Op/Ed: I’m Too Old for This…
by Jessica Holyoke on 15/12/07 at 6:22 pm
Why are Residents believing in Linden Lab’s proclamations?
by Jessica Holyoke
The more people discuss Age Verification, the more questions are raised. The biggest one is why are Residents believing in Linden Lab’s proclamations.
The Lab states that "[w]hile not foolproof, age verification can provide an additional layer of trust for inworld businesses and Residents. It also helps ensure that minors can’t gain access to inappropriate adult, mature content in Second Life." In the first sentence, taken from the Knowledge Base FAQ given on the blog, it suggests that age verification will build up trust. But if you page down on the FAQ, it states "[o]ther Residents will not be able to view your age verification status — for example, within your profile. However, if you are on a parcel that requires age verification, other Residents on that parcel (or having access to your location information) may be able to deduce that fact." So how does this build trust for inworld businesses and Residents? It would seem only to do so if you restrict access to your parcel or estate to age-verified avatars. Otherwise, a resident would never know if someone is age verified unless they ask for proof.
The second sentence lowers the standard of what should be age-verified. Inappropriate and mature content goes beyond sexual content and could mean other content such as excessive violence or even political speech depending on the country. Worse is that the Lab requests that "the community . . . continue to be effective and responsible in ensuring that Residents are sufficiently protected from potentially inappropriate and/or offensive content that is adult in nature. " Apparently, all people who use SL need to be protected from content, not just minors.
In discussing age verification, two ideas are being promoted as to why it is good, one statement is leading to confusion and one point is being avoided. Please keep in mind that this is written by someone in the United States, which has laws that vary from state to state. The actual law where you live and how it applies may be different.
Does age verification limit liability? for whom?
The first idea that is being suggested as to why age verification is a good idea is that this will somehow limit liability. The problem with the limitation of liability theory is what exactly is a content creator being held liable for. Most "distributing ‘harmful to minors’ material to minors" laws require that you know or have reason to know the person is a minor. (California is somewhat interesting in that if you fail to use reasonable care to see if someone is a minor before giving them the material, you are guilty of a misdemeanor, but if you use the internet, you have to know that the person is a minor. Cal Pen Code ยง288.2. The question becomes what does reasonable care mean. Another question is, in a world where behavior and content are mixed, what does distribution mean.) If someone does not use voice, a person cannot tell if the avatar they are interacting with is above or below the age of majority. For the most part, you cannot be held guilty for knowingly giving something to a minor if you had no means to know that person was a minor. This is especially true when just accessing the Grid requires a minor to lie about their age.
Aristotle does offer to pay if a company is fined for underaged sales. However, its not quite clear as to how a landowner who clicks "Age Verified only" is protected. Paying Fines for underaged sales is a very narrow protection and one that is not part of the majority of cases concerning adult content and youths. And the protection would lean more towards Linden Lab, not the Resident.
Virtually Blind brought up the point of parents may attempt to sue content creators for exposing their children to harmful to minor content. When you Google parents filing suits like that, Virtually Blind is the first web site that comes up. I looked for a single case in Lexis Nexis where a parent sued a website for content that is harmful to minors falling into their child’s hands and could not find one. The closest two were where a parent sued a library and a town for negligence and waste of funds because her child could print up pornography at the library and the French parents group that sued Linden Lab. Both suits never made it to trial.
One of the difficulties of bringing suit as a parent for the child is that you would have to prove damages. How was your child harmed by viewing content that is harmful to minors? There’s no statute saying there’s a definite amount of damages. And most courts avoid determining how a person was damaged psychologically without medical proof, such as psychologist visits or physical manifestations of mental disorders, such as the physical side effects of anxiety.
If a law enforcement agency decided to go after a land owner for Obscenity, age verification will not help. While "think of the children" comes up often in obscenity prosecutions, the basic nature of SL being adults only would seem to protect against using "think of the children." It would not help against the basic obscenity charge.
Does age encourage accountability? for whom?
The second idea that is bounced around is that age verification will encourage accountability. It’s just that the program as described would not be able to do that. Age verification does not retain records, or so the Lab tells the community. If this was about accountability, then the records would be retained. If they are not retained, then it is not about accountability. A Resident, in theory, is still as anonymous after verifying than they were before. Or taking the carding analogy further, just because I show the bouncer at the bar my real phone number on my license, doesn’t mean I’m going to tell you my real phone number.
One muddled idea is about who is accountable. At times, I’ve seen Robin Linden state that land owners are responsible for what occurs on their land. And that age verification means that the responsibility for content shifts from Linden Lab to the Resident. But that suggests that, at one time, Linden Lab was responsible for people’s content and actions. Additionally, if the Landowner is solely responsible for what happens on their ‘land", then why is Linden Lab, the ultimate owner, not responsible for what happens on their "land"? I covered some of these issues in a previous Op/Ed.
If you use the "land" as website analogy, and the duty to moderate what is posted, the analogy fails because a reader cannot make a temporary adjustment to the experience of the website. YouTube might be able to stop a posting of someone singing that infringes someone’s copyright, but a land owner cannot stop a Resident from infringing on someone’s copyright. Residents have the ability to have sex with each other, anytime, anywhere, regardless of zoning. Its the Resident, any Resident, committing the act that needs to be responsible for their actions, not anyone else.
An idea is being buried that might be the key to age verification. Deep on the Knowledge Base FAQ, Linden Lab states that they currently do not charge to age verify. Previous plans have stated that age verification will cost a nominal fee when it comes out of beta for basic members, and L$10 for premium members. In that same sentence, the Lab states that it does not cost to host "Age Verified only" land at this time. This might be very important, either as a future means to price out adult content, making it too expensive to host, or as a way for the Lab to cash in on the money involved in adult content.
Granted, paying Aristotle to host "Age Verified only" may be the way that Aristotle insures the land owner, but why would Aristotle agree to insure something when they would not know what they were insuring? (For instance, many obscenity laws automatically list BDSM as something that is fundamentally obscene. Perhaps Aristotle would not want to insure against a minor seeing BDSM due to the notoriety involved. Unless the cost is so high that Aristotle wouldn’t have to insure the content.) That one point might be the key as to why we have age verification. Linden Lab is a corporation. It always comes back to money.
Prokofy Neva
Dec 15th, 2007
My God, you’re dense, Jessica. Of course it’s about limiting liability. Do you need to go back to law school? Did you pass the bar?
Just because the data isn’t retained doesn’t mean a thing. The person who verifies against a public form of ID like a driver’s license or last 4 digits of SS# is volunteering to be ID’d which *is* accountability. Obviously, if there is a law-enforcement probe, the verification could be made again if need be, but it’s already a sign of the customer’s due diligence that he *has* verified *already*.
I’m really sick of all this word-fisking and comment-mincing over age verification. Don’t verify if you don’t want to, then don’t access adult parcels. If you want to access them and want to avoid liability, verify. What is the goddamn big deal?
It’s only those who have something to hide who would begin to acquire something to fear.
And in fact people in SL *do* need to be protected from UNWILLING expose to some of the nastiest stuff out there. It really is grotesque, and people should not have to have it in their face. They should have CHOICES and this helps them have them.
Re: “Virtually Blind brought up the point of parents may attempt to sue content creators for exposing their children to harmful to minor content. When you Google parents filing suits like that, Virtually Blind is the first web site that comes up. I looked for a single case in Lexis Nexis where a parent sued a website for content that is harmful to minors falling into their child’s hands and could not find one.”
That ought to be a good sign of how bogus this is, how manufactured the example is, and how untrustworthy this site is.
Here’s more idiocy: “One muddled idea is about who is accountable. At times, I’ve seen Robin Linden state that land owners are responsible for what occurs on their land. And that age verification means that the responsibility for content shifts from Linden Lab to the Resident. But that suggests that, at one time, Linden Lab was responsible for people’s content and actions. Additionally, if the Landowner is solely responsible for what happens on their ‘land”, then why is Linden Lab, the ultimate owner, not responsible for what happens on their “land”? I covered some of these issues in a previous”
Answer: because individuals are accountable for their actions. The idea that companies have to exist and cover your ass for you and diaper you and take the rap for you is part of the awful entitlement culture out of which you came.
Landowners are responsible for the simple reason that they are the ones who have access to the tools which check off “adult” and “verified”.
Linden Lab isn’t responsible because it’s not their content. They are a common carrier, or at least aspire to that status.
Now I wish the Herald would stop publishing this pablum about age verification boogey men and fake cases and false premises and do some real, honest-to-God research and try to find even a single case of a spouse whose husband or wife left them for SL partners, and whether they got any transaction whatsoever trying to get records out of LL.
Or for that matter, ANY case involving Aristotle/Integrity where someone was able to successfully sue — or simply obtain — the records of another private person (not the case of the journalists who made fake accouns, that’s old and discredited). Ok, we’re waiting…
Jessica Holyoke
Dec 15th, 2007
Prokofy,
Feeling as you do, are you going to make the mature rentals that you own “age verified only”?
Lao-Tzu
Dec 15th, 2007
Jessica you do raise some good points and I liked your article- but Im just curious, are you a parent? Obviously I understand if you do not wish to answer as it is a personal question. As a parent myself, I respect LL’s attempt at least to make it MORE difficult to see and interact with all the disturbed images and people associated with SL. I would actually like to see age veriification MANDATORY to even have an account.Its the thousands of anonymous PEOPLE at the keyboards that LL should focus on if they want to keep teens out of SL. It makes me sick at the thought of my teen or any teen to be able to wander SL and potentially hook up with a 40 year old pervert from Brazil.(No offense Brazillians..it was an example…Im sure your country is lovely.)
My point is that these arguments seem to focus on porn. The true danger for all of our kids are dangerous people. MYSPACE has already given us countless examples of the teen/adult hook-up..SL’s environment could take that to a whole new level.
Prokofy, I liked what you said “It’s only those who have something to hide who would begin to acquire something to fear.”
PS- This has been said before on another post, but no doubt this may be a move by LL to set the foundation for merging the adult and teen grids…..let us hope NOT.
Jessica Holyoke
Dec 15th, 2007
Lao,
To your question, I am going to stay mute on whether or not I’m a parent. My feeling is that when it comes time to watch my children’s habits, TV, internet or otherwise, I will take responsibility for them and not anyone else.
I’m not sure if the MySpace question is eliminated by age verification because its not universal. Pedophiles still need to really search in order to find underage people. Law enforcement decoys cannot self-identify as an underage user, like they would in a chat room sting. On the other hand, a person might fall for someone they met outside of age verified land and the person turns out to be 15. In other words, the current and upcoming scheme protect the child from being discovered, but does not help the non-landowning resident in knowing who they are talking to.
Sakkara Quamar
Dec 16th, 2007
If you find sick or disturbing images, you leave the sim, pretty simple really.
And what defines sick and disturbing images?
If I get offended by something I leave, I dont make a big song and dance about it, go fetch my pitchfork and join the preaching crowd.
As for verifaction, how is it going to help? “Think of the children” How about this, take the bloody computer off them til they are mature enough to be trusted with it, give them a football or a bike and get them outside to play and develop, oh wait, the pedos are all waiting outside in bushes for them…forgot about that…
Prokofy Neva
Dec 16th, 2007
On my rentals, if I have public properties with mature content, I sure do check off “mature” and “verified” and that has already cost some customers, but I found from polling them that most had no problem verifying.
As for individual parcels, at the customers’ request, I will check off “mature” and “verified”.
And if I see someone who puts in, say, a store with really graphic pictures and implements for sale, I will let them know that if they don’t check off mature and verified, they will face liability, and could be vulnerable to abuse reporting. That usually makes them move, or check off the box.
I don’t intend to go through my entire rentals system and check everything to mature and verified and then uncheck it after I have inspected each and every tenant’s content, any more than the Lindens will be doing that.
I follow exactly their model, to the letter.
I check off things that i can see are public adult things like a BDSM store or a no-tell adult motel with publicly available porn movies.
I give the customer the option of *deciding themselves* if their content is mature and has to be checked off.
And on everything else, I give them the benefit of the doubt and default to the notion of common law, which is “whatever is not forbidden is permitted” rather than the notion of civil law “everything that is not permitted is forbidden”.
People tend to notify me of any actionable activity going on, and I deal with it, so the attempt of people to set me up flops pretty fast. I run communities with groups of people cooperating in them, not maximum security compounds with isolated parcels.
Once again, age verification is not about trying to keep kids out 100 percent — in an age of parents out of the home, with kids having computers in their rooms, and able to grab cell phones or credit cards or whatever they need to verify, it’s not practical. But it’s *good enough*. You don’t need to have a tekkie anal-retentive 100 percent effective system, or knock a system that isn’t effective with malicious tabloid porn reporter’s glee, to have it be *limiting liablity*.
Obscure Doodad
Dec 16th, 2007
It remains hard for me to see the point of all this. If you verify, you endure risk of future exposure of having asked for porn access in what is now in the public perception a den of child porn. You can persuade yourself that risk is as small as you want to persuade (delude) yourself.
The one thing about this about which I am confident no one will delude themselves is that “small” is not zero. There is a non-zero risk to RPA (request porn access).
Given that there is a risk, of whatever magnitude, and no reward, why do it? Since the big announcement, I know that probably 2/3 my ridiculous friends list have chosen not to take that risk. They chose not to verify. So did I. Their and my SL lives have changed not one bit as a result. Most rational people aren’t involving themselves in this needless risk. Their RL lives are a little bit safer from that choice.
The correct choice looks pretty obvious in this context. Don’t age verify. Those who set their land requiring it shrink their market. Economics will therefore take care of it all eventually.
Ed DelRio
Dec 16th, 2007
Prokofy said “My God, you’re dense, Jessica.” My reaction is “My God, you’re a jerk Prokofy.”
Prokofy you being insulting and childlike only devalues any argument you have. When you speak like that you sound like a real jerk. Seems your ego has gotten the best of you as if we should all bow down to the all mighty, all knowing Prokofy. Have you no respect for other’s opinions? Apparently your sense of self worth has gotten the best of you. Obviously we should all just shut up, content in the fact that you know it all and anyone else’s opinion is worthless. Narcissism can be a nasty thing. I for one think you should apologize for your childish and intolerant attitude toward Jessica. Not that it will ever happen.
Learn a bit of respect Prokofy. Oh… And happy holidays!
Afghanistan
Dec 16th, 2007
Did you perhaps mean “for whom” instead of “for who”? If there was any clearer case of when to use “whom” over “who”, I can’t think of it.
Jessica Holyoke
Dec 16th, 2007
The typesetters are supporting the WGA strike. But I fixed that.
The subheadings, not the writer’s strike.
Benjamin Duranske
Dec 17th, 2007
I know regular readers of the Herald have already figured out that Prokofy isn’t a credible source, but for those readers who find this article while searching for Virtually Blind, and are wondering why someone named “Prokofy Neva” is taking random swipes at the site I edit, please consider this, regarding Prokofy Neva.
http://virtuallyblind.com/benjamin-duranske-on-prokofy-neva/
Aside from posting this link, I don’t respond to her random, usually nonsensical attacks on me, the site I edit, and the organizations I belong to any more — it’s just not worth my time. The above potshot, which appears to have completely missed the point of the referenced article on VB, is no exception.
Interested readers can see my take on age verification in the context of IMVU here.
http://virtuallyblind.com/2007/09/24/imvu-age-verification/
DINGOS ATE MY BABYFUR
Dec 18th, 2007
Hay Benjamim Duranske I would love to know why someone named “Prokofy Neva” is taking random swipes at the site you edit but you want to know what OS and web browser I’m using.
WHY IS THAT MR. DURANSKE WHAT INFORMATION ARE YOU COLLECTING ARE YOU WORKING FOR ARISTOTLE?
Ben
Dec 18th, 2007
No idea, Dingo. Maybe it’s a WordPress function?
Moody Loner (MoodyLoner Korobase)
Dec 19th, 2007
Regarding:
Prokofy: “It’s only those who have something to hide who would begin to acquire something to fear.”
That’s a good point. Mind posting your home address or a credit card number?