First the Germans... now the French are having a go

I don't think LL has much to worry about. Last I checked French Courts were still deciding how to sentence Marie Antoinette.

Is it not ironic, that a place quite possibly just as sexualy over the top as second life (Germany), would be the one to complain first?

A friend from Germany showed me his "junk mail" from his last trip, it was all escort services and porn advertisements galore.

LL really painted themselves into a corner with open registration. I wonder if they even thought about the possibility of minors getting on the adult grid when they had that brain fart, or did they only see dollar signs and pipe dreams?

Exactly if people with R rated content had locked out unverifieds then very few underaged making it onto the adult grid would have been able to get to those areas, but we have to look after our 20th century cousins who have ADSL but can't use credit cards or paypal, because they still use chickens for currency

ROFLMAO!! Just thought of the MEANEST thing to do:

#1 Make a disposable Alt.
#2 Pick up another Noob (preferably one of the "Hey Babe! Lets Have Sex!! types)

#3 Find a sex poseball.
#4 Let it get hot N heavy in chat.

THEN, get reeeeeal quiet..... and come back with something like

"This is Dans father. What are you doing with my underage son???? WHO are you???"

LOL!! I'm so frickin' mean

You never know what that hottie is behind the keyboard. Mini-skirt and fishnets on the outside and some bearded couch potato on the inside.

" THIS IS DANS SON, WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH MY FATHER"

With Black Magic

Well, we all saw how proud they were about those "million resident" milestones (even though only a fraction of those were active/unique accounts). Press releases galore! I'm sure having open registration helped with those numbers they could eventually go to those corporate entities and "sell" the Second Life customer base to. (Whoops... 90% of those people are "Broadly Offensive".

hello message from france.

For what i know famille de france are a group of crazy nutjobs that fight to protect childrens. They are known in my country for doing various pressures on games like GTA, DOOM, QUAKE.

I guess they are mainly profitering of the german case as some sort of stepping stone.

Basically they started a lawsuit agains Linden Labs and - in case linden labs ignore it - agains about 10 french ISP, what they would like basically is that if Linden labs do not hear them to try to force the Assotiation of the internet service providers of france to block access to SL from france.

As usual under the holy cover of protecting the childrens, we all know the good old way of manipulation.


I am sad of this, i just hope nothing happen as i would hate to be forced out of SL.

Then isn't that everything they go against?

Y'all know of course it's not going to stop. You can blame whoever you want.....be it religious zealots, moral elitists, doo gooders for the children, the Amish (but for the life of me I don't see the humor there......in fact it's really a rather disgusting, demeaning little joke), French, Germans, Americans, Linden Labs, atheists, agnostics,communists, facists, or us residents. Plus any others you might think of. The problem is here. It isn't going to go away. No society, virtual or real, can exist without some rules and restraints.

Age verification, restrictions and rules are coming. Accept it or forever be unhappy in SL. Go out and find another "replacement" for your virtual world..........it will either have the restrictions and rules in place or they will be coming soon. Placing blame is senseless. Some things are just like that........whether real or virtual.

you don't want the age verification that these groups want. you don't... its nothing but a moneymaking scam and it would spell the end of an international grid if they got their way.

Germany for example - adult sites are railroaded through threat of lawsuit to use a service that forces you to use a USB device to have access to adult websites, that takes you three weeks to actually get, costs a substantial yearly subscription fee, and shuts out everyone in other countries who can't verify through the German postal service. It's why most adult online services in Germany ran away to the Netherlands.

SL would cease to function internationally if they got their way. I'd take Disneyfication over that... I'd hate it but I would take it.

I didn't specify any particular age verification possess. All I said was age verification is coming. Some more or less universally, accepted possess. I'm sure it will not meet every countries (or groups) satisfaction............but it will for the majority. I'm sure there's a way..........not everyone is going to be happy about it, but it's going to happen.

this is the slippery slope of age verification.

Nothing, NOTHING, can actually verify someone's age on the net. The best you can do is match a record in a database to data submitted, which may or may not be the person submitting the information.

that is the best anyone can do, short of having actual biometrics attached to your computer to scan some unique bodypart of yours with a matching record in a database.

Germany has incredibly intensely offensive pornography plus a legal prostitution trade - far more than even the most blue US state would EVER allow, but it's sold in brick and mortar businesses where you can physically present your person and show your ID.

I hate to be spoken too as if I'm an idiot. I know there is no ironclad age verification process...........you don't need to tell me (or anyone else) something so obivious. But, some method.........mostly to satisfy legal concerns.........has to be in place. Even if imperfect.

And I could not care less how strict Germany's in person age verifcation is........but even that can be gotten around. That is also obvious.

Just know that age verification (imperfect as it may be) is coming to Second Life. And you won't have much of a choice about who Linden Labs chooses to provide it or how it's going to be implimented.........short of leaving.

Age verification isnt about being fool proof - its about giving the media less ammunition to attack with.

Yeah.. and if LL had listened to us back when they opened the registration process, then at least those 'children' would have had as hard a time getting onto the main grid as they do the Teen grid. Why don't we hear about this kind of thing from the Teen Grid? Oh, right.. there aren't any teens there. They don't need Mom and Dad's Credit Card to get on the main grid, but they do for the teen grid!

No, I definitely don't blame the French for this one... we've got Jack Thompson after all. These kinds of nut jobs simply can't/won't understand that the parents are the ones to blame. The companies are doing their best, by using the ESRB (which SL main grid would fall under guess what? Mature, if not a higher rating) to let PARENTS know what not to buy. Basically, they are saying that parents are incompetent and the governments should raise the kids. I would far rather let my 5 year old play GTA3 than be raised by the US government.. I have the feeling he'd be a lot less violent!

(No, he loves racing games and Lego Star Wars... plus his preschool/kindergarten games. I wouldn't let him play GTA3 until I'm absolutely sure he can tell fantasy from reality. Not that running into a wall to prove he could do as some of his favorite cartoons hasn't already started him down this path.)

Take some damn responsibility for your children!

When did it suddenly become the world at large's responsibility to raise other people's children. Monitor what your children are doing on the computer!

They can get to it at a friends house? you probably shouldn't let your child go to someone's house if they're going to be that poorly supervised. You can't watch them all the time? Then don't let them on the computer when you aren't around. You aren't a computer wiz, you don't know how to stop them from using it? Take the damn keyboard! They have their own computer, it's in their room and they don't want YOU in their room... You deserve whatever you get stupid.

K - now figure out how to get enough people to agree with you that the news and politicians wouldnt dare bringing it up as a hotbed issue.

Again, he meant the Mennonites ^^;



My sentiments exactly. Parents need to be more freaking mindful of their children's actions. I remember when I was a kid, my mother never missed anything I ever did, and I got an ass whooping for every thing I ever did wrong. Kids these days pull their parents around on leashes instead of the other way around.

There needs to be some accountability passed out all around, not just to Linden Labs, but to parents who don't watch what their children are doing, and to people who go chasing after others with high morals and judgements to lay down. A lot of bad decisions have been made in the past, I just wish people would fix them already. It's not like it's the end of the world, just an error in judgement.

You know, I've got to say, yours is still the best idea I've heard for age verification. It can't cost LL that much to send out a couple million cards. A lot cheaper than lawyers anyway, maybe.

I hate the title of this thread. It isn't THE Germans or THE French who are having a go: it was a German TV company (whose programme led to the prosecution of two German citizens in Germany under German law) and a small French pressure group. The French, Germans, and any other ethnic group you care to mention are here for the same reason as everyone else: they love SL.

I rejoice in the diversity - I'm thrilled to see foreign language classes in Events (and that includes English, BTW - foreign to the majority of SL users, if the figures are to be believed).

Only one flag flies over my parcel - the flag of SL.

Broccoli, I'm not talking about the content of the thread, and I'm not having a go at you - there are plenty of other posts in the same vein. Unfortunately some people have seen this as a chance to bash the foreigner du jour (whose turn is it next, I wonder?). I think the blame for this mess lies with LL, who in their mad rush to reach 1,000,000 resis removed verification, and, as Aaron said, with parents for not monitoring their children.

Ducks down behind parapet.
_____________________________________________________________

Nice English-born Irish/Italian/French Jewish girl

This sums up what I feel:

My Song
(Song of Peace)

Words: Lloyd Stone, 1934
Music: Sibelius (Finlandia)

This is my song, O God of all the nations,
a song of peace for lands afar and mine.
This is my home, the country where my heart is;
here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;
but other hearts in other lands are beating
with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;
but other lands have sunlight too, and clover,
and skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
O hear my song, thou God of all the Nations,
a song of peace for their land and for mine.

May truth and freedom come to every nation;
May peace abound where strife* has raged so long;
That each may seek to love and build together,
A world united, righting every wrong.
A world united in its love for freedom,
Proclaiming peace together in one song.


*Note: this is not a dig at our beloved ResMod, Strife

To speak for the other side of the fence, most parents are literally afraid to punish their kids with anything more than a time out, simply because we've got some seriously overzealous people who can and will report you to the authorities if you spank your child for smacking the crap out of another kiddo and then biting them!

And no, time outs do NOT work on a child who has inherited as much imagination and stubbornness as mine has. *sigh*

I know, and that's what's seriously wrong with people these days. People wonder why this generation is so messed in the freaking head, and why the world is going to hell. And I am not a militant type of person, when I do have kids I will love them with all my heart, but you can bet when they do something wrong they're going to get spanked for it.