Comments on: Content ratings, age-verification and secret words

By: K

Sat, 09 May 2009 06:12:39 +0000

You know…if kids REALLY want in that bad…they'll find a way in. Also, kids shouldn't really be on the adult grid in the first place, there are plenty of little sites and virtual worlds for them, so the little turds shouldn't be making our lives any more difficult.

By: K

Fri, 08 May 2009 15:12:39 +0000

By: TateruNino

TateruNino — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 03:37:29 +0000

I'm not sure it's possible. I've listened to many dozens of suggestions on how to perform age-verification, and in the end, most of them are either ineffective, or arduous or both. I can only think of one solution that improves substantively on success-rates, and it *is* somewhat more arduous than most folks would probably like.

By: emilly

emilly — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 03:17:45 +0000

I suppose it solves nothing to say 'But they should do it *better*'–in all fairness, after everything else that's happened in SL, maybe they truly don't know *how*.

But from the beginning, this has been a highly charged, highly contested issue, and they don't seem invested in making it *any* easier.

By: TateruNino

TateruNino — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 03:11:34 +0000

By US FTC standards, a simple “Are you over 18? Yes/No” is a sufficient best-practice age-check system for porn-sites, etc. However, we know that this is insufficient. Beyond that, age-checking gets more arduous, but not really any more effective, unfortunately.

By: Samantha Poindexter

Samantha Poindexter — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:04:02 +0000

Personally, no, I don't think it's a profitable model. But I think Mark Kingdon thinks it is. Maybe he's right.

By: emilly

emilly — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:50:16 +0000

So…Second Life wants to be the virtual Doubletree?

Really, now, is there money in that? Even hotels with conference rooms have to rent out to individuals on occasion…

By: Samantha Poindexter

Samantha Poindexter — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:34:11 +0000

Much as I hate conspiracy theories, I really do believe the most plausible explanation is “they want all the residents to leave so they can concentrate on virtual conference rooms for businesses.”

By: emilly

emilly — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:30:39 +0000

You know, I'm wondering that myself? Why *can't* Linden Labs match the efforts of other virtual worlds, online games, and adult-content porn sites? Why are they going to such extreme efforts, guaranteeing further loss of income and their user base, to “ensure” protection of children they won't admit to wanting to bring onto the adult grid anyway?

I don't get it. I'm paranoid enough to think something else is going on, but I haven't figured out *what*, yet.

By: TateruNino

TateruNino — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:56:14 +0000

We prefer the term “snurble bits”

http://dwellonit-comic.taterunino.net/archive/26

By: Wolfie Rankin

Wolfie Rankin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:44:14 +0000

Time to rename all your bits "budgies" (the smuggled kind).

I refuse to be neutered, what's in my pants, stays in my pants.

The poor, much maligned penis gets blamed for so much these days, where once they were worshipped in ancient Greece and India, and sill has a festival devoted to it in Japan.

But now must hang in fear of being blamed for scarring of childrens little minds for the rest of their lives.

Wolfie!

By: evan

evan — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:41:15 +0000

Isn't age-verification a bit of a dead issue?

Why are Linden Lab more liable for age verification than any website delivering hard-core (human) porn? Since a credit card is verification enough to access some of the most extreme porn on the internet why should it not be enough to access potentially pornographic 'cartoons' in SL?

Credit cards are completely distinguishable - of course banks and financial institutions know the difference between pre-paid kid-cards and credit cards, they're also keeping transaction profiles on all of us. If Linden want to prevent access to SL based on card-type then they can and will.