His [Benjamin Sycophanske, a favourite ranting target] latest gushing excess is of a new ugly and vicious system called AGELOCK. I'm not surprised that this awful new invention on the SL landscape comes from Allana Dion and Jamie David, as we know from long, long exposure to their manipulations, power-plays, and shenanigans on the old official LL forums, Second Citizen, and on this blog, that they are hugely aggressive and persistent.
When I spoke to Jamie David initially about Agelock, he seemed pretty proud of it but definately didn't come across to me as 'aggressive'
So a list of adult consumers with their avatar names and RL birthdates will be in the hands of one of the most aggressive and persistently nasty BDSM types in Second Life. Maybe the BDSM community won't care -- they like abuse, and maybe even this kind of RL abuse of their privacy. But as it spreads, and begins to be used by any club, or any rental, or anybody who just wants to be free from the plague of kids harassing and griefing you, it could become the device of choice, as it advertises being "better" than Integrity by not taking your RL name and drivers' license or Social Security number.
Hey, give me Integrity *any day of the week*. They are a real-life registered company with a business reputation and a bottom line to fulfill and a board of trustees. If I fear they've abused my trust in taking my info, I can protest -- with lawyers, by getting Congress involved, by getting the media on it. I can't do that with these anonymous avatars in Second Life!
And this seems to be the crux of the matter. What the extremely long rant boils down to are two essential points:
1. Nobody should touch this because it doesn't have the official "Prokovy Neva seal of approval" - mainly because she doesn't seem to like the authors, rather that whether the idea of the agelock system has merit or not.
2. Because Prokovy Neva trusts Integrity/Aristotle, so should everyone else.
With the latter part of her comment, I actually laughed when I read the part about complaining to congress. Integrity/Aristotle provide detailed information to congress, why the hell would they take any notice of someone's complaints?
Let's take this extreme example of how the information that Integrity collects could be harmful in the real world, and I have SPECIFICALLY steered clear of politics in this so that Prokovy has no excuse to label me a "lefty".
Let's says that I've given my detailed information to Integrity for age verification. They put it all on their database. But let's face it, Integrity is a data mining company - that's what they do, that's how they earn their money. So without telling me, what's to stop them also collecting information from second life that would be freely available, such as the groups that I'm in.
So for arguments sake let's say they do that, and find that I'm a member of a BDSM group in SL. That information then also goes down not only against my avatar name, but against my real life name.
Now in this little fictitious scenario, a BDSM hack magazine comes to Integrity hoping to drum up business, and buys a list of people who are members of BDSM groups. Shortly afterwards, editors are found to be peddling paedophilia, the place is raided by the police and FBI and gets shut down. In the raid their computers get confiscated, and subsequently datasearched. Now the legitimate law enforcement agencies find my RL details on the computers and suddenly I'm a suspect. Not only that but when I try to get a job that requires a background check, this gets flagged up and I'm turned down, and I don't even know the reason why.
Now, in this case the law enforcement agencies have got hold of my details doing their legitimate work - but those details should never have been there. I didn't give Integrity permission to resell those details, or our fictitious magazine permission to buy and use them. ALL of that happened behind my back.
And this is my main sticking point with the Integrity/Aristotle scenario. I agree with Prokovy to a point, that the government wouldn't need to buy that information off me because they already have access to it, but it's not the government I'm worried about. This is the flaw in Prokovy's main argument, because she claims this as a reason Integrity should be trusted. It's Integrity selling my details to anyone who comes up with the right amount of cash that is the major concern, not whether the government gives a crap about the details (because chances are, they don't).
Which is why alternatives need to be found. I've already said I don't think Linden Labs will go for this, but we do need some viable alternatives if we're going to stop them using Integrity. And I'd far prefer if the proverbial genie gets out of the bottle, all a company being able to harvest is "Untameable Wildcat claims she's over 18 and claims this as her birthdate" than detailed information that also contains RL details being available to the highest bidder.
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