Age Verification and Landowner Responsibility

Following the Age Verification blog entry, I wonder how many landowners picked up on this from the post:

"Landowners are morally and legally responsible for the content displayed and the behavior taking place on their land."

Since when did landowners 'acquire' this legal responsibility for the behavior of others on the land they own?

I own several sims, do I need to think about hiring a police force to patrol the parks and waterways, and Skyway Patrol vehicles for mischief in the clouds. etc?

So if a Norwegian and a Japanese get up to 'bad' behavior in a sim owned by an French guy, who left a Mexican manager in charge, and the sim is hosted on a server in England (not yet, I know, but LL did say it was coming), and the company owning those servers is located in California, just WHO is responsible? And does the French guy really OWN the land anyway?

I was planning on an orgy in #07 tonight, but I think I'll just go to bed early, with a hot cup of cocoa, and contemplate the error of my ways instead.

I suspect LL has two considerations here. One is CYA (for the acronymically challenged that is Cover Your Ass). The other is, I suspect they are looking toward the day when they are operating an open grid in which people hook up their own servers and operate their own territories of whatever size in whatever way they want entirely apart form what LL does or can do, or the legal and other restrictions LL operates under. Methinks this is going to be the Wild West for a lot longer than many people imagine.


And don't underestimate the value of hot cocoa. Chocolate is a mild but often quite effective stimulant, so don't give up on #07 just yet. O.O..

I suspect the exact wording wasnt as well thought out as he meant - he wasnt speaking as offical policy but his take on the policy.

We havent seen a TOS addendum saying this.

Still I dont like the implications either.

Exactly - this is one of the huge problems with this age verification policy.

If current policy is taken literally, all public land would have to be set Adult, because you can't stop someone running onto it naked and waving a huge prim c**k.

and sooner or later -- someone will.

LOL

No, you cannot stop that person from running around naked waying his wienie........nor the exhibitionist couple doing the nasty on Linden Land. But they can be AR'd by residents if it's on PG rated land (and even under the CS in M rated land). But it is the responsiblity of the owner of the land to provide a reasonable effort to pervent ARable "crimes" on their land...........pretty hard to do if you don't have a tool for such. The age verification does give you a tool.

And for the RL comparison about responsibility.........sorry, guys you are responsible for what happens on your RL property. Let someone build a meth lab in your garage and find out just how responsible you really are. Even let some underaged teen get drunk on your property and get caught...........you'll find out how much you are responsible. You better have made some "reasonable" effort to prevent such things are you might find yourself in jail. That's real life.

Your not responsible if you go to work and while your gone someone breaks into your house and sets upa Meth Lab.

Your not responsible if you on vacation and a a few teens get drunk in your back yard. Or have sex in your pool.

Your not responsible if some lunatic walks onto you RL front yard , strips naked and masturbates yelling at all your neighbors while your out having dinner.

Your responsibilities are based on you letting people do things on your property. Or your property being somehow unsafe (porch collapses under the mailman).

I would think that the landowner's responsibility has a lot to do with intent and consent. If you place a couple of sexual pose balls in a public place, that you own, you are showing intent to use them and consent for others to use them. If someone without your knowledge or consent rezzes them and uses them in public, I don't see how a landowner could be held responsible. So the griefer noob with the prim penis is not something a land owner should have legal worries about. Of course on my properties, they get one warning to put it away, then eject/ban.

No you are not responsible for any of that..........as long as you have taken reasonable measures to prevent that from happening while you are away. If you, through actions of the past, led people who do do these things it's okay by you then even though you are there at the time.........your defense is rather weak. But all you've provided is instances where you would not be held responsible in SL either. It falls back on the people doing the bad stuff........not you. However, if you do allow that stuff, then SL is giving you a tool to use to make sure (within reason) that the people doing it are verified as being of age.

I just can't follow the logic of many on the resistance to something that common sense says should be in place. Paranoia? Afraid you'll be spammed in RL or SL? Afraid the FBI will find out you are terrorist? What? The IRS might want some of the owed taxes on the millions of USD's you make in SL? Makes no sense to me at all.

Yep - youd think that.

But thats not what Danny Linden Said.

He said your morally and legally responsible for what goes on on your land.

If that becomes policy, sounds to me like its either Ban-lines or adult flags for everyone.

See - thats the thing.

We dont KNOW that. Weve been told different recently - which might change everything.

I bet if you summarized you local law on what you are "morally and legally responsible for what goes on on your land" you'd find out it would read very closely to what Danny Linden said.

Then why don't we all wait? The blog said late this month............hell, we've waited for bug fixes for years. LOL A couple weeks is a piece of cake.

Well the reason not to wait on THIS particular issue

"Landowners are morally and legally responsible for what happens on their land"

Is becuase the techy geeky Linden who said it might not realize whats WRONG with the statement and it might defualt become policy.

the laws covering land and the laws covering ISPs are really not the same at all.

that's a problem with this situation here. We're using words that actually don't apply to the situation.

your land is nothing but a swatch of server space. and if someone other than you does something with that server space, its very likely you won't be held accountable.

however, there's some limits.

if you rez your sexgen and all your sex poseballs for any noob to jump on, and don't take sufficient precautions to keep them out (be it via ban lines, security orbs, setting adult flag, etc. you could be opening yourself to trouble.

if you haven't rezzed such items, then no.

an even flakier area is autoreturn or nobuild. Many places have build and scripts on, but set autoreturn.

I am NOT responsible for what someone other than me rezzes on my land, that is for sure. I set my autoreturn to take care of it automatically. But someone can sit on something and play for as long as they want. I can't do anything about that.

Say my land has no adult content, but I have build and script on. and someone abuses that fact.

am I responsible? no, I'm not. they are. I leave build and script on for responsible people, but I am not responsible for the actions of idiots just because my store needs to be build and script for people to try out their purchases and/or unpack them to their inventory.

So if you have taken proper precautions, no, you shouldn't be responsible.

And nudity isn't "explicitly adult", not even by your usual MPAA ratings.

Lets see now...........haven't you been mentioning the whole thing is for LL's protection and what the corporations are wanting? I can't see a tech geek making any company policy.........even by "default". I'm sure LL has a few real life corporate lawyers on hand to design a policy with all it's legal issues at stake.

Take a breath........you'll hyperventalate!!!

Besides..............it's coming. Ain't a damned thing you can do except opt out or leave. You're safe as long as you don't give out any information............well, as safe as you are right now. LOL

Legally is a point that we can argue. But I cannot be held morally responsible for the voluntary actions of another, if those actions are taken without my knowledge or consent.

As for legally, this is gonna be a mishmash of local laws. Unless they hold us all to the legal standard in place where the servers are located.

More details need to be given, but knowing lawyer types, it will stay weasel words.

whoa, slow down.

You are saying the statement -

"YOU AS A LANDOWNER ARE MORALLY AND LEGALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT HAPPENS ON YOUR LAND"

is coming to the TOS whether we like it or not?

I beg to differ on that point - theres no way people are going to agree to that wholesale.

I think that Daniel Linden didnt realize the reprecussiosn of his statement.

I would agree with the statement "Linden labs ISNT morally or legally responsible for what happens on your land" great - add that to the TOS today. That protects LL.

I even agree to a rational responsibility approach - but me being responsible for other actions that I wasnt aware of by strangers?

If that happns SL will be all adult flagged or banlines. It will have to be- isnt worth risking being banned.

Collette...........I'm not the one hperventilating.

I worry about the transition, so here is my plan.

1. Split off a 4m wide slice of land around my place and mark it as "adult".
This prevents new players from entering while letting those with landmarks to still get to the place.

Right now the 4m wide slice (DMZ) is also no-object entry, no-build, ect...

The landing point is in the DMZ, That's corect, you can set the landing point one one parcel and then slice it so that the landing point for a parcel is on a seperate parcel.

2. I don't own any artwork!
I've let everyone else place artwork, so I am not responsible for any DCMA or content.

I remove artwork as I get complaints, but it keeps coming back.

3. Set private rooms as "Adult" since the Warpos transporters will most likely not function for non-verified's as they have to travel over other peoples land to get to the rooms.
(They are in other sims to reduce sim loading)


Edit: clarify 1 to include landing point.

Simple solution -

If EVERYONE simply ignores the use of the adult tag, the whole system will be effectively void. LL can't come chasing every landowner in SL. But they will have covered their asses so they should be happy enough.

If everyone did it your possibly right - thing is if Many ignore it and many do not (which im sure will happen) they will make Age verification mandatory.

And a lot of people will get banned in the process.

i was discussing this with some friends in-world this morning, and three of them are going to verify with Integrity and enable the adult checkbox on their land - even though there is nothing remotely adult there. they just recognize that their land is (for business reasons) open to others who may introduce adult content or behaviour in their absence, so they want to cover their asses.

I think this will be a common reaction considering the "Moral and Legal" responsibility claim.

Who wants to get Ar'd over something you have no control over?

Im really glad now I made a Satalite store on PG land.

How can you run a store with a Vendor and not enable build? How can they rez the box and open their new product?

But if you enable build anyone with the inclination can just drop a couple sex balls and have explicit sex in your store. And it would be your fault supposedly- not theirs.

Until I hear a better solution, that's what I'm doing.

I loathe the thought of constantly running into ban lines, so in order to enjoy SL as an integrated terrain, I'm going to verify. I'm not all happy with the degree of intrusion that veriification will require, or with the company that is running this aspect, but I can't see staying in SL under any other circumstances.

My land -- which contains my store -- will be set to Adult to remove the issue of liability. I'm not going to waste my time second guessing what does or does not fall under Linden's rules. It's Adult, deal.

The downside is that many of my friends, especially European ones, are very wary of the verification process. I'm sure my business will take a substantial hit, and my socializing will have to shift as well.

Oh well.