Open Letter to Linden Lab Management regarding Age Verification in Second Life

Open letter to Linden Lab Management, and specifically addressed to:

Philip Rosedale - Founder and CEO, Linden Lab
Robin Harper - Vice President, Community Development and Support
Ginsu Yoon - Vice President, Business Affairs


Dear Philip, Robin and Ginsu,

Our company KI Media has had a presence in Second Life since December 2006. We run a large successful swingers dating website at http://www.swingersfunclub.nl. Swingers are couples that are in search of other couples for erotic experiences. Our members are of all ages (18 to 65+) and come from all social classes and include (but not limited to) people with public professions like artists, police officers, lawyers and politicians.

Before we came to Second Life, the primary means of communication between our members was by webmail and by using the chatrooms on our website. When we learned of Second Life we saw the potential of having 3D avatar based chat over conventional chat systems. We also evaluated competitive environments like Active Worlds and Outer Worlds. The choice for using Second Life was primarily based on usability, the high level of personal freedom, and the fact that Second Life was accessible to all of our community members without any obstacles (financial or otherwise).

Establishing our presence involved buying an Island and building a Swingers Club as a central meeting place for our members. The island now also features houses for our members and a shopping mall for Swingers Lifestyle related merchandise. Since the opening we have actively promoted Swingers Funclub in SL as our community chatroom, which resulted in extended news media coverage because we were the fist party to establish a virtual Swingers Club in Second Life. Although we do not have explicit sexual photographic content, some of the graphics used on our island are of an erotic nature. Our members who visit our club are usually in search of contacts that are erotic in nature as well. That is why we have marked our Island settings as being a "Mature" island.

We have been reading the announcements on the linden blog regarding the age verification system with great concern. On the official linden blog it is written at Thursday, May 10th, 2007:

"you will need to verify age only if you want to enter parcels/estates flagged as containing adult content"

Although we welcome any initiative that makes Second Life more secure, we have serious objections against the announced identity verification system. Access to the grid is already regulated by your terms of service (TOS), which states in article 2.2:

"Users under the age of 18 are prohibited from accessing the Service [...] By accepting this agreement in connection with an Account outside the Teen Area, you represent that you are an adult 18 years of age or older".

This means that anybody under the age of 18 accessing the main grid is in violation of the TOS, and any legal liability for doing so lies entirely by the offending person, their parents or their legal guardians.

We can understand that you would like to give island owners and parcel owners the opportunity to deny access to accounts that do not have an age verification flag set. However this should be a choice to be made by the owners of the land, and not enforced by Linden Lab. In the TOS under which we bought our island it is stated in article 1.2:

"Linden Lab is a service provider, which means, among other things, that Linden Lab does not control various aspects of the Service.
You acknowledge that Linden Lab is a service provider that may allow people to interact online regarding topics and content chosen by users of the service, and that users can alter the service environment on a real-time basis. Linden Lab generally does not regulate the content of communications between users or users' interactions with the Service"

The announced age verification is in violation with the Second Life TOS. When Linden Lab denies age-unverified members access to our island, it is then actively regulating interaction between users, and between our customers and our service. Linden Lab should behave like a service provider as specified by the TOS and not intervene in communication or content, unless the intervention is required by order of a court of law.

Age-unverified only means that a person's age has not been verified, it does not mean that a person is not of adult age. The nature of our Swingers Lifestyle Community is such that our members do not want to be officially registered as being interested in erotic content or related activities. This is especially the case for people who have public functions like artists, police officers, lawyers and politicians. From the protests that come out of the broader Second Life Community we understand that the majority of the Second Life population does not wish to be officially registered as being interested in erotic content or related activities either.

You may be well aware of the fact that your customers have no control whatsoever over the extend to which their identity information is going to be stored, used or sold by any 3rd party. We assume you have made a legally binding agreement with the 3rd party prohibiting the use or disclosure of identity information. But even then, when that 3rd party goes bankrupt or changes ownership, such agreements become void and the identity information could then be used or sold by any party that gains ownership over that information.

We hereby would like to state that Swingers Island is our virtual property, and the choice to who to allow access to our island is entirely ours. We believe the responsibility for being the legal age is entirely with the visitor and we are against enforcing this identity registration and verification system.

We are seeing that the majority of the Second Life population is rejecting the announced age verification system as well. This means that when Linden Lab is going to restrict access to our island there will be substantially less visitors. Fewer visitors to our island will ultimately have financial consequences for our company, for which we will hold Linden Labs entirely responsible. Such liability may ultimately also include the investments in time and money already made in developing our Second Life property.

Therefore we would like to ask you urgently to guarantee unrestricted access to our island for all our customers.

Kian Stardust
KI Media
The Netherlands

Phone +31-20-6920737
Fax +31-20-6920734

Hello everybody,

interesting stance... this is an interesting thing.

You have good arguments.

/me waits for an reply

Absolutely fantastic letter. And terrific to have a corporate entity chiming in on this issue. Thank you SO much for your contribution to this fight.

So let me get this straight... people are ashamed of their fetish and don't want to be labelled as such, and that's the basis for your objection to the verification?

That's really not a very good argument, to be honest. How about taking the tack of the many people who need to be verified - such as people listed on the development directory - to ensure they are trustworthy, but have absolutely no interest in the 'adult' material to be found in Second Life?

My three objections are this.

1) It should be "identity verified" only - not "verified as over 18 and able to access porn online". I am over 18 and have no problems in proving that, but I do not wish to be labelled as someone who wants to engage in sexual activity online.

2) The company supposedly undertaking the verification has a documented dubious history.

3) The methods of verification are actually illegal in some countries; handing out personal information such as passport or ID number to a company based in a foreign country is prohibited. You don't give these details for the guy from Africa who needs your help to get $10 million out of the country from a secret bank account of someone who died in a plane crash, so why should this be any different?

Is "KI Media" really a 'corporation'? Googling couldn't find anything useful, and the link provided - due to the language barrier - didn't show anything to me more than could have been a personal homepage.

Broccoli

KI Media is registered at the Dutch Chamber of Commerce Trade Register, at the same address as Swingers Funclub. 'Swingers Funclub' is in turn a trade name of the corporation Class Logic (www.classlogic.com).

I am personally a RL member of the Dutch Swingers Funclub, so don't take my word for it. You can find the same information in the Dutch Trade Register, which you can access at http://www.kvk.nl/artikel/artikel.asp?artikelID=38213

*giggles* Maybe I "google" better then you . I found them on a Dutch company-listing, which most likely means they are an registered company...

Lemme do some more digging.

Edit: Ahhh... Suzy beated me "Kamer van Koophandel" would have been indeed my next move

Morwen.

It's easier when you google from the right country. When you are in Holland, Dutch-based websites get higher priority in search results.

Anyway, I own a business myself, which is why KvK is a natural first stop for me when researching other businesses.

For me the KvK is also something I use a lot. When I contact or are contacted by a new customer/company, I always look them up with the KvK.... a good way to prevent trouble.

Morwen.

All very good points.

I'm now starting to re-think that my 'yeah, whatever, i'll go along with that' stance.

Ok, so it's not my fault I don't speak Dutch... but I did make other points in my post.

Broccoli

Uhm... I wasn't trying to make you look bad or even to take a stand in this discussion, just trying to help you find information you weren't able to find.

Personally I am in favour of verification, and I have little patience for people who want to have some 'right' to remain anonymous in their dealings with any service provider. Or for people who are comfortable taking their fetishes to a public platform where they might be identified anyway, but who freak out over a simple "over 18" flag.

Broccoli- I'm NOT a swinger, and I think it's kinda gross personally - but I think the point the OP is trying to make is that the members of the group are afraid of being persecuted publicly for their interests, since some of them are in public professions, not that they are ashamed of it personally.

Being in a public profession myself, I can sympathize with this. SL and their company can talk all they want about the information being collected being private, but we all know that databases can easily be compromised. Not necessarily just by hackers - my employer outsourced its HR functions a couple of years ago, and a subcontractor of the contractor promptly violated the contract by sending everyone's personal information overseas for processing to save a few bucks.

So even with the best of intentions, Linden Labs is opening a huge can of worms with this. I hope they're prepared to eat worm sandwiches.

Hello,



you did. But this is a company that will loose money and customers (interchangable here) because its serviceprovider decides to change the TOS substantially... and not abiding it in the first place.

In the EU this is a nono. One cannot tolerate something for a while and then just decide otherwise, just because of a little bad press. Especially if the broadcast was dubious at best.

The TOS is clear 'Not 18 or over? No SL, please go TeenSL'. All required thingies to 'proof' you are 18 or over are as good as a click on 'Yes'. There will be no 'proof'.. just 'proof' that you are able to get the required document(s).

We all agreed to that, we all read the TOS. Right? You did read the TOS? If not.. well... oh boy you better do now. It is a legally binding contract between you and LL. And the relevant parts have been highlighted by the OP.

I am still curious how this unfolds.

Just a few comments on this well-articulated, but otherwise pointless "Open Letter".

Participating in the age verification program does not label you, or "register" you as you put it, as being interested in erotic content, or any other content of any particular nature. It simply sets a flag on your account which indicates you are at or over the age of consent. For your members, this poses no risk of exposure beyond that which currently exists. For your management, it provides a mechanism to ensure that those accessing your content are of legal age to do so, completely removing this burden from you, short of setting your region and parcel flags appropriately.

Your observation that the majority of the Second Life population are rejecting the announced age verification system is dubious at best. If you have devised a method to accurately take the pulse of the community at large, I'm certain the rest of us would be very interested in knowing what you have come up with. The noise here in the forums is contained to a relatively small fraction of the community, and cannot be relied upon to arrive at the conclusion you have.

As for your reference to the section of the Terms of Service you feel this program would cause Linden Lab to "violate", elsewhere in same said document, it states:

A small point. LL has repeatedly stated in the blog that it will be age AND IDENTITY verification.

I think its the identity part where the meltdown occurs.

You are REQUIRED to provide your true and correct identity to Linden Lab upon registering an account. So - how does verifying that identity which you are already REQUIRED to provide do harm?

To LL yes...to a dubious 3rd party company...well not sure on that one.

Hello,



bah

I stand corrected, sorry.

But I disagree with 'no risk'. With my CC data there is 'no risk' as far as I am concerned. But with my ID-Data there certainly is. Aaaand... well... we'll see what LL cooks up

Also 'If you have devised a method to accurately take the pulse of the community at large[..]' I agree with you, Zaphod, they should share this... with LL. We can talk long and wide about this and that... it is a knee-jerk action and still as good as a 'yes' on a button.

Terms of Service and Community Standards needs to be revamped.

Cant believe i read the op's whole post and not a single question in sight for me to answer. Whats the 'Residents Answers' forum coming to, eh?

/me wanders away shaking his oversized head.

Extra information, that is very sensitive is being asked for. This without a doubt provides extra risk. Others have raised the issue that those who have an adult flag are going to be seen as pervs by some. I'm not convinced about that myself as I'd imagine you'll need the adult flag to go to gambling establishments and then there will be arguments about art etc.

However the suggested mechanism will not ensure anyone is definitely over 18 unless there are checks and balances in place. What is to stop a minor getting hold of a SSN, driving licence or passport number? In fact this is even more dangerous than the current situation because now they will have the super duper age verified definitely an adult tag.

If there are checks and balances in place then surely these can be applied now, sending a physical letter in an unmarked envelope would be a start.



Opinions are generally sampled for any poll. If you look at the replies to the last blog you will see that the vast majority of them are against the system being proposed (as opposed to be against age verification full stop). A small sample indeed but many users aren't even aware of this, I was talking to someone recently about this and at the start they felt it was a good idea and then they changed their mind when they considered the implications it has for their business.

[10:12] Daniel Linden: it’s vaulted to provided a government-required audit trail for two years, but neither Linden or Integrity can access that data unless an audit is initiated.

Just a small FYI, LL is not denying access to anyone to your land no more than they would not be denying access to anyone not properly inputting the appropriate information to access the SL platform. Once the "age-unveried" member goes through the appropriate steps to become "age-verified," they are allowed unfettered access.

In simpler terms, yes, LL is the service provider. It is up to you and your potential customers to make proper use of that service. Which in this case means becoming "age-verified."

The choice to be denied service is entirely up to your customer.

That is the main part of my concern. I have no problem proving that I am legally over 18 (I could almost verify that twice) and having a mark on my profile stating that I am - but I certainly don't want every horny sleazeball hitting on me thinking I'm going to cyber with him (or her, I guess) simply because they read the tag as "I want sex".

Stop making it "voluntary", and force everyone to verify or not log in - that then stops any stigma that may be attached to the flagging. The Linden Lab "free for all" pipedream might have worked well in the sixties, but doesn't work in today's environment. After all, no other game/world/platform/whatever gives you free unlimited access forever; there are reasons for this I am sure.

Broccoli

They're not likely to do that because they know it won't be accepted by most people.

Having to give out personal information that is generally used only by banks, tax agencies and the government as a "last bastion" against identity theft, just to access an online service (or parts of an online service) just isn't reasonable.