Minors gambling, what next?

Despite all the chatter about age verification, nothing ever happened on that.

Let's suppose LL has finally concluded that there is no way to keep minors off of the main grid.

Minors gambling are breaking the law just about anywhere.

Do they need credit cards to get money to gamble with? No. Yesterday you could make over 1600L between HippiePay and FreeMoney.

So any 8 year old could become addicted to gambling, thanks to SL. And 20 years from now, they could still sue SL for how their life got ruined as a result.

So, unless SL gets ironclad age verification, gambling is never coming back.

My question would be, where else would this logic find application next.

Minors are prohibited access to porn almost everywhere. Porn can be addictive, and lead to addiction.

So any and every kind of porn is in the crosshairs now. Escorting, stripping, capture roleplay, hooking up in the local park - all of it.

You cannot insure that you are not exposing a minor to porn - with any kind of sexplay or sexual roleplay.

Another issue: there is significant backlash against Harry Potter, for teaching the dangerous idea that magic works. To these people, any kind of fantasy roleplay would be viewed as harmful to children. Making them believe in angels, dragons, talking animals, vampires....

I have to say that this wagering ban has made me seriously alter my investment strategy with regard to SL.

My previous view was that SL was the wave of the future, and could possibly eat the entire internet. Because SL was somehow managing to be Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian both - I was telling people SL was the greatest opportunity since The West Was Won.

But now, I think this shows that SL will ultimately collapse from it's own weight.

As SL gets bigger, the problems will increase geometrically.

What was never an issue with 100,000 users will become a huge problem across 1million users, and an unsurmountable issue across 10million.

Mark me down, I said it here first: The wagering ban is the beginning of the end. Get your money out now.

*takes away the tin foil from Giannia*

That hat is too thick. Holding in too much heat.

~Jessy

Oh please. Age verification is being changed however, even porn sites use CC information and thats good enough for almost every government as age verification to allow access to said sites. Now what would be NICE is if the major credit card companies (Visa, MC, AMEX etc) Allowed for the passage of not only number/address/name verification but also the Date of Birth.

That would counter the problem but again, any kid could say "Mommie(or daddy) i need your CC for a game and ding its' done.

LL does monitor reports of people that are minors on the grid and does take action when they feel said person is a minor.

However like i said, theirs always going to be minors getting into places they shouldn't and I could NEVER see LL saying Adult material (pornographic animations etc) is banned.

Geez, the Grid wasn't down THAT long.....

"Yesterday you could make over 1600L between HippiePay and FreeMoney."

Do the Affiliate programs hippypay uses actually allow minors?

Zack Massiel: You don't need to be over 18 to have a credit card. I started my credit rating at the age of 15 with my first Visa.

Gambling ban had nothing to do with age verification... and will never be coming back.

The gambling issue happened when the law changed. No skirting aroung it, age verification or no. Has nothing to do with gaming. Let it go. How many posts are there going to be that are spun off the gambling issue?

They don't need ironclad age verification. They merely need age verification that satisfies legal requirements and protects them from liability.

As regards their deployment of age verification, they have merely discovered that much of the world doesn't operate at internet speeds. So it's taking much, much longer than they guessed. But I wouldn't bet that it won't be deployed by the end of the calendar year.


As I and many others have suggested, they will need to split up the grid along dimensions other than age. And, in my opinion, they will need to split up their company and/or sell off businesses. There's the technology business, the virtual corporation service business, the mainstream consumer business (all ages, but possibly several grids), the adult recreation business (sex, gambling, etc.), and possibly the G/PG business. They may also need a separate dimension to deal with world-wide legal differences.

I dunno we could come up with some crazy ideas if we really wanted to.

Oh god.

PLEASE can I leave work behind? Please? Just once?

Yeah you might get kids gambling IF they are in here and ALL the verification in the world will not stop it ... merely that implementing proper Security means that LL will have done all they can to prevent it happening!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WIBBER!

Uh prepaid or Debit cards are one thing. But unless visa has changed their policies in the past few years, you still have to be 18 years old to actually get a REAL credit card that affects credit rating (due to you are signing a contract and most places including visa requires you to be 18 years or older to do so due to the legal rammifications of a minor signing into contract).

In any event that wasn't even my point. I never said kids can't get credit cards, I said that it works as Age verification for porn sites which is basically identical (if not a tad worse considering whats out there) than SL's porn industry.

Minors might also be getting in furrydom. They're going to grow up all messed up wearing their fur costumes around the place and then try to sue LL in the future. Time to leave SL now! Hurry up! I'm holding the door open!

The gambling ban gave me lice!

How about the cacaphony of voice in the casino's killed gambling.

fek it lets just close down every web site that isn't cartoonnetwork.com, don't you think it is the responsability of parents to monitor their own kids. The world real or virtual cannot be sanitised for their sake.

Very good point.

The Lindens are just an Internet company they can only do so much to keep minors out - same as any other place on the web.

In fact lets close down cartoon network too. That Johnny Bravo can be quite racy

Not to mention that Adult Swim. Who keeps the minors from watching that?

Not heared of that. But i think the power puff girls could turn your little boy sissy (tongue firmly in cheek).

Personally, I couldn't agree with you more. But, as a teacher, I can tell you that most parents abrogate this responsibility.

And the big difference between SL and porn/gambling websites is that you need to be able to transfer funds into those places to participate in porn and gambling. That provides some plausible deniability to the companies that provide porn/gambling on the web.

In SL, you can do it with money you make in world. And when Johnny's mom catches Johnny watching live porn on a webcam with money he made in world (and let's hope it's not gayporn, or bondage) - no amount of reasoning and logic is going to shut Johnny's mom up about shutting down SL. And when Janey's mom finds out that Janey has 8 different alts playing slavegirls and being gang-banged in Gor sims....

And the more Johnny and Janies are out there, the more inevetable becomes the showdown with Johnny's mom. That economy of scale is what I mean when I say SL will collapse of it's own weight at a certain level of success and market penetration.

The wagering ban shows that we are near or at that point.

I'm talking a real 100% Visa from my bank with my name on it. I was 15 when I got it.

Obviously my father had to co-sign the contract, but the card was under my name and effected my credit.

*sigh*

Nobody's making you read these threads or posts.

How about you let the people who find these type of discussions to be interesting participate in them, and those who don't find them interesting not participate.

Recognizing trends and using that to predict the future is pretty much the essence of investing.

Well they banned gambling.

So any minors on the grid are safe from gambling now.