Experiences with hatena.com for Nintendo flipnotes?

The Game Room
1

My nine year old son uses his DSi to view and download flipnotes. Some are gross, some are hilarious and none have been offensive. Now he wants to sign up at hatena.com so that he can upload the flipnotes he creates and rate the ones he views. By signing up, he will also be able to chat with other users.

To sign up I had to put my email in and they sent me a page that I have to print and sign, then fax to a 425 number (Washington) or sign it and scan it in, then email the scanned signature.

I have never had such an extensive sign up process for something so trivial as a Nintendo toy. I’d like to hear experiences from others that use this site. Is this an extreme case of CYA since their users will skew younger, or have there been incidents that prompted these measures?

I have until 6/26 to fax my permission form to them and they will hold my son’s chosen user name and password until then. After that it will be 10 days to activate it.

Thanks!

2

What’s a flipnotes?

Anyway, I don’t know the site (obviously, as I don’t know what this flipnote thingy is) but just at a guess, it’s a “Cover Your Ass” measure, not due to “incidents”. Something to do with that “no kids under 13 can give out information” law, I’d wager.

3

Thanks. A flipnote is like a mini cartoon that kids make on the DSi and upload. It’s like youtube for DSi. I was thinking it was CYA but it just seemed so… involved for just playing on the DSi.

I think I really just wanted someone else to say it so I wouldn’t feel so odd about it. Thanks!

4

I’ve seen other websites do this as well - Wizards of the Coast, for a while, had the same system for their forums.

5

My daughter uses the site. It’s CYA for kids 12 and under. I do not know of any incidents. Just a lot of silly cartoons.

6

The site is perfectly fine for kids, and yes Nintendo really goes overboard with the child protecting stuff due to the family friendly image they want to maintain.

Usually we adult fans get pretty upset at some of the barriers we have to go through (friend codes and the like) compared to how the other consoles are doing online. I started to understand Nintendo’s perspective however after viewing this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xAK-X0RA5o

That video is so full of alarmist misinformation that I can’t imagine how people would react if there were really some sort of safety issue.