Legal Commentary

As careful readers will note, I am not the poster of my posts. I depend on the good offices Ethan and Dan to actually get my words to screen. Herein lies a story, a mystery and hopefully a solution.

Dan sent me a link to set myself up an account as a guest-blogger. The system asked me the usual password/name questions, and then went on to get personal, asking my sex and age. I was clicking through in a hurry and not paying attention, and did not select a year from the pull down menu; the default year was 2009. So the system was informed that I was born yesterday.

This created a problem. I received an error message saying that I could not be given an account since I was under 13. Efforts to log on from other email accounts did not work; it appears to recognize my computer.

The question is ? why 13. I can understand why for liability purposes a platform may wish to ensure users are adults. Prawfsblawg may be a cover for tween sexting and worse.

But the age of majority is 18, and I believe the age of consent in all states is at least 14. I don?t know of any special legal or technological significance of 13.

Or does TypePad know more than one would think? If I were Catholic, would it ensure that I was at least seven years old?

I'd be indebted to anyone who knows how to fix this problem.