces using your software could be their own responsibility.
Can you assure me that, if I open my premises to players without payment information, I can't possibly run into any legal problems? That crafters who trusted in "the adult grid is for adults only" won't be held responsible in abovementioned case?

Thanks in advance for your answer

I'll post the reply in this thread, to answer the question once and for all, for all concerned land owners.

PS: I don't post this email (and the answer) to blame LL for the open account registration. A disclaimer is possibly enough to be on the safe side, legally. Most free adult websites only have a simple disclaimer too. I just want to know for sure if I can run into legal problems and I don't want to be one of the few spoilsports anymore who get drowned in IMs from upset and sometimes even outright enraged customers.
I want to either lift the access restriction for my land and have a good nightsleep nonetheless, or I want to know there's good reason to be careful - and in the latter case I'd like to see other adult shops / places / services take the same precautions.

While getting a reply like that would be nice, I strongly doubt you will. LL is not going to offer to protect anyone. What will happen one day, is mom will see what her son is doing, and get pissed. She'll first call Linden Labs on the phone. LL will of course say, 'Sorry ma'am, it's an adult grid, he lied about hsi age, we'll remove his access immediatly.' and in 99% of cases, that will end it.

The other mom, will not be satisified. She'll want this 'smut' off the internets. Think.. 'oh my god.. save the children!' But, she won't see Suzie's BDSM Shop, or, John's Strip Club. She will see 'Second Life'. Her beef will likely be with Second Life, not us.

The scary part, is if she does decide that YOUR shop is to blame, not Second Life. I think this is very very very unlikely to ever happen, but if it does, she'd probably begin a case, and trying to extract your RL info from LL. Linden Labs, in an ideal world, would fight to protect your identity, but much more likely, LL complies with lawyers, discovery, etc. They won't risk themselves over you or any of us. That's just business.

The 'protection' that SL offers is being the person the moms will likely sue in the first place. Not us. Angry mom won't understand the concept of us being different business under SL. She will just see 'Evil Second Life'

Bane

I hope you're right, Bane. What I fear though is that LL possibly won't take any blame in the first place. Why should they? They just provide a smut-free 3D development platform and we, as the users of this software, produce smut with it. So a law case could be more or less forwarded to a land owner, just in theory.
I'd like to either allow everyone in, or to know there's a sensible reason to hurt my own business by acting as responsible and precautious as I can.

I received quite a satisfactory answer to my email lately:

Greetings,

Because of the overwhelming amount of tickets recently our staff are
replying as quickly as we can. You are important to us and we
appreciate you patience.

You have the right to provide adult contents to adults only. This is why
we have a Teen Grid and a Main one. According to our terms of service
you must establish an account to use Second Life, using true and
accurate registration information. So if a teen uses/wears one of your
adult only object then you are not the one that broke our policies. The
only thing you should make sure is that your stuff is out of
sight(hidden behind a wall, or in the basement so that only those who
comes in your building can see and not everyone that goes close to your
building)

Please let us know if you are aware of any teen using a Main Grid account.

The way I understand it, any minor did violate the TOS by being on the adult grid in the first place, so any possible complainant should have a pretty weak legal position. That sounds safe enough for me.

There was a period of time zNewbies could not get into mature sims after being hatched.
I had this happen to me when I was a greeter. I tried to help the newbie get Skinin a adult rated store. But he could never get there. Called a Linden and he explained they had to be X number days old to enter.Now if this was a test period or what Maybe this is a great way to provent newbies to get into mature places.

Hence............Make a new rule................DON`T let them enter until their 31st day of life.


Just a yen worth of information.

Usagi

This confirms that you aren't breaking the TOS, but it would be nice if there could be an actual legal statement on it.

The thing is that we still run into the fear that if you, in real life, even have to go to court on a charge of distributing porn to children, then your real life reputation is ruined. It doesn't matter how well you're able to defend yourself, or how "nutty" the accuser is, because the moment you set foot in the courtroom it's already too late.

The only thing that would assuage this is some reassurance from a lawyer that a subpoena would not be granted in these circumstances, or that LL would be willing and able to oppose attempts to get RL information in this case. But as others have already said, that doesn't make business sense for them.

Interesting question! I'm sure that RL responsibility comes form Timmys RL mom allowing Timmy to log on without supervision. No different from Timmy surfing porn sites and looking at adult content.

More interesting perhaps is when Adults roleplaying children (childs avatar and behaviour) comes to your shop. What do you do? lol

I have a 3 year old SL daughter and in SL I wouldnt want her to visit adult /mature shops, yet in RL she is older than I am. ROFL.

FWIW having payment info on file does NOT verify that the user is over 18. It verifies only that the user is over 16. This is because SL also allows a sizeable portion of debit/ATM cards as well as credit cards. Certainly in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, debit cards are available to people aged 16 or older, and therefore anyone of that age may have a payment-verified account in SL. Therefore using the "verified accounts only" rule for purposes of age-verification is totally pointless.

I gotta say no on this one, Usagi.
Here's why:

A friend of mine recently had a weird mixup with her billing stuff. I don't know what happened, some credit card thing or whatever.
Another friend was being very creepily stalked by someone.
Yet another was irrevokably libelled and/or slandered (I can never figure out which is which when it comes to online stuff...*grin*)
And I, myself, wanted to make another character to test my vendors and permissions and stuff.

All of us made new alts, whole new registration.
The first had to, in order to play the game.
The second and third had to in order to escape abuse.
I wanted to.

None of us deserve to be forced to wait 31 days to get back to where we live, to our friends, to businesses.

There must be a solution to this, but your suggestion just isn't it, I'm sorry.

This is gonna sound harsh, but it's my opinion:

I'd trade your having to wait a month in deterring griefers. I'd trade MY having to wait a month to deter griefers. You can't very well play AT ALL on ANY alt if the grid is always down, can you?