The World Is Run By Lawyers

…and lawyers are, by nature, a bunch of pussies. I’m sure they would rather call themselves ‘careful’, but then they’re lawyers. They like to play with words, it’s their thing.

Just now I heard of the first victim of age verification - a woman who cannot access her own store because the landowner has flagged the parcel as mature, or adult, or whatever the extra-mature terminology is they dreamed up for our virtual world. Now hear this, all you Lindens out there:

THIS IS INSANE.

Open Google. Click Preferences. Check ‘Do not filter my search results’. Save preferences.

On the main page, click Images. Fill in a girl’s name - any girl’s name - or the name of a young, attractive female celebrity. And I guarantee you that you will see real life full nudity and possibly hardcore pornographic material, on the first page of the image search results.

Here’s one example I found with Google after a search using the first name of my mother (sorry, mom). I cleaned it up for this blog - actually it is one of the most modest pictures from that page. And it took under five seconds to find it.

And that’s exactly how hard it is for kids. And that’s why as a parent you need to monitor your kid’s internet behaviour. Yes, it takes time away from your precious career but hey, it’s a kid, not the damn DVD player. It needs looking after. And I am not going to do that for you.

Google does not demand age verification. The sites with these pictures do not demand age verification. My ISP never asked me for age verification. The government of this or any other democratic country hasn’t set a minimum age to web access. And therefore the good people that run our virtual world have no obligation whatsoever to introduce age verification.

I don’t know what is wrong with the lawyer folk in San Francisco. Maybe they are hardcore Christian fundamentalists with an agenda to clean the Internet of all the ‘filth’ that’s to be seen. Maybe they are just not ready for the 21st century yet, and still think you can somehow shield people off from mature content. But most likely they are just a bunch of pussies.

While you’re at it, go and see what Google turns up when you search for ‘pussies’ as described above… and don’t for a minute fool yourself into believing that your kids wouldn’t ever try.

Disclaimer: if you think you own the rights to the picture above, shame on you. It’s not even a good photoshop.