"In the event we encounter abuses of self-regulation, Second Life may have to require age-verification throughout the world."
Thus saith Daniel Linden. And it's the first clue that Age Verification WILL become mandatory. HAVE to require, not keep optional. Just like when Linden Labs first said "We are considering a method of Age Verification using a third party" they didn't mean 'we are considering', they meant 'we are going to do this'.
3 comments:
Out of curiosity how long ago did he say it? Daniel left Linden Lab a while ago, I believe.
Well, thanks for the warning Wildcat. It's appreciated. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the number of avatars over all drops just be this warning that had been said by a Linden.
BW
Yes, he did say it a while back. May 4th 2007 in fact, in this blog posting. However, look at the context.
Daniel said:
We require that adult content be flagged. If Residents and businesses attempt to violate this rule, we expect that such behavior will be reported by the community. Although we want to limit age-verification processes to adult content and Teen Second Life, in the event we encounter abuses of self-regulation, Second Life may have to require age-verification throughout the world. We hope that does not happen.
Self regulation is a combination of the marking of parcels of land with the "age_verified?" flag, and a willingness for the bulk of the community to age verify. If the bulk of residents do both of these things, then self regulation will be working as Linden Labs would like - they provide something and everyone starts using it. Self Regulation.
But let's look at his words about if we refuse to use the age verification tool, which is obviously the intention right from day one. This is the relevance of his comment - "may have to require age-verification throughout the world."
IS there any way that can be interpreted any differently than "use it voluntarily, or we'll make it mandatory"? If there is, I can't see it.
Daniel Linden may have left - but I've seen no evidence from any of the other Lindens that this viewpoint has changed.
They KNOW how unpopular this is. The ONLY way they have a chance to get it accepted is to stress how "optional" it is, but while ever it's optional, it's self regulation, and those that hate the idea won't regulate themselves using it.
Which leaves the door open for them to say, in the future, self regulation didn't work, and now it's mandatory.
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