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Age Verification strategies for OpenSimulator and the HG
Since there are 24 US states and the UK requiring age verification it seems this is going to inevitably change the way OpenSimulator functions. Denying it, protesting, waiting for it to go away, or saying it's impossible - won't last long in my opinion. I think the EU will probably follow suit with laws.
I personally think Geofencing is boo-boo and doesn't work. Right now you'd have to block half the USA and all of the UK and then comes EU. Might as well just unplug and go home I guess.
So i'm thinking about what I need to do on my grids. Here are the strategy/rules i've been thinking about and would love feedback.
rules
1) can only age-verify local grid users, not from other grids
2) only age-verified people can access M and A land
3) non age-verified and HG visitors may access G land only
4) G land is not UGC (user generated content) but only grid owner can place objects (or designated people in specific staff group, etc)
5) non age-verified users cannot chat in the local channel
6) the G land (should be one per grid really) is more like a welcome, and possibly each region on the grid can have a "booth in the welcome area" worked out with grid owner.
7) visitors are enticed to become local users and thus become age-verified
8) local users can have sims/parcels on the grid but can only be M or R rated, no G
9) we assume all local users are age-verified, since they have to age-verify during registation (must use "commercial" 3rd party verification service according to many laws)
10) visitors (non local HG visitors) attempting to access M or A land are always redirected to the welcome "G" land
If you are inclined, Here is the updated ini, xml and a new AgentGateModule.cs i'm working on - alpha
https://jemcity.com/agentgate.txt
I personally think Geofencing is boo-boo and doesn't work. Right now you'd have to block half the USA and all of the UK and then comes EU. Might as well just unplug and go home I guess.
So i'm thinking about what I need to do on my grids. Here are the strategy/rules i've been thinking about and would love feedback.
rules
1) can only age-verify local grid users, not from other grids
2) only age-verified people can access M and A land
3) non age-verified and HG visitors may access G land only
4) G land is not UGC (user generated content) but only grid owner can place objects (or designated people in specific staff group, etc)
5) non age-verified users cannot chat in the local channel
6) the G land (should be one per grid really) is more like a welcome, and possibly each region on the grid can have a "booth in the welcome area" worked out with grid owner.
7) visitors are enticed to become local users and thus become age-verified
8) local users can have sims/parcels on the grid but can only be M or R rated, no G
9) we assume all local users are age-verified, since they have to age-verify during registation (must use "commercial" 3rd party verification service according to many laws)
10) visitors (non local HG visitors) attempting to access M or A land are always redirected to the welcome "G" land
If you are inclined, Here is the updated ini, xml and a new AgentGateModule.cs i'm working on - alpha
https://jemcity.com/agentgate.txt
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"3) non age-verified and HG visitors may access G land only
4) G land is not UGC (user generated content) but only grid owner can place objects (or designated people in specific staff group, etc)"
Which will make it impossible to pass content on from one avatar to another by one avatar rezzing it in-world in a sandbox and the other avatar picking it up.
And believe me when I say I've had lots of cases in which this was literally the only way to get stuff from one grid to another in one piece. Or at all.
"7) visitors are enticed to become local users and thus become age-verified"
Which will largely kill the Hypergrid and/or require everyone to put efforts into building dozens of avatars and sell their most private data to some shady corporation just to pick up two items that are only available in that one grid.
Jupiter Rowland only exists in three grids, and I don't want to be forced to change that, thank you very much.
"9) we assume all local users are age-verified, since they have to age-verify during registation (must use "commercial" 3rd party verification service according to many laws)"
The moment that EACH grid MUST verify the age of ALL its users by means of a commercial, corporate-owned, revenue-oriented service that may do with their personal private data whatever they want, OpenSim will lose every last user who is even only a bit conscious about online privacy and data protection.
But then again, that won't be many. For most OpenSim users, OpenSim is literally the only non-commercial, non-corporate-owned online service they've ever used in their whole lives. And their viewers (and OpenSim itself if they run a grid or a stand-alone) are the only free, open-source, non-commercial, non-corporate-owned pieces of software that they've ever installed on any device in their whole lives.
Otherwise, they put blind faith into Windows, iOS or fully Google-laden Android, Google Search, Google Mail, Google Maps, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, Discord, WhatsApp or Telegram or iMessage, all kinds of Amazon services etc. as if there haven't even been any attempts at making alternatives to ANY of these that are free-as-in-free-beer, free-as-in-freedom, free-as-in-you-don't-pay-with-your-personal-private-data, open-source, non-commercial, non-corporate-owned. Best proof: 95% of all OpenSim grids are DreamGrids, and DreamGrid is Windows-only.
"10) visitors (non local HG visitors) attempting to access M or A land are always redirected to the welcome "G" land"
Which will kill lots of event locations. Don't expect everyone who attends parties at Stark now to make new avatars in ZetaWorlds. And all those many event locations that are Adult-rated because the owners think that "Adult" only means no child avatars allowed will be just as dead.
Now if you insist that we MUST do something, and we MUST use centralised, commercial, corporate-owned services for that, let me give you a little food for thought.
Have you ever heard about the Fediverse?
I guess hardly anyone here has. See my answer to 9).
So the Fediverse is something like the Hypergrid. A decentralised network of free, open-source alternatives to something commercial, corporate-owned, centralised (Second Life in the case of the Hypergrid).
Only that the Fediverse is not a network of all-out, 1:1 clones of one particular product. It's a network of free, open-source, non-commercial, non-corporate-owned alternatives to a whole lot of things. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube etc. Not 1:1 clones of the real things like OpenSim is a near-1:1 clone of Second Life, but alternatives that are different here and there and often better than the "originals". And they aren't only connected within themselves, but with each other.
30,000+ server instances. 14,000,000+ registered users. Not exactly small, I'd say, especially not compared with OpenSim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
Easy-to-understand video: https://videos.elenarossini.com/w/2909e4a0-6424-4a74-a936-...
https://fediverse.info/
A few here have heard of Mastodon already. It's a Twitter alternative and the biggest of 150+ different server applications in the Fediverse. Lone Wolf, founder and owner of the Wolf Territories, runs his own Mastodon server: https://opensimsocial.com/public/local
Anyway, the Fediverse is facing the same problem. And yes, it's being discussed a whole lot.
The Fediverse doesn't have age verification mechanisms that actually work water-tightly. And no developer and no server admin in the Fediverse wants to cooperate with centralised, commercial, corporate-owned age/identity verification services. These services go directly and hard against all the principles of the Fediverse.
So what does the Fediverse do now?
Eugen Rochko, creator and main maintainer of Mastodon and owner of mastodon.social, the largest Mastodon and Fediverse server (seriously, it's 22% of the whole Fediverse), says that Mastodon simply has no way of complying with these laws.
Others say that the Fediverse is probably safe because Mississippi or UK law enforcement will not go after 30,000+ independently operated servers, one by one. Especially not since these servers are spread around the whole globe, as in under jurisdictions where Mississippi or UK law doesn't apply, even under jurisdictions that have no extradition treaty with the USA or the UK.
If you really think they will, you should also start expecting Linden Lab and SL content creators to go after OpenSim grids worldwide, one by one, for intellectual property theft, what with probably over 90% of all content in OpenSim having been stolen from SL. That's "only" 4,000+ grids. And everyone is telling me that this won't happen because it's so many grids and all around the world.
Lastly, Fediverse users have recognised these age verification laws as what they're really for. If you genuinely think they are to protect children, I have a bridge to sell you.
These laws are not about protecting children. They are all about absolute, total, global online surveillance. They are all about tracking absolutely everyone's real-life identity across the whole Internet. They are intended and designed as a privacy and data protection nightmare, compared with which Palantir Gotham is a baby rattle.
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4) G land is not UGC (user generated content) but only grid owner can place objects (or designated people in specific staff group, etc)"
Which will make it impossible to pass content on from one avatar to another by one avatar rezzing it in-world in a sandbox and the other avatar picking it up.
And believe me when I say I've had lots of cases in which this was literally the only way to get stuff from one grid to another in one piece. Or at all.
"7) visitors are enticed to become local users and thus become age-verified"
Which will largely kill the Hypergrid and/or require everyone to put efforts into building dozens of avatars and sell their most private data to some shady corporation just to pick up two items that are only available in that one grid.
Jupiter Rowland only exists in three grids, and I don't want to be forced to change that, thank you very much.
"9) we assume all local users are age-verified, since they have to age-verify during registation (must use "commercial" 3rd party verification service according to many laws)"
The moment that EACH grid MUST verify the age of ALL its users by means of a commercial, corporate-owned, revenue-oriented service that may do with their personal private data whatever they want, OpenSim will lose every last user who is even only a bit conscious about online privacy and data protection.
But then again, that won't be many. For most OpenSim users, OpenSim is literally the only non-commercial, non-corporate-owned online service they've ever used in their whole lives. And their viewers (and OpenSim itself if they run a grid or a stand-alone) are the only free, open-source, non-commercial, non-corporate-owned pieces of software that they've ever installed on any device in their whole lives.
Otherwise, they put blind faith into Windows, iOS or fully Google-laden Android, Google Search, Google Mail, Google Maps, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, Discord, WhatsApp or Telegram or iMessage, all kinds of Amazon services etc. as if there haven't even been any attempts at making alternatives to ANY of these that are free-as-in-free-beer, free-as-in-freedom, free-as-in-you-don't-pay-with-your-personal-private-data, open-source, non-commercial, non-corporate-owned. Best proof: 95% of all OpenSim grids are DreamGrids, and DreamGrid is Windows-only.
"10) visitors (non local HG visitors) attempting to access M or A land are always redirected to the welcome "G" land"
Which will kill lots of event locations. Don't expect everyone who attends parties at Stark now to make new avatars in ZetaWorlds. And all those many event locations that are Adult-rated because the owners think that "Adult" only means no child avatars allowed will be just as dead.
Now if you insist that we MUST do something, and we MUST use centralised, commercial, corporate-owned services for that, let me give you a little food for thought.
Have you ever heard about the Fediverse?
I guess hardly anyone here has. See my answer to 9).
So the Fediverse is something like the Hypergrid. A decentralised network of free, open-source alternatives to something commercial, corporate-owned, centralised (Second Life in the case of the Hypergrid).
Only that the Fediverse is not a network of all-out, 1:1 clones of one particular product. It's a network of free, open-source, non-commercial, non-corporate-owned alternatives to a whole lot of things. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube etc. Not 1:1 clones of the real things like OpenSim is a near-1:1 clone of Second Life, but alternatives that are different here and there and often better than the "originals". And they aren't only connected within themselves, but with each other.
30,000+ server instances. 14,000,000+ registered users. Not exactly small, I'd say, especially not compared with OpenSim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
Easy-to-understand video: https://videos.elenarossini.com/w/2909e4a0-6424-4a74-a936-...
https://fediverse.info/
A few here have heard of Mastodon already. It's a Twitter alternative and the biggest of 150+ different server applications in the Fediverse. Lone Wolf, founder and owner of the Wolf Territories, runs his own Mastodon server: https://opensimsocial.com/public/local
Anyway, the Fediverse is facing the same problem. And yes, it's being discussed a whole lot.
The Fediverse doesn't have age verification mechanisms that actually work water-tightly. And no developer and no server admin in the Fediverse wants to cooperate with centralised, commercial, corporate-owned age/identity verification services. These services go directly and hard against all the principles of the Fediverse.
So what does the Fediverse do now?
Eugen Rochko, creator and main maintainer of Mastodon and owner of mastodon.social, the largest Mastodon and Fediverse server (seriously, it's 22% of the whole Fediverse), says that Mastodon simply has no way of complying with these laws.
Others say that the Fediverse is probably safe because Mississippi or UK law enforcement will not go after 30,000+ independently operated servers, one by one. Especially not since these servers are spread around the whole globe, as in under jurisdictions where Mississippi or UK law doesn't apply, even under jurisdictions that have no extradition treaty with the USA or the UK.
If you really think they will, you should also start expecting Linden Lab and SL content creators to go after OpenSim grids worldwide, one by one, for intellectual property theft, what with probably over 90% of all content in OpenSim having been stolen from SL. That's "only" 4,000+ grids. And everyone is telling me that this won't happen because it's so many grids and all around the world.
Lastly, Fediverse users have recognised these age verification laws as what they're really for. If you genuinely think they are to protect children, I have a bridge to sell you.
These laws are not about protecting children. They are all about absolute, total, global online surveillance. They are all about tracking absolutely everyone's real-life identity across the whole Internet. They are intended and designed as a privacy and data protection nightmare, compared with which Palantir Gotham is a baby rattle.
yes sadly the fediverse is not compatible with id. watch Mastodon turn into Naspter... article the other day about Mastodon not being able to do id. lawsuit and take down eminent i presume
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No law enforcement on the planet can take down the entirety of something that has 10,000+ independent servers with 10,000+ independent owners running in about as many independent locations.
You can't e.g. take all 10,000+ Mastodon servers down by arresting Eugen Rochko, just like you can't take all 4,000+ OpenSim grids down by arresting Ubit Umarov.
There's no higher instance that owns and governs all of Mastodon, just like there's no higher instance that owns and governs all of OpenSim.
Please tell me how exactly, step by step, Mississippi or UK law enforcement would go about to shut down all of OpenSim in one fell swoop.
Even if you can, I'll tell you that until that has happened, Linden Lab and Onyx LeShelle of Maitreya have DMCA'd all of OpenSim to hell for spreading copybotted copies of Lara and LaraX.
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You can't e.g. take all 10,000+ Mastodon servers down by arresting Eugen Rochko, just like you can't take all 4,000+ OpenSim grids down by arresting Ubit Umarov.
There's no higher instance that owns and governs all of Mastodon, just like there's no higher instance that owns and governs all of OpenSim.
Please tell me how exactly, step by step, Mississippi or UK law enforcement would go about to shut down all of OpenSim in one fell swoop.
Even if you can, I'll tell you that until that has happened, Linden Lab and Onyx LeShelle of Maitreya have DMCA'd all of OpenSim to hell for spreading copybotted copies of Lara and LaraX.