Represntative Kirk's Interview about Second Life; Linden Lab's Response

Last week, Representative Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) went on the warpath to launch a campaign to ask the FTC to issue a consumer alert about Second Life and ban the virtual world's "rape rooms" from school libraries. "Parents should be worried about one of the fastest growing websites on the planet, called Second Life," said Kirk in an interview last night with a local news channel. "It's the next level up from MySpace, a fully 3D interactive experience now totaling over 6 million people online."

Kirk then goes on to list some of the atrocities of Second Life, including human sacrifice, before pointing out that Second Life's terms of service allows adults in the kid areas and kids in the adult areas. When he asked Linden Lab for protection, "they responded by sending their $60,000-a-year, K Street lobbyist to tell me everything's okay."

Apparently the lobbyist couldn't help Kirk get most of his facts straight, either about the size of Second Life or its existing protections.

Linden Lab's Statement:

    Second Life is a 3D virtual world inhabited by Residents, all of whom must confirm they are over 18 on registration, and many of whom have submitted verified payment information. Minors are not permitted in Second Life. (Linden Lab has a separate grid for minors ages 13-17, Teen Second Life, which is carefully monitored and used by many schools and educators.)

    Members of the Second Life community, including Linden Lab staff, actively monitor against minors accessing the service.  Suspected minors must provide proof of age, and if this is not provided, they are blocked from the adult Second Life grid (and directed to Teen Second Life)

    As with many online service providers, the sheer volume of in-world activity and the ephemeral nature of the creative content prevents Linden Lab from policing all in-world activities at any given moment. However, while Linden Lab itself does not create most of the content within Second Life -- which is designed by its Residents -- we do work hard to ensure that our Residents' experience is enjoyable, safe and legal. 

    We also offer users a free “age verification” option, and ask those providing “adult” content to employ it. 

    We are consistently and constantly striving to make our platform even safer, and to prevent minors from accessing age-inappropriate content.  We certainly do not condone the provision of violent or sexual images to children, and we look forward to being part of the current, active dialogue regarding protecting children and educating parents about online safety. 

Kirk's office hasn't responded yet to  requests for comment.

Comments

[Aaron E. Walsh]

Teachers, parents and students in need of safe and secure virtual world education environments can use Immersive Education (http://ImmersiveEducation.org) free of charge. As reported previously by Virtual Worlds News, Immersive Education client-side platforms (such as Second Life) connect to private and secure back-end servers via the "Education Grid" which is built by educators for educators.

Immersive Education and the Education Grid are made available free of charge by the Immersive Education Technology Group (IETG) which is responsible for defining open standards and best practices for a new form of computer-based learning that combines collaborative online course environments and classrooms with interactive 3D graphics, commercial game and simulation technology, virtual reality (VR), voice chat (Voice over IP/VoIP), Web cameras (webcams) and rich digital media.

Below are two case studies related to the "safe mode" feature of Immersive Education. More details are available at http://ImmersiveEducation.org

2) Safe Mode — A high school would like to provide its students with access to certain Immersive Education courses created by universities, but is concerned that some of the courses and materials are not suitable for young adults. The high school uses the Immersive Education platform's "Safe Mode" controls to identify exactly which courses its students can access, and locks these settings directly into the client software (viewer) so that the viewer itself is incapable of accessing content other than what the high school specifies. In this way the high school is able to distribute a customized version of the Immersive Education client software (viewer) to its students without concern that the students will be inadvertently exposed to potentially objectionable content or characters/avatars.

3) Safe Mode — A graduate student is enrolled in Immersive Education courses offered by her college, and as such she has access to a wide variety of online learning environments through her home computer. Her young children are eager to "walk around and explore" the same immersive environments that they see their mother engaged in. Before allowing her children to do so their mother uses "Safe Mode" to set a high safety level that is appropriate for her family, ensuring that the children are only able to navigate through the environments but are unable to see any of the custom learning objects or characters/avatars within those environments. She also chooses to password-protect her "Safe Mode" settings to prevent her children from changing them or from running or quitting the client software (viewer) without her permission. Because of how she configured her client software (viewer) her children are able to walk around and explore a collection of large, interconnected virtual reality spaces deemed safe for all ages, but are not able to see or interact with any of the objects or people that populate those environments. As the years go by her children grow older, and the parent selectively relaxes some of the "Safe Mode" controls to enable her children to interact with learning objects that she decides are appropriate for them.

[Aaron E. Walsh]

Virtual Worlds News Interview:
Media Grid to Take Education Across the Virtual World--and the XO

"Media Grid recently announced its plans to roll out a cross-platform, immersive world for education for academics, students, and trainers everywhere. After experimenting with VRML, the Unreal Engine, and other tools since 2001, the organization realized that it needed to begin looking beyond simply one platform. It formed the Immersive Education Initiative and looked for options..."

http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2008/01/interview-media.html

[Jori Clarke]

The concern about kids and safety online is an important issue since many parents don't understand what their children are doing making it difficult for them to provide informed decisions or direction. Our site www.kidscom.com was involved in the development of the COPPA law and so we understand how important it is to protect children's safety online. There are many ways that parents can look to educate themselves on their kid's choices as well as to reinforce with their children safe practices online. One easy way for parents to validate if a site is following COPPA practices is to see if they have the CARU (Children's Advertising Review Unit) of the Council of Better Business Bureaus. This shows third party review of practices. To learn more about this go to www.caru.org.

They can also turn to the Common Sense Media site that provides reviews of kid's online content and advice to parents at www.commonsensemedia.org/

We have had over 13 years of experience in keeping kids safe online with a combination of adult monitored content review and safe chat filters as well as constant fun educational experiences for kids to help them understand how to be safe online. It is not easy or inexpensive to do, but it is an essential component of running a children's and tween's oriented virtual world. Let's continue spending time as an industry in the group dialog about the reponsibilities of content and safe practices for kids and not let sensationalism overshadow the commitment and efforts many of us in the industry have been practicing as active and involved corporate citizens.