Mark, Since you posted essentially the same message on both the Second Life mailing list and the OpenSim Users mailing list, I am replying to both lists. I think this is an important topic to be discussed, but I fear that too many of the discussions are based on lack of information. More and more reports are coming out about the nature of adult predators online.
I would encourage you to start with Trends in Arrests of "Online Predators" published by the Crimes Against Children Research Center at University of New Hampshire, http://www.unh.edu/ccrc The report is more focused on social networking sites than Second Life or OpenSim, but I believe that the information applies equally well here. The key finding of this, and other similar reports is that children that have been victimized by adult predators as a general rule knew that they were meeting with the predator for sexual purposes. From the summary at ccrc "Most offenders were open about their sexual motives in their online communications with youth. Few crimes (5 percent) involved violence." While we do need to be careful to make an enivronment as safe as possible, I believe that many go too far in limiting the educational opportunities to children out of fear of the rare cases of sexual predation. Personally, if I were to have a public museum in an Open Sim, I would make it as much as possible like a physical public museum. I would not place any requirements about who could enter the museum. I would not do background checks on a person before they could enter the museum. etc. Instead, I would have docents and guards in the museum to make sure that everyone could have as pleasent an experience in the museum as possible. Aldon -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]on Behalf Of Mark W Dubin Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2009 3:09 PM To: SL Educators ((The SLED List)) Subject: [SLED] OpenSim and children Hello, I know this is NOT a Second Life question. However, there are some who read this list who are interested in using Opensim grids in addition to using SL, and I do not know any other way to readily reach them. If you prefer, answer directly via e-mail to [email protected] and I will later post a summary if there is enough response to warrant it. This is more a philosophical question, than technical, but there may be technical approaches to it. A public OpenSim grid allows access to people of any age, adult or child. Then, the availability of both chat and IM makes the site the equivalent of a public chat-room with a private back-channel. This presents a situation in which adult predators can approach children, with the attendant dangers. How can this concern be approached? Any kind of "public" OpenSim is prone to this issue, which will thus need a long-term, broad-based approach. A specific example could be a museum. A significant advantage of having a public museum on an OpenSim grid, open to all, is that museums typically are valuable learning assets for children. Allowing chat/IM enhances the experience by fostering sharing of insights and questions. Thus, totally blocking chat and/or IM limits the value of the site. Another approach could be to require prior approval for each avatar that has access to the site. However, this is impractical in terms of resources needed to accomplish it (and difficulty in proving the nature of the requester), except in very limited (essentially non-public) situations. Monitoring of all the communication on a site is not practical (or even possible). Further, attempts by the site owner to monitor or otherwise provide security can leave one open to litigation. A typical, hands-off approach is to provide warnings and do nothing more. In the case of children, parents should know what their kids are doing and teach them safe internet practices. It is essentially analogous to going to a real, bricks-and-mortar museum, or store, or public place. Realistically, this may be the best that can be done. Or is it? I am interested in hearing ideas from others. thanks, Mark _______________________________________________ Educators mailing list To unsubscribe https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/educators _______________________________________________ Opensim-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-users
