Elvis is alive

Thursday, September 17, 2009

As some of you have painfully noticed, ever since last week the Sim that Necronom VI is located on is set to adult. Personally I strongly feel it would be worth to argue that it is just a mature area, because I do not feel that Necronom VI is a project that primarily focuses on adult aspects, but due to a technicality there is no other choice.
Now what does this mean for players? As player, if you want to get in, you have to do one of two things, either link a credit card of your choice to your profile, or get age verified.
Basically this whole issue is a huge pain for us, because from now Necronom VI will be blocked from the Second Life search for anyone who doesn't have adult content enabled. A lot of people don't know about this yet, so what is missing is those people who find Necronom just randomly. In most cases, from what I've seen, bypassers really like what they find here, so I consider this a huge disservice to both me and the Second Life players. It vastly decreases the amount of players and shopcustomers that find the place, which on the longterm poses a huge threat to the whole project.
But all the trouble is worth it, right? It makes sure only adults get access to this content and SL becomes a safer place right?
Well, let me tell you about the sad truth. One thing Linden Labs promises is that all the data they receive for age verifications is stored neither with them nor with their data processing partner. Think about what this means for a second, it means that they are not able to crosscheck new data they receive, in fact, every single Second Life resident is able to verify with the exact same information, without any consequences whatsoever.
Kind people have already provided a list of various identities, whose real owners really won't mind anymore.
Let me make this clear for you, Linden Labs has spent enormous amounts of resources and money to develop these adult features for over a year and the result is a system that is fooled with one single copy/paste by a toddler. I would wonder when they'd start asking why Elvis Presley has so many Second Life accounts, but like I explained, they have no legal possibility to even find out.
Well played, Linden Labs, well played.

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