Another nail in the coffin

The storm has once again broken out on the official Linden Blog with the announcement that age verification will be introduced with viewer version 1.18. Predictably, Linden Labs have released this well before it's ready (as usual) and there are a mass of problems with it, even if you don't count the fact that the actual age verification system doesn't work.

Firstly they've bought a registered digital certificate with their entire domain in it, which isn't accepted by most modern browsers. Firefox in particular refuses to take "secondlife.com" as valid when it's visiting a site where some of the features in a page are secure and some are not. The result of this is that Firefox displays a warning that the certificate may not be genuine, because some of the content comes from http: and some comes from https: - users aren't told by the browser what the difficulty is, only that the certificate is not fully valid to cover the page that is being loaded, but this is the page that they are being asked to put their personally identifiable information on - not a good sign.

Secondly, it's illegal in some countries to provide this information, and this means that even if someone does so it can't legally be verified. Aristotle/Integrity will add it to their database, but they have no means of verifying it. Although they claim to have data from all over the world, I do seriously have doubts about the legality of verifying such data.

Thirdly, 90% of Second Life users DO NOT WANT THIS. Some - myself included - won't be able to verify anyway, due to things like only just having emigrated from one country to another. When I came to Canada, I gave my UK license to the Ontario ministry of transportation, who then issued me with a driving license number in Ontario - but if you cross reference my driving license with any other database, you won't find a match, because as of yet I still don't have a Canadian passport. So you can't check my Canadian driving license against my UK passport because they don't share that information, and you can't verify my UK license against my UK passport because my UK license has been canceled due to having an Ontario license instead. So even if I wanted to do this, I'd fail the procedure, and several people have already responded to the Linden Blog posting with tales of woe about using genuine details and being declined.

This will kill Second Life off. It's going to be the final nail in the coffin. As sim owners are threatened with banning for not marking their entire sims as "adult" just because one vendor, somewhere on their sim, sells a prim-penis or cage, so the revenue from these land owners will die. As organizations like CARP can't raise their tier because half their members no longer play owing to either being against age verification altogether, or unable to verify - so those sims will also vanish because their owners can't afford to pay tier. Newcomers to Second Life will be asked to age verify immediately or threatened that they can't see some content, and either they'll refuse to verify and not sign up, or they'll fail verification and not sign up, so the new revenue stream will dry up.

Seriously, Linden Labs, you could achieve a much better method of disclaiming responsibility for underage misuse of the grid if you made everyone type a declaration manually into a textbox. Something along the lines of "I hereby certify that I am the account holder, over the legal age of consent in my country, and absolve Linden Labs and all their employees and representatives of responsibility for any actions that I may engage in when linked to this service." Granted you couldn't sign it, but if anyone accused Linden Labs of letting underage users in, what's the difference between someone typing that sentence into a box and someone providing details when you can't see that person? How does a child with their parents driving license and a child entering this paragraph differ?

Age verification cannot work over the internet. Not with the current technology. Maybe in years to come when everybodies details are on computer, and you can verify yourself by fingerprint, retina scan or facial scan, then there would be a foolproof way of making sure that an internet user was who they say they are, but that time isn't yet, and probably won't be for at least a decade. Even then it will be America, Canada, the UK and other such countries that will get it first, with other countries lagging behind by many years if not decades.

In the meantime, Linden Labs just banged another huge nail into the coffin that Second Life is destined to be buried in.

UPDATE: Take a look at this site, published by the Government of Canada - it proves that what Linden Labs is asking for is NOT something the Canadian Government agrees with:

The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) sets out ground rules for how private sector organizations may collect, use or disclose personal information in the course of commercial activities.

Since January 1, 2001, the Act applied to personal information about customers or employees that is collected, used or disclosed by the federally-regulated sector in the course of commercial activities. It also applies to information that is sold across provincial and territorial boundaries. As of January 1, 2004, the Act covers the collection, use and disclosure of personal information in the course of any commercial activity within a province, including provincially-regulated organizations, except in provinces that have enacted legislation that is deemed to be substantially similar to the federal law.

Under the new law, organizations like banks, telecommunications companies and airlines cannot require you to consent to the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information unless it is required for a specific and legitimate purpose.

This means that unless an organization can demonstrate that your SIN is required by law, or that no alternative identifier would suffice to complete the transaction, you cannot be denied a product or service on the grounds of your refusal to provide your SIN.

In other words, if Linden Labs refuse me access to a SIM on the grounds I won't provide my Social Insurance Number to them, they are committing an offense by Canadian law. And why is it so important?

Computer technology makes it possible to use the SIN to find and match your information from one database to another; without your knowledge, a detailed profile could be drawn about you. This amounts to "data surveillance" or monitoring of your daily life, which can pose a serious threat to our privacy and autonomy.

I don't see why other countries wouldn't have similar legislature.