How many others are happy with age verification?

No Walker - I complained about avatars that I recognize now were this "child" group who were initially actively seeking "guardians" or adopters in some of the landing hubs.

I am only 5 feet 7 inches in SL. So I am a short avatar. But I also got in trouble for chasing two griefers and popping off my pump shot gun at them.

I am no longer a helper because I am told I am too blunt.

I will visit. I promise. Puuuuuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Thankyou all for answering - some observations...

1) I am amazed by the amount of people who seem to think that all religious or culturally themed areas will be 'jamming religion down my throat' or akin to the W.Baptists (who are a congregation of LESS THAN 100 PEOPLE). Quite frankly, your resistance against religious themes smacks of ignorance...added to this, please read my posts - I was not advocating organised religion in Second Life merely that I think Age Verification will take many people's attention away from more carnal aspects of SL and towards more creative ones.

2) I never once said that I did not want sex in SL, in fact I specifically said there was a place for it and always should be. My point was that the technology is capable of so much more...I don't care if you don't want to see that, go and have more cyber sex - I'm very happy for you to and no I don't think you are 'sinning' by doing so.

3) I am being proactive about it - I have developed three buildings already devoted to educational and artistic endeavours and will continue to make more. I'm not just complaining, in fact I am being positive rather than negative by saying that age verification is a good thing for the evolution of the grid.

4) I think that a vast number of accounts will not be age verified for various reasons - these accounts will visit new places looking for new things to do besides shocking themselves or seeing all the varied things that SL offers in way of sexuality.

5) I recognise that SL is a way for many people to discover aspects of their sexuality in a way that they are unable to in real life - more power to them!

6) I am not a Christian, nor am I religious in any organised way - but I am personally highly spiritual. More than that, I am a religious anthropologist and am fascinated by the new opportunities in education, cultural expression, and art that SL warrants. I personally have seen some fascinating things, but think that progress has stalled a bit recently because the majority of people are interested in sex.

Personally, I think that many of the comments about how religion on the grid will pan out are showing a high level of ignorance towards the countless number of religious and spiritual traditions out there. I am not criticizing you for having those opinions, just stating that I think they are coming from misunderstanding and stereotyping.

Hey, don't shout so much.

Chill, babe.

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive at where we started
And know the place for the first time."

See - we may sound flippant but there are hidden depths even to a Neko girl.

This is strange, he comes and says the word religion and then all of a sudden, we get comparasons to Westboro and the Third Reich , an prosetylizing.

Those who shout they are tolerant and open minded of all lifestyles, get all intolerant the second the R word is mentioned. I think if the OP came in and said he had some form of highly transmitable second life ebola he would have recieved a more better reacton.

Have to agree with the principle of age verification. Get the kids off the adult grid (as much as possible).

Have to agree the problem is implementation. Identity theft and privacy are major difficulties. I'm guessing there will be a menu of ID options that lets individuals pick the best, or at any rate least objectionable, method for their case. All three key needs - individual verification, security and privacy - need to be accommodated.

As for the comments on what "should" or "should not" be in SL - are you guys kidding? In SL?! It's almost hilarious to see avowed secularists getting up in their secularist pulpits and thundering "Thou Shalt Not" at all those miscreants out there daring to exercise freedom of religion in this freest of all spaces. Wonder what they're afraid of? Getting converted?

Unless something is criminal - let 10,000 flowers bloom.

LOL

My point exactly - particularly since I never actually said (at least I don't think I did) that I wanted more religion in SL...just more creativity and variety mainly. My personal contribution is in the field of religious studies, not as a representative of a religion but as an academic...

I also find it highly amusing that people think I am a bible-bashing Christian when one of the sites I listed is a 'Vodou House Museum'. I made a museum that looks at the religion of Vodou and its history...you really think I'm going to start calling everyone sinners?

I don't believe things have stalled on the cultural front due to people being interested in sex. Sex will always be there.

But if there is no influx of cool cultural and educational regions, then it can't be found, can it? It's good that you're creating something and it will perhaps inspire others. But I don't think pinning any kind of decline in cultural interest on sexual desires is an accurate theory. It's a sad comment to make, really.

Religion, casinos, sex, BDSM, furries... whatever... if it's there and there's interest, it will be explored. If there's no interest, it will be ignored. It's that simple.

Now this is exactly what worries me. NO ONE was stereotyping you Var - you are now stereotyping yourself. and "carnal" .....?!!! Wow I havent heard that word since I was at Boarding School. And just what exactly IS a religious anthropologist? If you are here to observe then do so - just dont stir the pot with your wooden spoon.

And I am a Neko Avatar and VERY VERY VERY carnal. But I also consider myself a spiritual person. Amen to all that.

I fully support the requirement for age and identity verification. This is supposed to be an over-18 only world, and I can't see how they can assure that without 100% validation of age and identity. However, I question their planned implementation and the company they have chosen to implement it. There are a lot of problems to be worked out, including complying with the laws of other nations where the proposed required proof of age is illegal to give out or ask for. I personally think the best validation is a letter from a Notary, mailed by postal mail to LL or a trusted third party, attesting that the Notary has met the individual and examined their ID and affirms that they are over 18 years of age and are who they say they are. No need to keep info on file that could be used for identity theft. Just "The person we issued this validation number to has been verified to be over 18, and we associate this list of account names with that person's real identity".

Without a grid-wide requirement for total compliance with age validation, I don't see how they can prevent minors from camming in from "allowed" areas and stilll watching porn and buying adult items...

I don't mind religion in SL, as long as the participants obey the TOS with regards to tolerance and don't use it as a reason to grief others. My own home in SL is, to some degree, a Shinto shrine to the Kami Inari, the Japanese "goddess" of fertility. My main avatar and that of my Partner are both Kitsune, the Japanese "Spirit foxes" that are the servants of Inari in the world of mankind.

I know and am friends with quite a few people in SL who are practicing Wiccans, and I know of merchants who sell Wiccan-themed merchandise.

So if someone wants to set up a church or a pagan grove or a mosque in SL, that doesn't bother me at all.

LOL Dakota, also well said. Apologies Vir for seeming reactionary. I am interested in all aspects of SL. I don't create .. except here I am an explorer, both of the terra and the persona. I love SecondLife.

Now we're getting somewhere

I agree with you that cultural sites may not be as highly affected as I think...however, I do feel that with the onset of age verification people with free accounts will take some time before verifying to see all the non-adult stuff. Thus increasing their exposure, and letting people see that there is a lot more to SL than sex and casinos.

I know that this is a free environment (supposedly) and therefore market conditions and people's interests will win out...but this is an exciting technology that we should be exploring, many people are and they should be commended for their efforts.

In the area of museums this is particularly relevant, and as I work in a museum and have almost completed my Masters degree in Museum Studies I find this of particular interest. I want people to visit more museums, and artists to have places to explore new installations, and musicians to have concerts, etc. etc. All of these things happen already, but that doesn't mean that I can't want more!

I think age verification will make all of these activities more prevalent and more attended...

Voudon - or Obeah??

Haitian Vodou - and yes I know the difference (not saying you implied I didn't )

I think it is interesting that so many people affifliate with various religious identites in a public space where there is perhaps a social reward for it, and in a space like SL they leave it behind. Can't you study/ponder the lack of a need for religous practice here? No death, no pain, no need to explain/ rationalize them.

The mystery that cannot be explained here is what the devil are those grid monkeys doing in there?!?! Maybe we should form a cult and sacrifice something in their honor.

For my own personal reasons I dumped any form of religion out of my RL.

That said, I have no problems with religions in SL... as long they let me live my life there the way I want and prefer it.... (and there is one of the part of the problems I have with many RL religions).

Morwen.

I certainly can, and have been doing so. Yet there are still very strong senses of community here - so I disagree that there is not a social element to people's experiences in Second Life. Indeed in many ways that is what defines their experience!

Religion is not just about rationalising death and pain. There are many many theories surrounding why religion is so important to humans, and that is just one of them. Although I don't have the answers myself, I do understand that religion as a human phenomena is not able to be summarised in one sentence

Sex Drugs and Rock n'Roll or The World's Religious Communities come to SL.
Please let's keep sticky fingered religion out of all this - if I want to be enlightened I will read the Book of Common Prayer, read John Donne's Holy Sonnets or stare at the statue of Poseidon Pointing to the Sea from ancient Greece - I am not gonna come to SL for soul searching. Get REAL everyone.

Oh well, Jig... SL is for everyone.... But if they dare to point their "sticky fingers" in my direction, I bite them off

Morwen

I agree with many others here. Age verification per se is a good idea, but the implementation chosen so far is disasterous. It has the effects of:

a) using the same information that's used by banks, thus removing the banks' "last bastion" of security against identity theft.
b) earmarking those who have performed age verification as potential porn consumers...
c) .. while leaving those who have not done so as acknowledged and implicitly sanctioned minors on the Main Grid..
d) .. thus potentially leading to areas that are not at all adult, setting the flag anyway, for fear that they will be blamed for something adult happening on their parcel otherwise.
e) Implicitly trying to hide and downplay the adult activity on SL, potentially leading to parents "helping" children past the age verification that the parent can see no reason for.

The problem is the underlying feeling that all of this is simply due to Linden Labs desperately trying to escape being sued over pornography in SL. So why don't LL simply ban it? Because they know it helps SL stay popular. In other words, they want to have all the benefits of having porn, but none of the risks - and I just don't think that's likely to happen. After all, the average person running an adult club or shop in SL probably could have the business ability to run a RL porn site too, and might make more money that way, but they don't because of the stigma and risk attached. If running a place in SL develops exactly the same risks, they won't do it anymore.

I don't care anymore. I'll verify. If my identity gets stolen, well then thank you LL and Aristotle. The impending lawsuit will make me giggle. The argument that kids will steal their parent's id's to verify is slightly lame. Seriously, LL is not supposed to take into account bad parenting.


And remember, beat your kids. It worked on us.

Why? Remember, what LL are trying to do here is to protect themselves from being sued, if a parent finds that their child has seen pornography on SL.

It is not the good parents who are filing this kind of lawsuit.

Because of the COPA act in the US, almost every game asks for some kind of age verification because they can't legally store any personal data about a child. If the parent doesn't know that there is pornography in Second Life - and remember that the parent may be the non-internet-savvy Joe or Jane Public, which means Joe or Jane Public has to know about the pornography - then how is signing up their child for it any different - in their perception - from signing them up for World of Warcraft, or the EA game system?

It might seem that it would be obvious that, if a parent helped their child through the age verification, the parent would have no case. But if the parent argued that they had no way of knowing that they were signing up for access to pornography, and simply thought it was the formality age verification that occurs all over the internet, then it might come down to a judgment call.

A question for those of you who are happy with the age verification system as it appears it will be implemented...

Yesterday, I successfully verified myself on budtv (Integrity's other client for this verification system). The particulars I gave them were:

Name: Joe Public
DoB: 1st Jan 1950
SSN: 123412345

Now, I guess it is remotely possible I chanced upon his particulars by dumb luck, but what are the odds?

Do you feel comfortable with this verification system, given that it'll apparently accept any old bullshit?

Before I was old enough to use the MG on SL, I played several other knockoff games (like, when I was 9-17 >> and even tho I was exposed to alot of the sexual stuff, I still steered FAR away from it. I hate that SL is plagued with all of the sexual content it has, and I am excited for it to slow down. With the age verification, what measures will be taken? I really badly want to play SL, but I was having enough of an issue giving out my cc info.

Oh, I forgot to add, when ever I did create an account on an MMO, I DID have parents permission, they would kill me if they found out I registered on something w/o their permission.

oh, the message i replied to was about size ("miniature avitars (too close to "children" and VERY strange) coming through the "gateway"". never mind. still, seeking out adoptive parents and guardians isn't unusual is it? lots of people seem to indulge in innocent family roleplay.