Banning Second Life: Congressman Aims to Restrict Access to the Virtual World
Illinois Representative Mark Kirk has a bone to pick with Second Life and other social networking sites over what he feels is a lack of protections for minors who use them. He called upon the Federal Trade Commission yesterday to "investigate the growing vulnerability of children to predators on Second Life."
The congressman fired off a press release stating he'd sent a letter to the FTC's chairman asking for a "consumer alert" to be issued about the dangers of Second Life. Kirk claimed there are no age verification procedures built into Second Life registration despite the popular social networking service's claims of preventing children from accessing it.
"During the past five years, social networking Web sites like MySpace, Facebook and Second Life exploded in popularity," Congressman Kirk wrote. "As more kids flock to these sites, we've seen a corresponding increase of online sexual predators targeting children."
Kirk added, "Sites like Second Life offer no protections to keep kids from virtual 'rape rooms,' brothels and drug stores. If sites like Second Life won't protect kids from obviously inappropriate content, the Congress will."
Kirk seeks once again the passage of a bill called "Deleting Online Predators Act," which passed the House in 2006 but died in the Senate. The act would require schools and libraries to prevent children from accessing Second Life and other social networking Web sites unless it was for educational purposes and under adult supervision.
Linden Labs, the developers of Second Life, in turn issued a statement defending their creation. This statement, as it appeared in the Chicago Tribune, read in part "Members of the Second Life community, including Linden Lab staff, actively monitor against minors accessing the [adult portion of the] service."
The question here is obviously: how much of a real threat is Second Life, especially when you consider children run huge risks of running into sexual predators in unmoderated chat rooms and such? As Ars Technica points out, Second Life does, in fact, have age verification technology in place.
That being said, Second Life is not exactly the most G-rated of places online. Take this recent real-world lawsuit over the theft Second Life related "adult-themed virtual objects." This move by Kirk does seem to be a bit of a play to the cameras, but perhaps he does have a point that it is easy for kids to get into stuff online which is not age appropriate.
CREDIT - PC World contributor Nino Marchetti
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I am not comfortable with the government acquiring any more censorship powers over the internet. But, I have to ask why local government supported schools condone access to these sites from a school computer. Where is social responsibility?
What do you say to junior when he asks why you don't want him to go there on your home computer, when it's alright at school?
These sites could be made safer, but money talks. The good thing is that as long as their visitors are online, they are'nt on the street.
These are difficult issues, but the right to free-speech, that does no harm, must not be compromised. Can our government be trusted to make the determination as to what is harmful? No!!
If you frequent questionable sites, you are part of the problem, not the solution. Let them wither on the vine if the don't start policing themselves properly.
Banning Second Life in schools is an unconstitutional idea which would block legitimate educational and commercial opportunities in the virtual world. While perhaps access to Second Life should be monitored and limitted to PG-rated content (of which there is an enormous wealth), banning Second Life in the classroom would be tantamount to banning the Internet when it was forming.
Well, we can see everyone we has been posting is a big fan of Second Life. I agree with the congressman to restrict minors from this game. Games like this are already banned from schools though, any outside-school chatting is banned on school networks. I think our government can determine what is harmful, you voted them in there so as a group they can determine what is right and wrong for us. You might want to get out of your little "second life' (since we know you play it to escape the reality that your 'first life' sucks in the real world) and get back to real reality.