Official Statement From Linden Lab On Accusations

[Jopsy Pendragon]

These laws are to protect minors.

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Bans can backfire. Weed was a gateway drug, prohibition drove up the profits and criminal activity of producing, distributing and selling it. Attempts to ban violent computer games or drag performers claim to 'protect children' too.

I certainly -hope- that the chilling effect of censorship and legal consequences are enough to help... but I can also see this going down a similar path of the attempts to ban violent video games with the belief that they're a gateway to active shooters. Are they? We've got examples for and against it.

On the other hand, I live in a world where over 1.5 million people have to remove their shoes every day to fly... due to one failed shoe bomber over two decades ago. And yet my government refuses to do anything substantive to prevent our daily active shooters.

I'm rambling. Sorry. Just fed up with policy made to pander to public opinion without adequate consideration or study of the consequences.

 

[Essence Lumin]

I'm rambling. Sorry. Just fed up with policy made to pander to public opinion without adequate consideration or study of the consequences.

It seems whenever there is Anything conservatives don't like they will try and link it to child endangerment, not that they do anything to help children in danger once they are born.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

It seems whenever there is Anything conservatives don't like they will try and link it to child endangerment, not that they do anything to help children in danger once they are born.

I'm convinced it's a distraction tactic... there are few things more directly and indirectly harmful to children than conservative values.

 

[Mona Eberhardt]

Sexual ageplay has a very specific meaning. It is not this in the slightest. Not sure why you are muddying the waters of discussion about it.

I'm not muddying the waters. I saw several occasions where ageplay was defined as "roleplaying as a character that is not your real age." Adding the "sexual" to it leads to a muddy situation, where even depictions of sex among adult-looking avatars can be construed as problematic if their apparent ages aren't the same as their RL operators. Whereas we all agree that the problem is, as law provides, the depiction of sexual situations involving child avatars.

 

[Mona Eberhardt]

Right, nobody cares if 38 year old me plays a 22 year old sometimes or a 340 year old magical creature sometimes... I was perplexed when I first read that statement. These laws are to protect minors.

No reasonable person. However, we must remember that people have been called "ageplayers" in SL simply for having RL-sized and RL-proportioned adult avatars. I hate paranoia and moral panics almost as much as I hate those who "indulge" in the sexual abuse of children.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

I saw several occasions where ageplay was defined as "roleplaying as a character that is not your real age." Adding the "sexual" to it leads to a muddy situation, where even depictions of sex among adult-looking avatars can be construed as problematic if their apparent ages aren't the same as their RL operators.

Maybe don't listen to them if they're equating an adult cosplaying as an adult of a different age with SAP.

Actual minors and adults cosplaying as minors have no place in Adult Content on the grid. Two different issues, with different liabilities and laws. Same urgency to stamp it out.

 

[Cristiano]

There is an extensive thread on the main forums about this as well:

Official Statement from Oberwolf Linden

As this is an official LL post, I assume that it is ok to post here. Please be a little circumspect in your comments however.

community.secondlife.com

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Oh well that thread went down the hill quickly over there; I do admire the patience which our Sid over there showed.

Aside that, it really derailed and now seems to be mostly 2-3 people discussing different POVs and definitions about certain terms. Great candidate for a closure.

 

[Free]

The comment early in the thread that "Child avatars are not actually children in real life" sounds reasonable and effectively logical, and yet....

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

This comment does not matter, because nowadays in many countries the visual depiction alone is a criminal offense, regardless how old the person steering the under age avatar is.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Regardless of whether or not the visual depiction is a criminal offence, it constitutes a huge reputational risk to the Lab, who will certainly not want either potential customers or (maybe more important) banks and payment processors to think LL is a scuzzy operation that tolerates people creating virtual images of child sexual abuse and caters for people who want to RP such activities.

 

[Cristiano]

Oh well that thread went down the hill quickly over there; I do admire the patience which our Sid over there showed.

Aside that, it really derailed and now seems to be mostly 2-3 people discussing different POVs and definitions about certain terms. Great candidate for a closure.

They always go off the rails pretty quickly there, which is why I rarely wade into them. There is some interesting discussion there from a few people (Innula Zenovka and Sid among others), and I have participated quite a bit in it. Still, it is just a clusterfuck in a lot of ways that just circles back to the same thing over and over - that it is not actual children. There seems to be a lot of element of the lady protesting too much on some of those.

 

[Mona Eberhardt]

Regardless of whether or not the visual depiction is a criminal offence, it constitutes a huge reputational risk to the Lab, who will certainly not want either potential customers or (maybe more important) banks and payment processors to think LL is a scuzzy operation that tolerates people creating virtual images of child sexual abuse and caters for people who want to RP such activities.

Precisely. There's another risk I've feared since this broke out: yet another torches-and-pitchforks paranoid rally against SL in general. Being an oldtimer in SL, I've seen more than my fair share (even one is one too many) of paranoia-fuelled campaigns driven by people of Mary Whitehouse-grade hypocrisy. With the Overton window having moved so far to the right that these people's inanities are now mainstream, I'm surprised we still haven't seen headlines denouncing SL as the seediest online service. Remember, it ticks all the boxes for the holier than thou crowd to attack it ferociously: much of its economy is based on adult-rated content (R- and X-rated), many people openly express their sexuality through their avatars, there's a thriving sex industry that is nowhere near as stigmatised as it is in RL, and there's a very strong and visible LGBTQI element.

 

[Cristiano]

The SL forum thread was finally locked. Unsurprisingly it was getting nowhere on the road to hell.

 

[Cristiano]

Precisely. There's another risk I've feared since this broke out: yet another torches-and-pitchforks paranoid rally against SL in general. Being an oldtimer in SL, I've seen more than my fair share (even one is one too many) of paranoia-fuelled campaigns driven by people of Mary Whitehouse-grade hypocrisy. With the Overton window having moved so far to the right that these people's inanities are now mainstream, I'm surprised we still haven't seen headlines denouncing SL as the seediest online service. Remember, it ticks all the boxes for the holier than thou crowd to attack it ferociously: much of its economy is based on adult-rated content (R- and X-rated), many people openly express their sexuality through their avatars, there's a thriving sex industry that is nowhere near as stigmatised as it is in RL, and there's a very strong and visible LGBTQI element.

This particular time around, it is like a moral panic bingo card.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Precisely. There's another risk I've feared since this broke out: yet another torches-and-pitchforks paranoid rally against SL in general. Being an oldtimer in SL, I've seen more than my fair share (even one is one too many) of paranoia-fuelled campaigns driven by people of Mary Whitehouse-grade hypocrisy. With the Overton window having moved so far to the right that these people's inanities are now mainstream, I'm surprised we still haven't seen headlines denouncing SL as the seediest online service. Remember, it ticks all the boxes for the holier than thou crowd to attack it ferociously: much of its economy is based on adult-rated content (R- and X-rated), many people openly express their sexuality through their avatars, there's a thriving sex industry that is nowhere near as stigmatised as it is in RL, and there's a very strong and visible LGBTQI element.

I think the main issue for SL at the moment isn't so much as measures targeting SL or virtual worlds in particular (we're pretty niche nowadays) but more general initiatives aimed at protecting children online in general, such as the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), the UK's Online Safety Act and similar initiatives in France, Italy and various US states. These aren't written with SL in mind but some or all of them may well contain definitions that inadvertently catch SL.

So I suspect age verification to access adult content in SL may well become a live issue again, not because LL want it to be but because recent legislation in various jurisdictions makes it one.

 

[Govi]

If history is any gauge, SL possibly being "Banned in Brussels" may attract Europeans to find out what the fuss is about, just like the "Banned in Boston" effect on banned book sales in the USA.

 

[Mona Eberhardt]

I think the main issue for SL at the moment isn't so much as measures targeting SL or virtual worlds in particular (we're pretty niche nowadays) but more general initiatives aimed at protecting children online in general, such as the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA), the UK's Online Safety Act and similar initiatives in France, Italy and various US states. These aren't written with SL in mind but some or all of them may well contain definitions that inadvertently catch SL.

So I suspect age verification to access adult content in SL may well become a live issue again, not because LL want it to be but because recent legislation in various jurisdictions makes it one.

As has been pointed out in this post on the official site of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, age verification methods are notoriously invasive and tough to comply with any privacy legislation, especially the GDPR that authoritarian governments (look up "Predatorgate"), elected or not, all over the world hate.

Addendum: For the record, I've been age-verified in SL both on this account and on my first one since time immemorial. But now, that particular age verification method (sending a scan of an identification document) simply wouldn't fly.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

As has been pointed out in this post on the official site of the International Association of Privacy Professionals, age verification methods are notoriously invasive and tough to comply with any privacy legislation, especially the GDPR that authoritarian governments (look up "Predatorgate"), elected or not, all over the world hate.

Addendum: For the record, I've been age-verified in SL both on this account and on my first one since time immemorial. But now, that particular age verification method (sending a scan of an identification document) simply wouldn't fly.

Presumably, though, whatever methods of age verification the EU and various member governments decide upon will ultimately have to comply with the EU's own GDPR, so I'm not sure that's going to be so great an issue.

The larger credit reference agencies all seem to offer age verification services, backed by a variety of different methods (cross-referencing their own data and that held on public databases, remote verification of documents, automated facial analysis, etc) so it seems to me entirely possible that businesses will be able to rely on trusted third parties to verify people's ages for them -- that is, LL or Pornhub will be able to say "We checked so-and-so with Experian (or whoever) as part of the sign-up process and they confirm that so-and-so is over 18", without LL or Pornhub ever seeing any documents themselves.

ETA: As to the question of data security, if the data a credit reference agency holds about me is ever stolen, I, along with millions of other people, am going to be too busy worrying about identity theft to be much concerned about someone being able to work out what porn sites I may have visited -- in other words, I assume this kind of data is kept pretty securely.

I am very aware of the problems with online age verification -- in the UK, both the government and Ofcom have been tying themselves up in knots since 2017 trying to come up with a workable implementation --- but this kind of legislation is already in force in several US states, and LL will have to comply with it, whether or not they think it's sensible.

ETA: If (and I realise that's a very big "if") legislators have any sense, they'll realise that it's not question of making it impossible for anyone under the age of 18 ever to access anything deemed undesirable but to make it difficult for them to access without a bit of conscious effort and forethought.

 

[Essence Lumin]

The larger credit reference agencies all seem to offer age verification services, backed by a variety of different methods (cross-referencing their own data and that held on public databases, remote verification of documents, automated facial analysis, etc) so it seems to me entirely possible that businesses will be able to rely on trusted third parties to verify people's ages for them -- that is, LL or Pornhub will be able to say "We checked so-and-so with Experian (or whoever) as part of the sign-up process and they confirm that so-and-so is over 18", without LL or Pornhub ever seeing any documents themselves.

If that exists for the credit ratings agencies over here, I have never heard of it.

I am very aware of the problems with online age verification -- in the UK, both the government and Ofcom have been tying themselves up in knots since 2017 trying to come up with a workable implementation --- but this kind of legislation is already in force in several US states, and LL will have to comply with it, whether or not they think it's sensible.

My understanding, possibly wrong, is these laws are so vaguely written here it is like saying if you are underage you are not allowed to drink without specifying that water and milk are ok.