Age Verification
I woke up this morning to an interesting blog post. I’m actually a bit shocked at the severe reaction it’s had so far. I have never seen this many people rant and rave this much about something that anyone could see a mile away. The really humourous part is that people are stuck on the giving the last 4 digits of their social security number, rightly so, but have really overlooked that it is one of the many different types of ways to verify - including drivers license which is something that LL already does when a resident’s age is in question.
Not to mention the freak out about it dealing with mature land, where it is clearly written that they will be adding the abilty for any parcel to be flagged as “adult content” - meaning sexually explicit and/or extreme violence. Mature will stay as it is with no verification needed. I think of it in movie terms. Mature = PG-13, R, (nudity, swearing). New adult title = XXX (public sex). PG = disney. The only problem is is that “sexually explicit” is a vague term and every cultre, country, religion, ect has their own veiw as what that actually means.
The one thing that is out there that does bother me some, is that a company will have RL name/address/dob for everyone who wants to engage in public sex in SL, buy sex balls, or go to a strip club. That could be very damaging.
Anyways… I was lurking on the second citizen forums - which I should never do because those people are down right crazy - and wrote the following post. As always with those forums, my logic seemed to go unnoticed.
This is not surprising in the least. Businesses are in SL for the sole purpose of marketing, but aren’t able to reach the main advertising market - kids. Children are not only the most impressionable to adverts but middle class kids have the most dispensible cash. Just look at the music industry. Bleh.
That was the biggest issue I heard about SL at the Virtual Worlds Spring Conference. There was being highly touted as “kid friendly” because of the horrible system of approving content. Especially after listening to all the panels, I’d much rather have the corps stay out of SL, but LL doesn’t seem to agree with me.
This isn’t about covering their ass in lawsuits, as they already have that covered, it’s about PR image and corps.
Personally I’m torn on the issue. I’d rather corps go to There and MTV’s crap, but then again I welcome teens being able to shop in my store. I also am very happy about the distinction of Mature and XXX and do hope that the search will revert back to allowing mature to be default again. I’d really like the ability to call someone a cunt whenever the fuck I want to on the private isle I pay $195 per month without being hidden from search just because I “may” run a public sex club. Not to mention this really sucks for those who do sell adult orientated items. They are going to loose a lot of business during the transition and perhaps in the long run because of the way people feel about giving so much information.
They are really going to need to have a clear definition of “overtly sexual.” To me, nudity isn’t necessarily sexual but to some crazy christians it is. Not to mention will “private” homes need to be declared as adult because they may engage in private consentual adult relations with their partner?
The way I read it is that there are different options. You don’t necessarily need to give out your social security number. I personally have no issue with giving out my passport info. As an American resident of the UK, loads of people have photocopies of mine. Every single job I’ve ever interviewed at took a photocopy of it and my visa. As a freelancer who usually never works at the same place for more then a month, thats a lot of companies. Not to mention my agent, every bank I ever went to, immigration, and even the really creapy people at the job centre to get my national insurance card. It doesn’t bother me too much because they need to have a valid one to use and getting a replacement is really fucking difficult.
But then again why are they wasting even a moment on this crap when so many things are broken. Grr.
