Your Papers, Please

Posted on May 7, 2007 by Scott Jennings| 29 Comments

Second Life dropped a bomb on its merry Elysium Friday: to get into the ‘mature’ areas of Second Life (which in practice is, well, 90% of Second Life), you’re gonna have to prove you can drink legally. (A further statement here.)

Second Life has always been restricted to those over 18. All Residents personally assert their age on registration. When we receive reports of underage Residents in Second Life, we close their account until they provide us with proof of age. This system works well, but as the community grows and the attractions of Second Life become more widely known, we’ve decided to add an additional layer of protection.

(Snarky emphasis mine. “OMG, there’s an online game where I can pretend to have sex!”)

Said age verification is a bit more stringent then picking a date earlier than 1986 on a web form. Linden is partnering with Aristotle Integrity, a site which…

…integrates a government-issued ID database check, algorithms and web-based signature capture. The service provides merchants and government agencies with Patriot Act compliance and compliance with age verification laws and guidelines.

An MMO with Patriot Act compliance. Oh brave new world, that has such wonders in it.

The initial reaction from SL users: not positive at all.

From what we have been told so far, it does not seem that this new system will be any less prone to fraud than the existing system. Plus, it places burdens of effort and costs on the residents. Also, there doesn’t appear to be any definitive description about what does and does not constitute adult content which historically tends to force overcaution on the part of self-raters. This is most obvious in the comic and computer games industries.

Aristotle Integrity was previously used by Bud.TV to prevent underage tykes from watching a bad Youtube clone.

The Internet, with no government oversight and leaky parental controls, only compounds the problems. Self-imposed age-verification measures are almost laughable in their naïveté. Most ask visitors if they are of age, or ratcheting up the level of difficulty, request people to punch in their dates of birth to ensure they meet the qualifications. All that’s needed to get around that more advanced system are some basic math skills and a desire to sneak past the virtual bouncer. Anheuser-Busch, to its credit, will have one of the smarter gatekeepers keeping watch over Bud.TV. It has bought an identity-verification system used by casinos and banks, Aristotle’s Integrity, which checks the names and Zip codes against driver’s licenses and other public records.

Yet once vetted, there’s nothing to stop Bud.TV viewers from sharing the goodies with under-age friends, relatives or complete strangers on YouTube. Anheuser-Busch executives understand this viral loophole. With its inherent pass-it-on nature, Web video demands to be shared. Not only does it provide street cred; it’s also an inexpensive way to get the word out. And the Bud.TV logo will be emblazoned on every shared video.

Linden Labs isn’t in a good position here. On the one hand, they’ve created a cyberutopian world with all the happy Cory Doctorow-ish platitudes cyberutopias espouse. On the other hand, it seems the most popular activity in cyberutopia is cybering. Whoops. So the onus is on Linden Labs to do SOMETHING before an ageplaying leather-clad furry transgender makes the 9′o-clock news, or worse, the 2008 campaign.

But this OMG WE MUST DO SOMETHING! reaction is dangerous, because it rolls back further the excuse that Linden Labs is simply a common carrier, and has no responsibility over the wacky uses put to their “grid” by their users. The more control they assert over this (and this isn’t the first instance; Linden has also been cracking down on “ageplayers”, or people roleplaying pedophilia), the more they become responsible for that content. And that way truly lies madness.

I wonder if Linden’s long term strategy is to simply open-source everything and let the truly freaky join their own servers, while keeping the “official” Second Life a sterile Disneyland full of marketing and press releases. You know, like PS3@Home. Of course, the question then becomes… would anyone pay for it?

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  • http://www.orbisgames.com/ Dave Rickey

    As I understand it, the “Common Carrier” doctrine doesn’t quite demand that you take a totally hands off approach to policing your service. And LL truly is screwed if (more likely, when) the second wave of publicity on SL is all about the one-handed typing. Because it’s hard to spend any time in SL without getting exposed to its dark side. In fact, it’s harder to find things that *aren’t* the “virtual red light district” outside of the sterile (and empty) corporate islands than it is to stumble into someone’s gorean furry ageplay bondage scene (that’s not hyperbole, BTW).

    Go ahead, look up “Gorean”. I dare you. No, I’m not paying for the therapy.

    –Dave

  • http://www.orbisgames.com/ Dave Rickey

    Oh, to add to the “Things LL doesn’t want people thinking about” list: SL is apparently becoming (or has been for quite some time, depending on who you ask) a place to swap (and view) child porn. You can upload it fairly anonymously, and once uploaded (to LL servers and storage, mind you) it can be viewed untrackably. It’s mostly kept out of public view, but it’s entirely possible to commit a felony good for a long stint in federal prison just by wandering into the wrong area (doing so will create multiple copies of any displayed graphics in your system, some of them cached long-term).

    Whether or not anyone is using the L$ -> US$ exchanges to make money off of child porn, I leave as an excercise for the reader. “Common Carrier” will not do much to save LL from the consequences.

    –Dave

  • Walter Yarbrough

    Oh C’mon Dave – you gotta dare people to do an image search for Gorean, at least.

    Second life is only the 3rd hit.

  • http://ve3d.ign.com/ Apache

    Everytime I try to read a Second Life post my brain glazes over.

  • Ylikone

    This is NOT for getting into “mature” rated regions, but ones that have been flagged “adult”… which will be a relatively small percentage… not the 90% you claim.

  • Vivianne Draper

    Dave you are seriously misinformed.

  • DragonPup

    Won’t someone please think of the furries??!

  • http://www.orbisgames.com/ Dave Rickey

    People keep telling me that about SL, then I go to look for myself and find out I wasn’t. For obvious reasons, I’m not going to go investigate *this* too closely. What I know is that several different people who have been in SL a long time have told me that before the “ageplay” crackdown, it used to be fairly common to run into displays of child pornography in their areas (which weren’t always clearly marked), and there were shops advertising video and images they claimed were child pornography.

    Maybe when Second Life prohibited ageplay, all those people politely left. Maybe they even deleted all their files and left their L$ behind. Maybe everyone who told me this stuff was just spinning a story. Anything’s possible.

    –Dave

  • http://www.playnoevil.com/ Steven Davis

    While this company may claim age verification, Patriot Act, etc., there is no legal criteria for certifying adult ages, only minors (via COPPA). The rest is just “best effort” and will not give Linden, or anyone else legal coverage.

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  • Vivianne Draper

    “People keep telling me that about SL, then I go to look for myself and find out I wasn’t. For obvious reasons, I’m not going to go investigate *this* too closely. What I know is that several different people who have been in SL a long time have told me that before the “ageplay” crackdown, it used to be fairly common to run into displays of child pornography in their areas (which weren’t always clearly marked), and there were shops advertising video and images they claimed were child pornography.

    Maybe when Second Life prohibited ageplay, all those people politely left. Maybe they even deleted all their files and left their L$ behind. Maybe everyone who told me this stuff was just spinning a story. Anything’s possible.”

    Its complete bullshit. I understand you were told that but its complete bullshit. I’ve been in SL for two years now and have yet to run into any ageplaying. Furthermore the ageplaying that I have run into was completely non-sexual. I have never seen kiddie porn in SL and I do get around.

    As for sexual content, yes it is prevelant but you still have to go find it. Just like on the internet, if you type girls sex porno gor into the search function, expect to find exactly what you searched for. In spades. That doesn’t mean that minute you step off orientation isle there’s someone waviing a naked girl and a penis at you.

    You are completely misinformed and furthermore, helping to spread lies and bullshit off an impression formed when you haven’t even been there.

    If I went and talked to people who didn’t like DAOC and told me it sucks and then came here and posted that DAOC sucks and I know this becuase a few friends who used to play it told me so, you’d jump all over me. Or you would if you had any love for the game or whatever. Yet that’s exactly what you’ve done here.

    If you want to see whats in SL then go into SL and see. And when you go, don’t type ageplay mommy daddy sex into search and then come back and say “see! ageplay!” Go with an open mind (if that’s at all possible) and look around and see for yourself. There’s some really cool stuff in SL.

  • http://weblog.probablynot.com Jason

    “That doesn’t mean that minute you step off orientation isle there’s someone waviing a naked girl and a penis at you.”

    No.. the last time I went into SL, it was a naked girl with a penis waving at me.

  • Talorc

    And for people who live outside the USA what happens?

  • http://www.orbisgames.com/ Dave Rickey

    I *have* been in SL, because people kept telling me things like that. And I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two things at work: Bad math, and people sticking to their own kind of content and forgetting the rest of what’s out there.

    Bad math, like the guy who went to a hook-up joint, and by only counting the actual polygons used by the vaginas, penises (penii?), and other *exclusively* sexual things in view came to the disingenuous conclusion that only 5% of the content was sexual. Even though the whole point of the club was to make connections for anonymous cyber-sex.

    Sticking to their own, by living in a bubble where they only associate with people who are into their own kind of interests, and going to places that cater exclusively to people like them. If you poke around at random and start conversations with random people, you’ll get a very different picture. And maybe the people into various forms of sex-play are just more outgoing, but they are *everywhere*, and so are their areas. Maybe only 10% of the area is rated “mature”, but you can see things in the “PG-13″ areas I wouldn’t want to have to explain to my 13 year old.

    “Daddy, why is that naked woman on a leash?” “Oh, she’s just a Gorean kajira, she likes to be treated like a pet. And she’s not actually naked, don’t you see the two bandaids and the strip of duct tape?”

    –Dave

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  • Riprend

    It took me forever to figure out what the heck the difference was between Gorean and just run-of-the-mill BDSM. This link, in its own special narrative style, helped me figure it out.

    http://www.rdrop.com/~/wyvern/data/houseplants.html

  • http://www.orbisgames.com/ Dave Rickey

    Yeah, less leather, more mindfuck.

    –Dave

  • Larry Lard

    “I’ve been in SL for two years now and have yet to run into any ageplaying.”

    I’ve been in RL for considerably longer than that, and I have yet to run into any kiddie porn. That doesn’t lead me to conclude that it doesn’t exist, however.

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  • Lacero

    oops, too late. Whether there’s age play or not, if it’s on the BBC (as a report about a german tv program even) it’s true.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6638331.stm

  • http://www.orbisgames.com/ Dave Rickey

    Now, on the flip side, to be fair, there is some substantial stuff in SL that isn’t at all pornographic, or at least not beyond the PG-13 level. The steampunk spaces are really cool, the Star Trek roleplay areas are neat just to wander around in, and even the gothic vampire stuff is nice to look at (although it tends to cross over with the BDSM a bit).

    That’s probably the most interesting thing to look at, the way these things don’t cleanly separate into separate communities, but merge into each other (well, sometimes, the Star Trek stuff is pretty purist).

    So there’s cool stuff in there, but most of it is invitation-only (to keep *out* the sex-play, which tends to squat any public space that isn’t policed), you’ve got to join the right clubs.

    –Dave

  • Vivianne Draper

    Again, not true Dave.

    Midian City, City of Lost Angeles, Lost Gardens of Apollo, Svarga, Underwater Caverns of Rua, Future Perfect, Caledon, Neualtenburg, Nexus Prime, Rennaissance Island…

    All just a few of the roleplaying/cool sims I can name that are completely open and free and you don’t have to join a group.

  • http://www.orbisgames.com/ Dave Rickey

    What SL needs most is a search function that doesn’t completely blow.

    Vivianne, I can accept that there is some cool stuff in SL. Can you accept that there is some really sick and twisted shit in there as well?

    I’m a pretty liberal guy on sexual issues, even the stuff that personally creeps me out I don’t want prohibited.

    Except for this one thing. They start even *pretending* to fuck around with little kids, and as far as I am concerned they need to be exterminated as a public service. Yes, the people, not the SL avatars.

    So don’t fall into a trap where you feel you have to deny or protect ageplay in SL to save your metaverse. Because way too many people feel the same way as I do, and they’ll tear the whole thing apart to get at them.

    –Dave

  • Vivianne Draper

    I don’t deny there’s a lot of porn and sex stuff in SL. And yeah there’s age play and kiddie porn. Just like every other venue on the internet. Its not anymore accepted there than it is anywhere else. However for you, and everyone else that doesn’t play it, the first words out of your mouth when talking about SL is “OMG PORN!!!” like somehow the internet isn’t for porn and there’s never been cybering in any other online game EVAR — which is, of course, complete bullshit.

    SWG and The Sims were all about the porn. Oh but they were real games. There was oogobs of cybering in DAOC but again, it was a real game.

    I’m not denying that ageplay is in there. What I am saying is that its not prevelant, not accepted and completely not what SL is all about. And while there is oogobs of sex stuffs in SL — there’s a huge amount of very cool stuff too. But while the first words out of yours and everyone else’s mouths is “SL is all about sex” then it just spreads the perception that sex is all it is.

    On this thread alone, the first post you make is about how common ageplay is — when that isn’t the truth at all. Sexual age play is hidden, in their own little areas, and you have to go looking for it. Granted before the crack down you didn’t have to look very hard — just type age play into the search function. Now its more difficult.

    Other than when I called you on it in this thread, I’ll bet you’ve never made a comment about SL that didn’t include something about how it was all about the sex. Yet you’ve done other stuff in SL. Why not comment on that? Is it because then you don’t get to be sensational and righteously bash someone else’s product? And of course the LL developers aren’t part of the MMOG developers clique and it isn’t like you’ll have to eat your words while sharing a beer with them at some GDC or anything like that.

    Age verification (what the original article was about) is a huge issue with serious ramifications for a lot of residents (like Canadian citizens may not be able to verify — they aren’t on the list of countries the verification product supports). Yet given an opening, you decide to go for the most sensational most fringe element on the grid — as if age verification will somehow stop the sexual ageplay practice. The two are completely unrelated and the former will not have any impact whatsoever on the latter.

  • http://www.orbisgames.com/ Dave Rickey

    Okay, a few things:

    1) The “ZOMG PORN!” reaction didn’t start from me until very recently, when I actually went into SL. And frankly, although I could have done without finding out about Goreans (for some reason they *really* creep me out), I don’t care that much. It just annoys the shit out of me when SL residents act like ageplay doesn’t even exist anymore, and sexplay is some fringe activity that *isn’t* all over the place in SL.

    2) Before a few months ago when I found out about the ageplay, I didn’t concern myself about what was *in* SL at all. I stuck to discussions of their business model and the theory of a virtual MUSH. At one point, we even considered using SL as a platform to build our games.

    3) Yes, every virtual world has its seedy side, but in the games it’s much more hidden (from everyone but, say, a GM character with /snoop capability). So that isn’t the big deal. In SL, it’s not at all hidden.

    4) I do know some of the Lindens, certainly far more of them than Blizzard employees. And I’m not particularly happy that they set off this particular PR shitstorm, and we probably will talk about it at a conference someday soon.

    5) If you want to talk about age verification, you’ve got to talk about the porn and the sexplay, because without them nobody would care about verifying anyone’s age. I’ll go a step further, if it wasn’t for the ageplay and the kiddie porn, it wouldn’t be happening. LL is trying to get themselves out from under some serious legal consequences.

    6) SL is not the web. Everything in SL is on LL servers, using LL bandwidth, and LL storage, paid for with L$ purchased with real money from LL. It’s a commercial venture operated for profit, where everything single image and polygon is monetized, not a technological capability available to anyone.

    7) We’re about to see a media frenzy over the sex in SL, a backlash triggered by ageplay but primed by LL’s deliberate courting of media attention. The results will mar the public perception of virtual worlds for *years*, and quite probably damage *my* business. So don’t make me the bad guy.

    –Dave

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  • Mist

    I fully respect LL for removing ageplay from their game, but I’m not really sure how ageplay got equated with child pornography. Ageplay is two consenting adults engaging in virtual dressup by altering their character’s height parameters. Child pornography is the vile practice of exploiting real children for sadistic gratification and/or profit. To say that ageplay equals child pornography is greatly downplaying how horrific child pornography truely is. Ageplay is not horrific, its just weird but ultimately not N-factor times weirder than any other form of D/s sexual roleplay. Ageplay has been going on between consenting adults since chat software was invented, and going on in people’s bedrooms for far longer than that. I mean a schoolgirl uniform on a rack is probably the first thing you’ll see when you walk into one of your finer upscale sex shops. This stuff is going to crop up in EVERY virtual space where you give players that much control over their character. Isn’t a girl in a schoolgirl uniform the display ad for that ’3D adult chat software’ on a lot of online gaming sites banner rotation?

  • Prodigal

    I agree, ageplay isn’t pedophilia. And yet promoting it does draw the pedos. While I’m turned off by it, I have respected friends, consenting adults and even real life couples who love to engage in it. And while I’m turned off by it and it’s been against policy in my sim since long before LL took a public stance, I tolerate it, and I don’t feel any need to smoke it out wherever it lies.

    Also, while it’s harmless sexual play when it’s between consenting adults, actually putting up a banner to advertise it will draw the creeps, who will populate and cross the line until pedo porn becomes the main feature. I’ve seen it lower the tone of a few clubs that were formally for healthy adults.

    Btw, Dave, if you’ve only scratched the surface of Gorean lifestyle and come away with a snap impression of it, then you’re no different than those ‘Goreans’ who believe themself to be engaging in it. It’s certainly not for everyone, not even for most the people who think it is for them.