She writes:
On Thursday May 3, we were contacted by German television network, ARD, which had captured images of two avatars, one that resembled an adult male and another that resembled a child, engaged in depicted sexual conduct. Our investigations revealed the users behind these avatars to be a 54-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman. Both were immediately banned from Second Life.
Which backs up what most opponents of this form of age verification have said. That it wouldn't have stopped this particular case from happening, and it won't stop it from happening again.
The main staying point is Linden Labs' introduction of this data collection while at the same time trying to dodge their responsibilities in policing the grid properly. It is NOT enough to say that it's all the residents responsibility, and more to the point it is not satisfactory in law. If you are a service provider, as Linden Labs claim to be, then the ultimate responsibility for content on your site (or in your virtual world) is with you, the service provider - not your customers. You can put whatever terms of service you like saying "don't do this" but if somebody does, and you fail to find and remove it then legally you, the service provider, is responsible.
A 54 year old and a 27 year old could both, under the current proposals, have easily age verified and the same thing could have happened, and could happen again. What Linden Labs are proposing here is not a solution to the problem. It won't work on a voluntary basis, so they'll make it mandatory and then wonder why half their residents left.
And even after age verification, adults that WANT to peddle child porn will simply make a group that only those "in the know" know about, will lock their land (on PG or Mature sims) to 'entry by group membership only' and will go on peddling child porn or depicting child abuse. Unless Linden Labs are prepared to send an invisible Linden into locked group membership plots to have a look round, this kind of thing is going to continue to happen in Second Life regardless of age verification. Worst of all, perpetrators may use stolen information or identity fraud when they go through age verification in the first place, meaning those who have had their identities stolen could be facing pornography charges on top of everything else.
All the arguments I'm making here have been made by others too, and what have we heard from Linden Labs about these very valid arguments?
Silence. Dead silence. The preverbial crickets chirping. Followed eventually by a "this is the date age verification will start" that proves they haven't listened to us at all.
Finally, I'd just like to point out my OWN experience with "Integrity" and their age verification system. I went to a site that they used, and because my IP address came out in North America, the system assumed that I'd always lived there and wouldn't let me enter anything but an American zip code (itself a laugh, as my IP comes out at Toronto, Canada where my service provider is - yet Integrities system refused to take a Canadian post code) and when I was unable to give it the details it wanted (I've just moved from the UK, and most of my documentation is still UK based; it wouldn't take my Canadian driving license number, and for some reason it wouldn't take my UK passport number either) it demanded that I fax copies of these government documents off to who knows where - it certainly didn't tell me who the fax number it gave me belonged to. Could have been the FBI or it could have been somebody in the identity theft business for all I know.
You had better listen, Linden Labs. You had better listen well. Because you're not the only virtual world out there, and if you do this, residents (particularly non-US residents) are going to leave en-masse.
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