Minors at a lan party

[Digger[NJLP]]

Well age is a major issue for any one running a LAN party or a commercial business.

You do realize by letting a child be exposed to ponographic material, drugs, or sexual situations you could be held on child abuse charges and you could end up on the Megan's Law list.
By letting a minor drink, do drugs, or be exposed to adult situations(sex in the bathroom), while in the custody of your event you can be held liable.

I'm not saying some 13 year old is going to purposely find a reson to get in trouble at a Lan Party.

But lets say the parent drops the kid off and then comes back to find his kid enjoying porn via your web connection. And the parent happens to be a member of a right wing conservative group. Your gonna have one hell of a problem on your hands.
Trust me there is not a disclaimer you can write that could protect you from that type of situation.

If someone trips and breaks an arm their is insurance in place at the hall you have rented to cover those problems. But if the person in question can prove it was your fault for not taping down the wire then yes you are liable.

I have no problems sitting next to a 12 year old playing games. In fact I frequent the local arcade on lunch hour all the time. And I enjoy some great racing tuesdays and thursdays with a group of kids from North Brunsiwick High I think.

99% of the time its not the kids you should be worrying about its what their parents will do if they don't like what they were exposed to.

[Digger[NJLP]]

Just as a foot note to the child abuse thing..

NEW BRITAIN, Conn. — Computer technicians would be obligated to report child abuse just like doctors, teachers and others who work closely with children, under measures being considered by lawmakers in two states.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techp ... sers_N.htm

[coold8]

All I am saying is that you could absolutely get sued for having kids at a LAN party who witness or do something wrong, and could possibly face laws, but at the same time, there are a list of thousands of thing you could get sued or arrested for that goes on at a LAN party, and if you decide to not host a LAN party because you may get sued, then what difference does it make either way adults or non-adults. Last time I checked, if a kid goes into a bathroom in a public place, and they see someone having sex in the bathroom, it is highly inappropriate but i have never heard of anyone suing the store or w/e the location may be for it. Not sure what you are saying by the article, but based on my interpretation it almost seems as if it is the opposite, with instead of parents reporting it, computer technicians were. Can't see the connection.

Well age is a major issue for any one running a LAN party or a commercial business.

You do realize by letting a child be exposed to ponographic material, drugs, or sexual situations you could be held on child abuse charges and you could end up on the Megan's Law list.
By letting a minor drink, do drugs, or be exposed to adult situations(sex in the bathroom), while in the custody of your event you can be held liable.

I'm not saying some 13 year old is going to purposely find a reson to get in trouble at a Lan Party.

But lets say the parent drops the kid off and then comes back to find his kid enjoying porn via your web connection. And the parent happens to be a member of a right wing conservative group. Your gonna have one hell of a problem on your hands.
Trust me their is not a disclaimer you can write that could protect you from that type of situation.

If someone trips and breaks an arm their is insurance in place at the hall you have rented to cover those problems. But if the person in question can prove it was your fault for not taping down the wire then yes you are liable.

I have no problems sitting next to a 12 year old playing games. In fact I frequent the local arcade on lunch hour all the time. And I enjoy some great racing tuesdays and thursdays with a group of kids from North Brunsiwick High I think.

99% of the time its not the kids you should be worrying about its what their parents will do if they don't like what they were exposed to.

[Digger[NJLP]]

The connection is, children are the responsibility of the organizer.

I (the organizer) “could” get sued for an adult breaking their arm during my LAN party in civil court.

BUT

I (the organizer) would get arrested and could be charged with felony counts if a child falls and breaks their arm under my care and the investigating officer thinks I was neglectful.. The proof of conviction would then fall on the prosecutor and the jury to decide if I was neglectful. Do we want to go in to the ramifications if some 14 year old girl goes home and says to her parents, I was raped in the bathroom at the LAN party?

Civil suits are a dime a dozen and just because you loose a civil suit doesn't mean you will have to pay.

But a criminal conviction, specifically dealing with child endangerment can ruin a persons life..

Last time I checked, if a kid goes into a bathroom in a public place, and they see someone having sex in the bathroom, it is highly inappropriate but i have never heard of anyone suing the store or w/e the location may be for it.

1. I'm not referring to a kid seeing sex, I'm referring to a child having sex, doing drugs, or in other words being involved in an act that endangers the childs well being. (As stated by the laws of the state)

2. A LAN party is not a public place. Its an organized event where you pay to get in. If you charge a fee for services it is not considered "public".

3. Sex in a public place is illegal though most people would just ignore it or watch.

4. If those kids parents knew about the sex in the bathroom, do you think they would have just let it go? If I knew about it, mall or otherwise, I would be all over the management of the location. But what if their 13 year old was 3 months pregnant?

Your opinion may be yours, but you need to base it in fact and realize what will happen if certain things occur.

This was not ment to start a war with someone who needs to defend....
To be honest I can't figure out what your trying to defend. If your so dam naive to think nothing can happen then it will be your own demise..

But I'm beginning to see what everyone keeps telling me...

[Digger[NJLP]]

So... No connection huh..

Here is the list of sex offenders in Bound Brook. Aquired freely from the states Megan's Law web site.. I have removed the names so not to bring attention to the individuals but have included the distance from LaundroLan.

Name removed

two blocks away from LaundroLan

Name removed

10 blocks away from LaundroLan

Name removed

Less then 1 block away

Name Removed

6 blocks away

Do you feel safe enough to allow your under 18 participants to walk out the door at 3 AM to get a hoagie at quickcheck?

Or what happens if one of your 16 year old participants runs out to the car and doesn't come back?

Or worse lets say you do get your 20 to 30 participants. Do you have enough staff to keep an eye on the people? What happens if one of these guys walks in and hides somewhere?

My opinion is my own and I am not trying to deter anything. But I have facts and information to back up my concerns. I have yet to see any facts from this apparent flame of why we shouldn't have an age limit.

[kobalt]

Minor liability is a big issue for LANs big or small, Weekend Wars included. In the last 8 years liability took center stage in countless discussions during meetings with my staff. I can state from experience that there are a myriad of reasons to shy away from inviting minors to attend. Fortunately majority of these issues are done away with by implementing agreement forms / legal waivers, but to be honest the risk is still there, however small it may be. At the same my staff and I are convinced that the pros of allowing minors to attend outweigh the cons by a significant margin; allowing minors to attend our events is a key ingredient to that personal, friendly, small-LAN atmosphere we've been trying to perfect for years. So far luck's been in our favor...

[coold8]

Did you know that a sex offender lives nears the library in Manalapan? I guess everyone under 18 should stop going to the library.
Also, when was the last time you saw a 16-year old girl at a LAN Party? Also, when was the last time anyone here has seen sex in the bathroom of a LAN Party?... How bout with a minor? The only sex even theoretically possible at a small LAN party would be gay sex, since most LANs either have 2 girls in attendance or none (btw, the 2 girls that would be attending LAN parties are women, so we can say there are 0 girls under the age of 18 attending LANs, at least in this area). Also, don't you think that if someone is having gay sex in the bathroom at your LAN whether children are there or not, you should probably draw some attention to the issue of someone having gay sex in a bathroom at a LAN Party. How about just sex in general in the bathroom.
What Kobalt is saying is correct, in the end there are plenty of pros and cons to have minors at a LAN party, however the odds of anything ever happening at a LAN are so small, that the risk is able to be made.
For example, if you drive in a car, you have a higher risk of death by just entering the vehicle then if you were sitting in your house, however the risk is small enough that transportation over rides the fact you may die. You do not need to leave your house, you can call Domino's every day and start a home business, however it is a lot better socially, mentally, and probably for overall happiness of life if you do indeed leave your house. Therefore that little tiny fact that you might die the second you pull out of your driveway is not large enough to prevent you from leaving your house.
Btw, car accidents can ruin someone's life (death) and it happens much more often than becoming a sex offender when you did not even commit the crime. Remember next time you get in the car, you might die, and think about whether you actually want to pull out of your driveway, based on your opinions on risks at LAN parties, you better put that car into park as the odds are higher you might die then become a registered sex offender.

Oh and btw, there are 11 sex offenders in Freehold, therefore better safe than sorry, I would not let your kids play outside the house, they may get kidnapped and molested if you don't keep them inside the house. No Bicycle for you little Timmy (fill in your kid's name in place of timmy), it's dangerous you will get kidnapped.

-Dave

So... No connection huh..

Here is the list of sex offenders in Bound Brook. Aquired freely from the states Megan's Law web site.. I have removed the names so not to bring attention to the individuals but have included the distance from LaundroLan.

Name removed

two blocks away from LaundroLan

Name removed

10 blocks away from LaundroLan

Name removed

Less then 1 block away

Name Removed

6 blocks away

Do you feel safe enough to allow your under 18 participants to walk out the door at 3 AM to get a hoagie at quickcheck?

Or what happens if one of your 16 year old participants runs out to the car and doesn't come back?

Or worse lets say you do get your 20 to 30 participants. Do you have enough staff to keep an eye on the people? What happens if one of these guys walks in and hides somewhere?

My opinion is my own and I am not trying to deter anything. But I have facts and information to back up my concerns. I have yet to see any facts from this apparent flame of why we shouldn't have an age limit.

[Murdock]

Sorry to be so out of the loop on this one. I have been busy with school and things. Anyways...

Cold...maturity is the key here. Sure...things could go wrong. Does the chance that things could go wrong increase if a minor is involved. I believe it does. I have run Lan Parties with age minimums and Convention Lan Tournaments with no age minimum. I added the "no one under 15" rule to our lan parties after seeing what could (did) happen (at the convention) if parents drop their kids off for 8 hours at the lan. Just think about this for a moment...the parents don't even want to spend the time with the kid...and now you're stuck with them for who knows how long. Now, your a babysitter. Nowhere am I trying to say this wouldn't be the case if the idiot kid was...say 17. You would then have the same problem. All I am trying to say is, you might be able to avoid one or two of these cases if you have a minimum age. If you remember, my parties state that no one under 15 is allowed without a parent. If the parent wants to come, then they know what’s going on, and the kid must be pretty cool. In addition, at the parties I run, I am willing to make exceptions to the age limit, if I know the kid. I know a few kids in the 10-14 age bracket that are mature enough to be at my parties. In those cases, I will be their guardian, as long as their parent permits it. I can be fairly confident that their parents will not be upset with what the kid may see or hear at the party…as I stated…I know them. As for people I don’t know, I am not willing to make that assumption.

Now for lawsuits regarding porn, have you seen this one:
http://sunbeltblog.blogspot.com/2007/01 ... uilty.html

This is a total miscarriage of justice…and hopefully it will be set straight on May 18th. The unfortunate thing is, they still have the legal fees to pay. The really terrible thing about this is the school is not being sued…they are suing the teacher, when it was their computer and their network that the whole thing happened on. Usually in the area of lawsuits, the general rule is “sue them all…let the courts sort it out”.

Waver...not very helpful...It just helps me sleep better. At the end of the day, if someone wants to sue me, it will cost me thousands of dollars to fight. In this country, you are innocent until proven guilty; however, the innocent will still have legal fees. In some other countries, if someone brings a lawsuit, and they lose, they pay the winners legal fees. In our country, defending yourself could cost you a lot of money. The thing I like about the waver is that if a kid shows it to his parents, they are going to read it and think...holy cow...you are no where's near mature enough for this....you're not going. The ones that are mature enough, their parents trust them...and then I trust them. Someone once said to me, well you don’t want to tell the parents its too dangerous for the kid to be there. Actually, that is exactly what I want to tell them. If they read that, and then they still allow the kid to come, then they understand the what goes on at a lan party.

Honestly…it is some of these issues a that are making me go away from hosting public lan parties toward, private, invitation only parties.

Let’s not turn this into a flame war. I think we are all saying the same thing here...to prove my point I'll say this:

Define a minor.

[Digger[NJLP]]

This has gotten out of hand and this is the second time in a row Coold8 has spouted off without any control of his mouth.

This originated as a post to see what each persons preferences are for LAN Party surroundings. But instead it has become a soap box for Dave(Coold8) to stand on, due to his insecurities about age. Which by the way, just made it more obvious how incapable he is of running anything with maturity and control.

Quoting directly from his post

Age Requirement is the most retarded thing I have ever heard. All an age limit expresses is how big of a loser people can be, as you are banning kids and teenagers from playing video games.

Since Dave(Coold8) feels that my choices are retarded and my opinion about a 15 year old age requirement, marks me as a loser. I have decided that simply ignoring him is the smartest thing. Which includes the removal of anything posted by Dave(Coold8) in the TechForum in the future.

--------------------------------------------------------
I was first exposed to Dave (Coold8) just one year ago at my first visit to TCF. My first impression was a kid who was excited about technology but didn't have a grasp on how to communicate. He was basically the sketch from Saturday Night live the "Computer Guy". He knows it all and he can fix it no matter what anyone else knows or how he makes them feel.
I myself gave Dave the benefit of the doubt since I've known many people including past students like Dave, and they usually come around. But it was not without warnings from other people in the community to steer away.
I hate to write anyone off, particularly when they seem to be positive about LAN gaming, so I ignored the warnings so I could make my decision myself. I then saw Dave at one of the parties at NJgamers and though appearing to be helpful he was acting the same way. It almost seemed like he was trying to prove something to the rest of the people there.
Once given access to post at NJLanParty, he posted comments to the TechDump that gave the impression that he was still trying to prove something, starting his post with "Just to give you guys a quick insight,".
After having things sort of ironed out about how to post in a forum so as to not insult other people or forum moderators. We now have another issue of being flamed due to stupidity of the poster and his lack of foresight.

To top this all off his reply above is a classic example of using a point to flame someone. I was simply showing the dangers inherent in managing minors in an overnight event. And would have assumed a responsible adult would have had concerns with such people in the area. I as an adult who owns a home is keenly aware of where Megan’s Law individuals live near my home. I also keep tabs on their progress with their locally assigned probation officer.

So I feel I have given Dave enough opportunity to express himself and look forward to not having to deal with his personality anymore.

[Digger[NJLP]]

Minor liability is a big issue for LANs big or small, Weekend Wars included. In the last 8 years liability took center stage in countless discussions during meetings with my staff. I can state from experience that there are a myriad of reasons to shy away from inviting minors to attend. Fortunately majority of these issues are done away with by implementing agreement forms / legal waivers, but to be honest the risk is still there, however small it may be. At the same my staff and I are convinced that the pros of allowing minors to attend outweigh the cons by a significant margin; allowing minors to attend our events is a key ingredient to that personal, friendly, small-LAN atmosphere we've been trying to perfect for years. So far luck's been in our favor...

kobalt,
Thanks for the two cents and I do agree with what you are saying. The liability and responsibility of allowing minors in to a LAN is a tough line to walk. My original post was not centered around this specific subject, but seemed to grow due to the response.
I don't think NJLanParty has ever turned anyone away due to age. But as privately run LAN parties become more "publicly known" partly due to the influx of commercial game centers. Our LAN parties will start to become targets for people looking to steal, pickpocket, etc, especially when they get "too big".

And obviously keeping it small reduces those issues dramatically.

I always had an idea of having a LAN group that required yearly dues to be paid which got you in to that groups LAN parties for the year for free. That way the LAN group had funds to work with and then bringing in new blood or members would be by vote or invitation.

[Paulie_D]

[Post deleted because of inappropriate discussion]

[NILL]

[Post deleted because of inappropriate discussion]

You make a good argument. Why should the person running a LAN be able to make rules. I mean you have the freedom to attend, but he has no right to tell you what to do? This is a free country. You have a much a right to be a douchbag as he have a right to kick you out for it. It works both ways.

Also using mature language doesn't mean your mature, use spell checker, and nobody cares that you know leet speak.

[Murdock]

Well, that was interesting. I have to say...I have been running this site for almost 5 years now, and in all that time, I have never had to ban anyone. Until today.

Sorry for the interruption. Let's get back to the discussion.

[coold8]

Wow Paul. Last time I ever show you a post. First of all, Kobalt was not saying that he wanted 14 year olds banned from a LAN, Kobalt stated simply that he wanted everyone to be able to attend LANs and the risk was worth it. Second of all, thanks for defending me but by cursing off everyone it is not helping, it was worse than what I said by a huge amount. If anything your post should target digger but not in this way. Also you are missing what he is saying completely:
He is saying it is a liability to have kids at a LAN, much as though I disagree with that, that is what he saying. Essentially he is saying that if we want to have a LAN we should have it privatized since the liability issue would not exist or would be almost non-existence if it was at someones house as friends.
Also i don't understand from your horrid gramatical spelling, and the fact that some curse words are bleeped while others are there. There should be no curse words. This is not funny it only proves Digger's point (which judging on what you say you don't want).
As far as the sex in teh bathroom, just because you had sex in a bathroom does not mean that a LAN party is the appropriate place. I specifically stated that people should not be having sex at a LAN Party in the bathroom, and you specifically countered it by saying that you have had sex in bathrooms and find nothing wrong with it.
However Thanks for the complement and trying to put up some defense, but you clearly read everything backwards, which I know you do a lot of the time, or you honestly feel the age limit is good, because the only thing you said to support your argument was "we are just kids we have the freedom to have a LAN" and even that is slightly distorted.
Also Kobalt, I appologize for my friend, I did not even know about his post until NILL brought it to my attention. I am indeed as shocked as most are by this offensive post and almost disturbing post. However, if most have went to LANs and know of Paul, you should not be really too shocked by his post.
Thanks Paul for attempting the defend, although since you just cursed off like 4 people and most of the LAN community, (I just called some of them retarded, you called them **ck suckers), really Paul, what is it that was going through your head, it almost makes my blunt and outright rude (intended) posts look like they were polite friendly conversation.
Nice to see that there is some outrage over the idea, from someone else that will be effected.
Please know that Paul was only shown the topic here, by me, all responses are his, and you know my clear opinion based on my above posts.

[Murdock]

I have to say...all of this mess has just solidified my thinking that 15 is the right age. Does this mean that once someone turns 15 then they can come to the party? Well...yes. Can they stay at the party? That would all depend on if they were mature enough. Piss off enough guests and/or piss off the host once, and you can be calling your parents to pick you up early.

What does everyone else think?