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By Strange Ranger Visit Strange's Second Life Blog at sl.webfeedcentral.com Today Linden Lab announced that they will be using a company called Aristotle’s Integrity for the “first stage” of Identity Verification. The company, based in Washington D.C. is run by John Aristotle Phillips, who once designed an atomic bomb to get himself out of bother at Princeton University. He wrote a book called “Mushroom: The True Story of the A-Bomb Kid“. Now his company Aristotle International pits its software against ruses of underage teenagers trying to gamble or buy alcohol or cigarettes online. Phillips, 50, is not so much poacher-turned gamekeeper as nuclear physicist turned web nanny. On May 9, 2007 Inigo Chamerberlin wrote an Op/Ed article at the Second Life Herald, titled “Philip Linden’s Folly“. Definitely worth a read, paying close attention to the links near the bottom. This “first stage” will verify age. There’s no mention of what the “second stage” will consist of, and if the next level of verification will be required to access areas marked as “restricted”, once it comes along.
Personally, I will not be verifying my age with Linden Lab or any company that they’ve chosen to work with for the verification process. In my opinion, there is absolutely no need for me to visit any place that sets up restrictions on access to their land, allowing only “verified” residents there. From the comments on their latest blog post, I’m definitely not alone. Over the past few years, I’ve “been involved in” multiple cases of stolen identity from a merchant’s point of view, and while my RL company has lost plenty of money because of it, LL stands to lose their own “integrity”. The verification will be nothing more than a process to step through, having no real meaning, being riddled with stolen information after just a couple months. It’s also very interesting how Linden Lab has chosen a company that is known for selling mailing lists for this verification. When the deal was announced by LL, back in May, Aristotle International threw a fit because a final deal had not been reached, before the announcement. It makes me wonder why it took so long to come to a final deal and what the issues with that deal were. Being honest about this topic, Linden Lab claims that this age verification process is only for “age restricted” areas of the grid. The big thing that nobody is really talking about is that when I go to an “age restricted” area, most of the time, I don’t want to be “trusted”. I don’t want my SL information to show that I’m 37 years-old, married, with three kids. I would go there for the purpose of wanting to remain anonymous while I indulge in “adult activities” with other anonymous people. By the way, I never do this, but I’m using it as an example. Like I said, earlier, “I will not be verifying”. Sure, I know that people will come up with the argument that they are not saying if we are married in RL, and they’re not collecting our marital status and other very personal information. But to that, I say “when will they start”? A year ago, who would have thought or even imagined that it would have come to this? Within the past 6 months, they’ve banned ageplay, gambling, and now that want everybody to “know and trust” each other. Before each of these steps were taken, there was a lot of speculation concerning each of those topics. Now, maybe as a prelude of what’s to come, people are speculating the end of sex in SL and the end of virtual stock markets and banks. There have already been RL news stories about “The Taxman” coming to SL. Of course, people can speculate whatever they want about any given topic or area of SL that they want. The fact is, though, that most of the serious speculation of the past has led us here… and we’re sure not at the end of the road, by any means. They can ask you to “volunteer” to become age-verified, toady. They can ask land owners to “choose” to make their land “age restricted”. They’ve already said that land owners who don’t can be reported, though. What about next month or a couple months from now, when they may start requiring that you link a RL bank account to your profile (like PayPal does) in order to stay verified? A few people have already suggested that as a “better” solution than what they’re doing, now. I don’t agree with that, at all. What happens, three or four months from now, when you want to open a virtual business and they start requiring that you hold some sort of LL issued business license, hinging on whether you’re “age verified” or not? What if they decide to turn “all” mature sims into age restricted areas? What if it goes so far that I can’t even log on to sail my virtual sailboat without providing some third party company that I know nothing about and is in the business of “selling” people’s information with my driver’s license number, social security number, and whatever else they deem as “acceptable”? I’m sure that we won’t see the mass exodus like we did after the gaming ban, but I’m sure that a lot of smart people will see this age verification for what it is. They’ll see the path that this is taking, and will quit giving LL money to continue down that path. Smart people, indeed.
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