[Wikia-l] Why is DOB required for registration?

[gil penchina]

Laurence,

It's a great idea - one of several we raised when we hired an outside  
law firm to tell us how to do this

The lawyers told us the law is extremely in-flexible (despite several  
rounds of yelling at them) and their comments included things like

"all the other sites are violating the rules and liable unless they're  
a non-profit 501c3"

"the law discourages creativity, as the safe harbor requires you to do  
specific things to be safe"

We spent thousands of dollars looking for a different answer - but  
this is the legally proper one that large web sites use :-(

Gil

On Sep 23, 2008, at 2:33 PM, Laurence Parry <greenreaper at hotmail.com>  
wrote:

>
>
>> As we have universal login for 9000+ wikis, it's considered safest  
>> for
>> us to ask for a real date of birth.  That way we ensure we do the
>> right thing for all our varied communities while complying with
>> federal regulations.
>
> Perhaps offer the alternate option that people attest they are (or  
> are not) above the age of (legal requirement), like forums do? The  
> issue people have with this is that there's no guarantee that the  
> DOB will not be revealed by Wikia in some way. It's safe for you,  
> but it puts users off.
>
>
> ---
> Laurence "GreenReaper" Parry
> http://greenreaper.co.uk/ - http://wikifur.com/
> "Eternity lies ahead of us, and behind. Have *you* drunk your fill?"
>
>
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