AgeLock: age verification by residents, for residents
by Akela Talamasca 
Nov 5th 2007 at 8:00AM
Filed under: Game mechanics, News items, Opinion, Second Life
I will assume, for the sake of this article, that you know nothing about the age verification issues Second Life has undergone. It's thorny, and Linden Lab's system still isn't in place, despite how gung-ho they were about getting it up and running pretty much post-haste. In the meantime, a group of residents have been quietly working on a homebrew system called AgeLock, and while there's a full description of the way it works on the referring site, the best part of the site's description is this: 'How does this system prevent children from accessing adult content?
It doesn't. It won't. It can't. As parents ourselves, we really do care about the importance of protecting children but this is not about protecting children this time. In this instance, our goal is to provide a sense of security for the adult community.'
And there you have it, the heart of the matter. There are without a doubt, non-adult residents with accounts on SL. There is no foolproof way to prevent someone who shouldn't be on the Main Grid from nevertheless creating an account for themselves. The AgeLock system at the very least protects an adult sim's owner from liability issues. This is a step in the right direction; whether or not Linden Lab works off of this remains to be seen.
(Thanks, Allana!)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Allana Dion said on 3:07PM 11-06-2007
Thank you Akela. You've gotten to the heart of what we're doing. This isn't about verifying anyone's identity, this isn't about protecting children (there needs to be more done about that, but through other means, Integrity is not the solution either). This is about covering ourselves and taking responsibility, both for our own choices and for making certain that we are providing sufficient warnings.
Linden Lab has never stated (to my knowledge) that flagging your land "adult" and allowing only Integrity verified users will be mandatory, they've only stated that it will be "strongly recommended". What we are hoping is that they will stick to that and allow the users to choose which systems they prefer, whether it is Integrity, AgeLock, or something else.
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