IMPORTANT: Regarding under-13s and COPPA.

No... not until you're 13. /facepalm

You just made yourself unsafe. :/ You'll have to get parental consent now. You were doing fine til you told us all your age, so...yeah. Should have just kept that under wraps and you would have been fine.

Sadly you need to be at least 13 or your account gets restricted until you either turn 13 or if you submit parental consent, which has to be a hand-written note by your parents, scanned and then uploaded. The admins should give you the all clear upon seeing the note. Read the OP by Razor Leaf for information on how to submit parental consent. When your account is restricted, it won't be able to receive PMs/VMs and your profile will be hidden from view to others.

Well, he just has to wait until November whenever then he can ask the restrictions to be removed, right?

He could provide parental consent or wait till then, yeah.

EpicGameBums said:

Well I'm twelve now but I'm turning 13 in November so am I safe from this law?

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...nope. >__>

Hikari10 said:

Sadly you need to be at least 13 or your account gets restricted until you either turn 13 or if you submit parental consent, which has to be a hand-written note by your parents, scanned and then uploaded. The admins should give you the all clear upon seeing the note. Read the OP by Razor Leaf for information on how to submit parental consent. When your account is restricted, it won't be able to receive PMs/VMs and your profile will be hidden from view to others.

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Hikari I appreciate that you're trying to be helpful but almost all of that is wrong. COPPA users can recieve PMs, we have a form of consent which is a bit more than a note now and much easier to use, and I removed information regarding consent from the first post. ):

Para-Dox said:

I joined when I was under 13 but I'm in my mid teens now so I'm okay. btw this is a ****ing stupid law that only stops perfectly fine people from interacting with the interact with the web.

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I gotta agree with this ^

What I don't get is why you mods suddenly thought of enforcing this law? Was it because you had no more laws of your own to make? {XD} LOL JK

But seriously, why? I've never even heard of this law anywhere or of this agency & I've been on the internet for almost 2 decades now...

AnonygooseD said:

What I don't get is why you mods suddenly thought of enforcing this law? Was it because you had no more laws of your own to make? {XD} LOL JK

But seriously, why? I've never even heard of this law anywhere or of this agency & I've been on the internet for almost 2 decades now...

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Both of your questions have been answered repeatedly within the confines of this thread.

1. The administration of the site had been discussing the site's COPPA stance, and realized during that discussion that PC does meet the criteria that requires PC to enforce COPPA.

2. The server is a .com domain and is hosted in the US, both of which cause the site to fall under the jurisdictions of US law. That you've never heard of the law is to be expected, as non-residents are not expected to know every US law unless they are living within or visiting the United States or one of its territories. That you've never heard of the law does not make it any less relevant, either, since on most sites joining whilst under the age of 13 was cause for a ban to begin with, since they had decided long ago that they met the COPPA enforcement criteria outlined in the COPPA law, which is likely the reason you haven't heard of the law before. The fact remains that COPPA is an old enough law to have been applicable to me for 5 years after it was made into law in 1998.

I really don't like this rule, but I understand it. My mum signed me up to this website in the first place and she knows I use it. I don't know how I could show you written consent due to the fact that I don't have a scanner.

I understand COPPA's principals, but still...

PokeCommunity is moderated, doesn't allow swear words (only minor ones) and everyone who is requesting indecent stuff from kids will sooner or later found out, and a lot of people here are smart enough not to give out private information. Plus there are a lot of people out there who aren't too keen of sending a stranger their picture and private details so they can be un-banned. Almost every site has this law, which is annoying for the kids, since all they wanna do is talk Pokemon, shed some light on some matters and just stop be treated like a kid. :S

Question: Am I okay? I feel like I might be in a "gray-area".

SandyOperations said:

Question: Am I okay? I feel like I might be in a "gray-area".

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Unless you're faking your age being 13, you should be fine :3

Zach said:

Unless you're faking your age being 13, you should be fine :3

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Oh thank you Zach!You're also answers my questions!:D

Honestly, I don't get the idea. I am over thirteen years old, yes, but I know many kids under 13 who are more mature than me, and hell, even half of the whole Internet. And then of course there's those idiots who spam Fluttershy everywhere.

And, like someone mentioned, this is a Pokémon forum. There are kids out there who want to discuss about Pokémon, and will google "Pokémon Community". Once they figure out an age of 13 or above is required, chances are, they will fake their age. It doesn't really help. But oh well. It's just my opinion, I have had bad memories with COPPA so I guess that's why I dislike it. Thug life.

I just want to emphasise that we are are not enforcing this now just so we can wreak havoc and be the evil people of pc muahaha etc. We're actually enforcing this because (as stated many times within this thread), it's US law. Whether we like it or not the law is still applicable and so we must comply with it.

I do realise this, and I think the law is useless. It doesn't really help, but neither does my complaining. :)

1) The law is dumb. I registered what, 2, 3 years ago? I probably lied then (I've since changed it), but I'm 14 in less than a week. No repercussions ever happened even when I mentioned it. A bit surprising that they're banning the kids now.

2) The law only applies to US jurisdiction. Assuming that doesn't extend to Canada, I recommend whoever owns the servers (I think that's Rukario's company) just move it to Vancouver and access it remotely when he needs to. If jurisdiction extends to Canada in violation of obvious principles, I recommend he move them to the Netherlands with Ixquick, where they can't bother him and the target audience of Poke'mon can register freely.

2) The law only applies to US jurisdiction. Assuming that doesn't extend to Canada, I recommend whoever owns the servers (I think that's Rukario's company) just move it to Vancouver and access it remotely when he needs to. If jurisdiction extends to Canada in violation of obvious principles, I recommend he move them to the Netherlands with Ixquick, where they can't bother him and the target audience of Poke'mon can register freely.

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I hope this is some form of sarcasm, because you can't just ask someone to uproot themselves so that they can go somewhere that this website wouldn't have to adhere to this law. That's very selfish.

Complain about it all you want, it's not going to change anything unfortunately, unless the US decides to get rid of this law.

You should remember that under 13's can legally join this forum, so long as they have parental consent.

Whether or not the law is stupid is irrelevant. It applies.