– 16 year old accesses main grid, parents sue because 16 year old engaged in virtual sexual act (virtual sexual knowledge of a minor?!)….

In court:

‘So you did ask that they were over 18?’
‘Yes, we did.’
‘And the 16 year old said yes?’
‘Apparently they did.’
‘What other verification did you try?’
‘Umm…. well, we asked her again…’
‘And they said they were over 16?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what else did you do to verify?’
‘We hired an age verification service.’
‘Did the 16 year old pass the age verification service?’
‘Yes, they did.’
‘How did they do that?’
‘Apparently by using the mother’s driver’s license’
‘Did you call the mother?’
‘No.’
‘Did you ask the neighbor?’
‘No’
‘Did you go to their house and see if they were over 18?’
‘No’
‘Clearly you were not interested in whether they really were over 18. Thank you.’
‘!!!!!’

The other thing is that it does not solve the problem pf “it was not me” anyway. One can always claim that “it was already like that” when they started to play – “someone came in and hacked in, and put the [phrase|my birthdate], and i did not get any warning before i saw the pr0n”. Again, I am not a lawyer, so not sure how far one can go in their denials, and whether the RL date is a compelling enough argument.

If you think the date will draw attention, ask for SL “rezz date”. This one you can verify as well :)

@Taran: I click on so many “I agree” buttons daily, I don’t care much if it is one more or one less – if it makes someone happier, I am glad to do so, as soon as I am not revealing any useful information about the meatspace avatar. After all, SL is more and more like RL – so we’ve got to have those “I agree with blah” inworld as well.

Same as I happily deposited a few lindens in Ginko, I’ll be happy to press “I’m over 18″ for any given CheckURTrueAdult SL-based “company”. I can even go as far as entering my SL “birth date” – this keeps the risk within the game. Giving my RL bank account#, RL birth date or any other RL information does not keep the risk bound, and I kind of feel concerned about that fact :)

The ‘click-through’ kind of takes us full circle. To use Second Life on the main grid, people are supposed to do exactly the same thing. Everything added on seems redundant.

If Linden Lab asks if the person is over 18 when they register, then they are the primary gateway. Anyone who is actually under 18 and lies at that point… well, that’s the whole point now isn’t it?

So if someone lies to Linden Lab, or otherwise fools them – no matter how sophisticated the system – do we really expect to have to police that? Access to the virtual world is provided through Linden Lab – not any member of the community. The fact that we’re even discussing this is very troublesome in that regard.

But again, we are listening to suggestions and definately open to both suggestions and possible customizations in future versions.

Yes that was something we contemplated during the development. Should we have just the one warning? Should we make them answer a question? Should we go further and ask them to input a date? etc. In the end we figured we’d be best off going as far as we could go, while asking for as little RL information as possible.

The idea behind our decision is that the visitor will read and respond to the warning and inquiry a total of three times, making it impossible for anyone to be able to get away with saying, “I missed it.” or “I didn’t understand what I was doing.”

On the website … http://agelock.net/ … we have a link to a forum and we are hoping people will offer their input, their suggestions for future development, ideas for customization, etc.

What we have right now is version 1, and we really want the community’s input on future versions.

To #6,

Liability is something we’ve also considered. Right now Second Life is completely open. Content creators and land holders are completely vulnerable to liability. At this point it’s only a matter of time before someone’s parent comes along and throws a fit because their child saw adult content.

The problem with LL’s plan is that even after it is implemented, the content creators and land holders in Second Life will still be just as vulnerable. People keep saying Integrity is providing “insurance”, but insurance to who? To Linden Lab, that’s who. It is Linden Lab who is “insured”, or protected by Integrity, not us. Integrity’s contract is with Linden Lab, they’ve offered SL residents no contracts or assurances.

This is our (my partner’s and I) way of protecting ourselves and we want to offer it to the community. Will it stand up in court if it ever came down to that? That’s a good question. But my thinking is that it would certainly be better than nothing. It’s goal is to at least take away the other guy’s ability to claim innocence and/or ignorance.

I am not a lawyer, but wouldn’t it be enough to merely show the dialog “I am over 18 yes/no” and afterwards asking the user to type in “Yes, I claim that I am over 18 and I am aware that deliberately misinterpreting my age is an offense which is punishable to the full extent of the applicable laws in my jurisdiction” ?

and store just this phrase, rather than the RL birth date ?

That was, however, a rather naive response, I admit. The point here is not to actually make sure that visitors are over a particular age, rather that the landowner has made the appropriate checks under law to avoid prosecution should a visitor turn out to be underage and their outraged parents pick them up on it and look for someone to sue.

To be honest, the Integrity system has the same purpose and appears no more reliable in terms of identifying actual underage users, and this requires far fewer personal details (distilling it simply down to a personal statement as far as I can see, with no actual identifying information at all). Thus I see it as a distinct improvement in the field of Security Theatre. Whether it will stand up to future tabloid scares is a matter of speculation, but who can ever predict that?