Linden Labs’ Identification Verification Plans?
Well, there’s been a lot of smoke on the latest greatest plans by Linden Labs’ plans to identify who is who in Second Life. If this is a good idea or not I’m not going to get into. An analysis by Gwyneth Llewelyn appears to make some degree of sense above all of the noise. The thought that Gwyneth has here is that Linden Labs is trying to find a safe harbor from the US legal system’s propensity to sue anyone who has deep pockets for just about any reason (which I haven’t really seen with Linden Labs yet).
The idea in a nut shell is that Integrity will assume the liability of verifying the identity of the customer (avatar). This means that Integrity is on the hook for making a mistake. Now, there are of course a lot of negative arguments against this whole idea, mostly down the Utopian concepts of free sex, money, land, ponies, and whatever else we have all come to know and love in Second Life. Let’s assume that the method of keeping this information separated from Integrity and Linden Labs is kosher and we are for the sake of argument’s here going to pass over that.
(Disclaimer, I’m not a lawyer….)
First example, an escort performs some services for a customer. This customer turns out to be Jimmy, a 14 year-old on the adult grid (shock and horrors). He cheated the Integrity system somehow and the escort verified he was of “legal” age (whatever that means) before delivering services. Mom and Dad find out and are infuriated. They sue Linden Labs. Their lawyer files discovery motions in every direction to find out who is who, like who was the escort avatar, so they may conduct discovery. Without the verifications by Integrity, Linden Labs, and probably the escort avatar are now under a court’s microscope (like it or not). But with Integrity on the hook, Linden Labs can probably shield the escort and themselves and fire the entire episode off at Integrity - who they are paying to absorb the hit.
Second example, a vendor sells a sex dildo strap-on to 16 year old Tommy (he has some interesting kinks - that’s for sure) and Mom finds out. Same thing as above. The vendor should also be protected, and more important, the vendor’s business should be protected.
In the real world, anyone who runs a business they live on wants to take prudent measures to protect their source of income. That’s why the soft porn magazines have a black plastic condom cover over them on the magazine rack and the hard core porn magazines are in another room. It’s prudent.
Call me a prude (which I hardly think is the case), but I have limits myself. Like children avatars inside of Second Life. While playing around as a child in some sims might be okay, almost all of the places I go to it would not be okay. Let’s use the example of Paradise Lost club. Clearly, this is not a place for children. It’s an adult playground, clear and simple. It’s also an attempt at a business. It makes sense to try to keep people who should not be there out. Second Life is far closer to Las Vegas than Disneyland.
There is the purely moral point of unverified underage activity. Most of us ignore the payment information on file or not on an avatar’s profile. So, we do not really have that to go by for age verification anyway. I would find it hard to believe that almost anyone who reads this blog would not be rather upset if they found out they were unintentionally involved in adult activities with an avatar that turned out to be a minor. Right now, we escape that moral failing through ignorance, which is really not right.
A civil society makes compromises all the time for the better good. Society does not believe that children are not capable of making adult decisions (which biologically they are not), and thus need to be protected from adults. Adults have to give up a few rights to make sure that children, who are the most vulnerable members of society, are given some protections. Rather than sounding like I propose the Disneyfication of Second Life, let’s attempt to keep it safe for non-adults, and keep it like the fun adult Las Vegas we all know and love (and figure out how to get gambling back too).
I’m pretty confident that everyone I know to more than a passing acquaintance in Second Life is an adult (at least legally speaking… :) but perhaps this verification system is a better way of being sure about it.
Lastly, rather than sounding like a hypocrite or zealot, I am very protective of my own Second Life identity. It’s my means of increasing my enjoyment of the environment. I play in Second Life for my entertainment, and I want to enjoy it to its fullest. I too am concerned about how this verification will be implemented, I want to see this done right and hopefully it will be. But I do see it’s value and why it is being done.
This is all going to be a difficult and painful process, but it is an unavoidable process of evolution for Second Life. Hopefully things will turn out for the better in the end.
-Veyron
September 22nd, 2007 at 6:22 pm
That raises some interesting points there actually hun… I think a lot of the reaction against age verification has been ‘knee jerk’ and as long as my data is safe, I for one don’t mind it.
September 23rd, 2007 at 1:30 am
Yes, we should keep the children safe. But no way that any identity verification, LL’s, Integrity’s or whose ever will do that. Kid can steal credit card or passport or driver’s licence. Kid can make father’s signature if needed. I did when I needed it. Credit cards during registration are good, because they ask for effort of stealing them, so they might block kids that are too young (like 8y.o.) or those who are not “too good children”. But if they want in, they will come in. Lwt’s face it and think in directions that can do something good for those kids.
At this very moment SL is really like Disneyland comparing to google. Just turn off your SafeSearch and type “nasty sex” and choose images. No credit card needed. Change your type string and you might see things you, as an adult which is frequent in SL’s nasty clubs, will find discusting. Still no credit card needed. So little Tommy can come to SL’s escorts safely. Actually, they will be either more educative or much less interesting than the rest of the internet.
September 23rd, 2007 at 4:22 am
There is only one way to really keep children out of inappropriate content: parental control (meaning: the parent sists behind the child and watches what the child does!). Once parents discard that responsibility and rely on “technology” instead (since these days they all claim that they cannot “control their children any more”), we’re stuck with the notion that the Government and the corporate world have instead to step in the parent’s shoes and act as good cops to present children a sanitised version of the world (real or otherwise) to them.
Since that’s a daunting task — one that I very well believe to be impossible; in fact, only parents are entrusted with the task of controlling their children, anybody else will ultimately fail — there is a simple way out for parents: discard themselves of the sacred task of keeping their own children under strict surveillance and sue companies (or the Government) instead to “fail to provide” a “safe environment”.
At the end, these lawsuits tend to get a friendly judge’s ear, and “trespassing” companies will be forced to shut down. Shut enough of them down, and the world becomes Disneyland — safe for children again. So this is what our politically correct world is aiming for: a world where parents can neglect their task as caretakers for their children, and an utopia where children can wander around the world in safety.
Now, I’m pretty much disgusted about any attempts to create utopias, since, by definition, they will always fail. If they don’t, the mere process of building an utopia will simply discard acquired rights, liberties and freedoms, in order to create this “utopia-of-my-dreams”. Put into another words: create a rosy Disneyland, where there is no crime, no drugs, no violence, and no sex, and we’ll all live in a “happier” world with our children roaming freely around. So, anything that has crime, drugs, violence or sex has to be hunted down, shut down, destroyed, obliterated.
Well, the first lawsuits have been filed against Linden Lab. What should they do? They know very well that there is no “safe” way to make sure that children don’t enter Second Life, except for one: charging parents for their neglect in keeping their children safe. Sadly, in this politically correct world of ours, it’s the parents that file lawsuits against corporations, and not the contrary.
So, Linden Lab’s choice was quite simple: becoming Virtual Disneyland or, well, getting insurance against lawsuits. That’s what they bought. And it was about time, too.
I might have had some qualms about the way Integrity does business, but one thing is quite clear for me. Their contract with Linden Lab is rock-solid. They have far better lawyers and enough funds to fight whatever battle they wish in court. They must really be annoying a lot of people right now, as lawsuits bounce off adult sites and keep them intact. Integrity is, like Veyron so very well wrote, building a safe haven for companies that wish to provide adult entertainment and refuse to get Disneyfied. I’m currently reading Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, one of many books dealing with safe havens for data and money in this lawsuit-happy world. Somehow all these things slowly start to make some sense; when reading them in a book, you tend to shrug them off saying “oh well, that’s science fiction, and, anyway, only criminals really need protection”.
Apparently, avatars roaming around a politically incorrect world are criminals, too. And this is worrying. No matter what my personal feelings towards Integrity or their CEO are, or what I think that LL is doing, the issue here is: I really don’t want a Disneyfication of Second Life, and I really really wish that LL is able to survive all lawsuits brought against them…
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:59 am
I think the age identification thingie is all broken anyway. It should take only about 10 minutes of searching on the Internet to find enough information in public records to beat the system. Not that *I* would ever do something like that - when I age verified, I was *completely* honest. I really am Gus, a 65 year old, 350 pound truck driver with a peg leg. I swear
September 24th, 2007 at 3:43 am
Good comment, Gwyneth.
Stretching the comparison a bit, but it is the simple truth that the mere process of trying to create utopia kills the foundation of it. One nation wants a safe cosy world, manageable to their standards and without “terrorists”. So far, the process has not made the world safer, just created more “terrorists”.
This is not about shagging teenagers or someone’s moral standards. Personally, I think that “We need to make the world safe for our kids, I condemn age-play, etc” are very lame excuses. Of course I agree about not abusing children.
But when I was 13, me and my chums had a stack of porn mags hidden in our hideout. That’s what normal teenage boys in our contemporary society do, even in suburbia Disneyland, like it or not. If you “shield” them from the Immoralities of the world, they will seek it out in other ways.
The only, whole and sole reason for this is the legal protection of LL’s heinie. No reason to pretend anything else and no reason to use “The Safety Of Our Children [moralTM]” as a hostage of reasons.
And that reason is very understandable.
October 1st, 2007 at 11:07 pm
[...] Linden Labs’ Identification Verification Plans? [...]
October 6th, 2007 at 5:39 am
I hear you, Sin Trenton, and totally agree