Adult protest - Store Closings - Huh?

I'm telling all the guys in Kearney you are really a girl.

I'm going there 2010 Connolly, you just try it!

Yes but it's girls who say "behave!" - at least to me, anyway.

I'm not sure how I'm misbehaving. lol Government run corporations (Chrysler), government wealth redistribution programs (can't afford your loans? Don't worry - we'll pay it for you by collecting extra taxes from the people you owe the money to), government deciding what's right and wrong on all levels. That's socialism. <shrug> Until they start enforcing it with guns - at which point it become communism.

That's not the point though. The point is that these laws are far more likely to pass now. Conservatives (in general) might dislike porn/adult content - but they are far more "It's not for me - but who am I to tell you what to do unless it hurts someone else - so just do it someplace where it doesn't get in my way, and we'll be good." With the Liberals in office, they know better than all of us and like to make our decisions for us. So, as these laws come around again, they are more likely to pass. That's just how things work.

And, even if nothing does come of it all right now (it took Tipper Gore almost a decade to get the record ratings system in place and it was a decade after that that they were able to get that to carry over to TV under Bill Clinton) it's still a good idea for SL to be ready for it as best they can be. It's far more effective to do something when there is plenty of time to refine and revise to make it work. Believe me - LL knows that there is a huge gravy boat floating around generating revenue known as "Adult Content" - and they don't want to lose that any more than we do.

As far as this whole protest thing goes... it does no good to say "Don't do this!" without providing some sort of "Do this instead!" solution. If someone were to come up with a better solution that would meet the end goals of what LL is going for (not all of it is about the law - that's just a part of it), would comply with any reasonable law that might be enacted, and was practical to implement - you can bet that they would take a serious look at it. Granted, it would have had a better chance three months ago when they first started talking about this - not now after they've already invested time and resources into it. But it still could get a good ear and some of the ideas could be incorporated. In general, though - it's quite futile to say, "That's wrong!" without providing some sort if "Here's what is right!" alternative.

Last year it may have been, we talked about starting a farm raised virgin project....

Is it accompanied by a smack on the side of your head?

True enough. But LL has completely refused to listen to any of the many "here's a better way to do it" alternatives that have been proposed. Their willingness to modify their plan extends only to the most minor of changes.

What we've seen of the plan so far sucks even worse than we'd feared. They've broken Search in so many ways that we're going to be reduced to asking other residents "where's a good place to...?" Businesses will never again be matched with customers, except maybe through third party blogs and reviews.

In fact, my suggestion to businesses is to forget in world search completely. Make a website. Get a good search engine ranking. Advertise OUTSIDE Second Life, and then have a SLURL teleport link to your shop from your website.

Of course, you HAVE a website, Ry.

Actually - two of the suggestions I made early on in the process got incorporated into the plan. And I think a third (the ability for us to filter backwards and show ONLY adult content when we are looking for it rather than it being a one-way filter) is still being tossed around as a possibility - though probably not in this first release.

They have listened though. True - they haven't utterly picked up and changed course - but there are plenty of suggestions I've seen that have made it into the thing.

Agreed closing just hurts the store owners. LL are not going to change their mind on the Adult content but the disgraceful thing is how these proposals are still hidden. All mention is buried in fluffy blog postings and no big button link to these forums via blog plus given a couple of days in forum adult issues can be buried.

How many big RED A's do you see on the map?...hardly any...action by various splinter groups won't turn the tide.

About our only hope is that we try somehow to get LL to announce the proposals before its a done deal just to give people time to focus on how they prepare and move forward...this is only FAIR. ~How we do this is the thing as basically its a call to LL to see fair play which seems to be missing from their vocabulary.

But that cuts both ways. The several threads on this, going back months now, include numerous appealing resident-suggested alternatives. The response? "That's wrong." We point out that we might offer even better alternatives if they'd just tell us what it is that they're really trying to achieve--i.e., why are the suggestions not acceptable? "Because we don't like them."

On this subject, LL has behaved as would a petulant four-year-old.

Little damn wonder that residents have lost patience. Nonetheless, the proposed protests are unlikely to have any effect on LL. Still, to the extent that they raise awareness of what's ahead, and thereby encourage more people to get adult-verified in advance, they might possibly be of some marginal utility.

Yeah, in some bizarre alternate universe where those conservatives actually get elected to public office.

They were in office when it was hands-down voted away and it was determined that "It's none of the U.S. Government's Business to decide such matters."



I don't think you need to close shop and shut down business in order to get the word out though.

One of the issues I have with the big "No Change Whatsoever!" movement is that there are huge amounts of misinformation (or at least disinformation) in their propaganda. Most of the stuff I have read suggests that people who have a sex bed in their residence will have to move - which is not a fact whatsoever. You would if you show your home in search and have it open to the public as a place to come hang out and have sex, but just having sex stuff in your residence - you will be able to stay on the mainland.

I won't go into the list of all the information. I will say that dissent is good. And I will say that there are many PR issues going on with LL and I agree that all of that could have been handled much better. But the "extreme" response from the opposition turns my stomach even more than LL's closed lip and evasive approach to motive and ultimate goal revelations.

<shrug>

Porn is dead. Long life the porn.

You do? Oh, kinda like girls called Bobbie or Sammie. I gotcha.

Ry, this is indeed what's been said in the forums and in the brown bags. I have several problems with it.

1. None of those assurances are in any of the draft policies or definitions that have been published. As written, they could be used to censor privately owned and operated adult content.

2. There are a ton of edge cases between what's "private" and what's "public". Any edge cases are subject to AR by your enemies, your rivals, and passing strangers...and any ARs are adjudicated by a Governance Team that's been proven to be imbeciles and prigs.

I fully intend to continue living my SL lifestyle on Mature land...but now, I am always going to have to be looking over my shoulder. I hate that.

They were the ones sponsoring the bill. Congress was controlled by Democrats. Rep. Kirk and 89 of the bill's 95 co-sponsors were Republicans. But Republican isn't really a synonym for conservative, is it?

Seems to me that LL researched, planned, consulted their lawyers, and sewed it all up before even announcing the planned changes.

We're all shouting into the wind. :/

I didn't bother readin this thread because its the same ole same ole...I'm sure. But yes it's me with my two cents *drops two pennies*....

Hasn't anyone realised, I mean out of all the protestors, hasn't one realised yet...

It....don't....matter.

Don't matter, won't work, not a union, not about insurance benefits, not about job layoffs...

Does not, will not, do not matter.

Especially the people who have been here for a while, if anything you should know.

*drops a dead horse* Here you'll have better luck beating on this. Seriously. Get over the civil war cause unless your going to hand the Lindens that huge paycheck they are striving for, don't matter

*picks her two pennies back up*

Well it will cause all those who aren't giving in so easily a better chance of winning sales from those who are pposed to any change that may affect their short term profits because they fail to see the potential in long term profit increases this could mean for SL.
They give in and close their business because they think they have lost already, and by giving in they have.

There's potential in long term profits from wearing lucky hankies and spitting when you cross a bridge too.

It's good to know you were able to identify the enemy for all of us on this one. I never realized soccer moms ran the world.

If you can run a kids' soccer game, you can run anything.

Nope. Republicans and Conservatives are not the same thing - especially in recent years.



There is no such thing as privately owned and operated content in SL. That's the part that really seems to elude everyone, I guess.

Yep.

Be suspicious if anyone wants to take your money based on a future promise, then refuses to put that promise into writing.

Not since, oh, some time in the '50s? The 1850s?