Artificial Boy

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Dusan Writer of Dusan Writer’s Metaverse discusses the absurdity of Linden Lab’s age verification policy in his post, Linden’s Age Verification Hypocrisy. While Writer is mostly criticizing the 3rd-party solution LL began to Beta-test in December 2007, and the contradictory policies that surround it, this post makes an interesting setting for me to note that the current alternative to this horrible solution is even worse. As it stands, SL users who are accused of driving-while-underage are banned from the grid until they provide scanned copies of sensitive personal documents. The person who does the accusing is not investigated, and his identity as well as the information provided to raise the suspicion of LL is never revealed to the accused. Supposing there is actual evidence that someone is underage in any of these cases, since the person reporting it is merely another resident, it is safe to say that the evidence at hand can at best consist of something that is said in chat or IM. In other words, resident-to-resident hearsay results in administrative action. Despite the absurdly weak evidence, the accused must provide sensitive documents or leave SL forever. I can only hope LL conducts periodic internal reviews of these policies and evaluates the effectiveness and costs of the policy. If a person decides not to upload scanned documents to the support portal, and leaves SL forever, does that mean they were underage, or just pissed off and insulted by the whole ordeal?
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