Advantages of separating adult content

I would love to hear some comments from the people who have requested a seperation of adult content from other stuff, but for some reason I have not yet been able to find any.
Can one of them please tell me what was requested exactly? And do the current efforts of Linden Labs seem adequate to satisfy that request?

There is nothing wrong with tidying things up a bit, there are places where the Full Metal Nasty isn't appropriate, or to correct LL's idiot idea of having Mature regions next to PG regions on the same sim. But all it takes is a little tightening up of the current rules and a little more work on LL's part, which they never want to do, so they come up with knuckleheaded solutions like the current scheme. Other than presenting a squeaky clean image to the Corporates, there is no benefit to this plan at all.

*raises her coffee cup* cheers on that

Ditto.

This is the best post I have ever seen on this topic!!!

I know someone very well that told me she has been lobbying the Lindens for quite a while to do something about unverified accounts participating in her adult activities. She also told me that she knows several other adult vendors that had also done so.

I asked her about the loss of business. Her response was that her business was not selling porn to kids, so she was losing nothing she really wanted. She also said (paraphrased, but close), "Peeps gonna get day porn!"

And your friend is happy with the plan LL has come up with?

I'm sort of helping her with the pain a little ... we already have a new store and club made in sections, and ready to place. The club is a vast improvement to what she currently has. She says she is going to make her merchandise work and look better, and have a kind of "Grand Re-Opening" thing going on.

I don't want to speak for someone else, but I certainly get the idea that she would have done things differently, but that in general likes the way things are going. I think she likes it better than I do, and I'm generally a supporter.

/me asks the same question a different way, unsure she was clear before..

The plan that LL is implementing is making your friend less concerned with RL kids buying her products? If so, why? Not giving you crap, I'm actually interested.

Has she been guaranteed a free move by LL?

For some, this will be a great opportunity to gain a market share, as the big guys take it on the shin (butt?) from Linden. There are always winners and losers, but that does not make this a good idea anyway. It may create winners at a great cost to others. In a pure market, you have to be willing to kill your enemies, there is no room for civility.
BT

You have never come across as the type to give people crap, from what I have seen.

The honest answer to your question is that we didn't get into that great a detail. We were building and you know it's a little hard to have a deep discussion while you are pushing prims. I'm also getting dangerously close to putting words in someone's mouth, and I don't want to do that.

So, speaking for myself only, as a person that works for a large beer importer, I can tell you that this plan does one thing ... shift accountability. They are making way, by currently accepted practices, to verify that a person is an adult by US Law.

I have no idea, but I would assume so, since we are in fact building something generic for a new lot (modular, so we can make it fit).

Again though, I really don't want to cross the line of thinking or speaking for someone else. The original question was about anyone that actually lobbied for this, and I do know someone.

Not in the slightest. Accepting "Payment info on file" as a valid "account verification" says absolutely nothing about the age of the resident. Are you aware that 100% of the Teen Grid accounts have Payment Info On File? It is a REQUIREMENT for teen grid access!

/me will try harder then!!


Just in case you two do get into a discussion about it, please consider that LL has been very careful to use the term "account verification" instead of "age verification" and consider the implications of using payment info to mean "verified." See also: http://usa.visa.com/merchants/new_acceptance/merchant_responsibility.html

/me is truely interested in people who have followed what LL is saying they're doing and are still in favor of it, especially the bits around verification.

Never heard that before. Are you making that up??

Yes, I tried to ask a few times in the string Blondin was on a while ago, WHO is going to be accountable for any damage that a real life child suffers... I couldn't get it answered.

As Brenda said earlier, genuinely working to help people access or be free of adult content is a good thing. Provided peoples business and work were cared for during changes like this, it's odds on that not many people would object.

But the open and public encouraging of more real life children into a adults only game is morally dodgy. Especially as the main effort in all this seems not to separate or protect them from the adult concepts but to get them to access as much as they can of SL, even Ursula in some circumstances.

I take it she has already restricted access to her land to verified accounts only.

Several adult vendors have asked for better access controls. I believe that one of the very largest, Stroker Serpentine, is among them.

I do NOT think that they expected what they got, or that they are happy with it.

At least one vendor of adult content has already posted a going out of business sale notice. The first trickle of the flood to come.

Brenda for president lol

Not forgetting though Adult sims can be side by side to PG sims on private estates

But I agree with what you said

Respectfully, both you and Cerra are mixing two things that are mutually exclusive, and omitting something that is joined at the hip to both.

The department I work in runs several websites for a beer importer. When you enter one of our sites there is a disclaimer that these sites are for people age twenty-one and older. You are then prompted to enter in your date of birth. A person can enter any date they wish, so they can beat the system, but that is the point ... THEY are beating the system, which shifts accountability to them.

Our scenario with Second Life is no different. This is an adult service and that is clearly marked. When you give them payment information or age verify, it is with the understanding that you are giving it to enter an adult system. That a credit card might belong to a ten year old, or that fake information can be used to age verify is not germain to the end result ... that Linden Labs now has a record that shows information (true or otherwise) was given to improperly access a clearly marked adult website.

Where people are falling astray here, is that they are considering the accuracy of the information used to verify, which has absolutely nothing to do with Linden Lab's legal liability for an online service. The laws in the United States for an online service are as unsophisticated as they are clear ... The Lab is covered the moment a minor gives any form of information, accurate of not, to access a site that is marked as adult content.

I was being facetious. She is making extensive preparations for a move but she has not been given any guarantee they will be offered the free swap (since no one has to my knowledge). How large are we talking about?

Er.. But.. Er.. Haven't we already had that for years now? Don't people already have to do the checkbox thingie or something to register an account?

And with LL being careful to call it "account verification" aren't they themselves doing sortofa disclaimer that such people aren't age verified?

I know it's goofy, believe me. When I first started working here, and saw what was legally acceptable and required, I said WTF????

I'm not a lawyer by any means. I'm actually an artist, but do all the artwork for these websites and get to sit in on the meetings with the bigshots and lawyers to discuss what for us is multiple legal challenges a week.

About two years ago, beer websites used to have a check box that asked if you were over the age of twenty-one. That seems to have been the requirement. The requirement then became that a person had to actually enter their age, and in the case of our websites they do it via a dropdown. The check box no longer seemed to be enough. What our sites do, is log this entry against their file (I'm not a techy, so this may be a simplistic answer), and if that person actually buys something, we have a record that shows that the person that bought item-X, entered value-Y in the date of birth field. From meetings over the last few weeks, this law is changing again, were you can no longer use a dropdown on the date of birth. It will have to be entered every time. They are also turning off the ability for the system to remember your date from one session to the next. We have been given a deadline of July 1st to have the change made for our sites. That date must be meaningful, as the company I work for is not run by Linden mis-managers.

My guess is just over a sim, spread out over two sims.

I have never requested anything of LL and don't have strong feelings either way about so called adult content. However, I have seen things that would make me advocate the separation if done with a convincing plan. The various Science Islands (including NPR's Science Friday) gave me some of that old sense of wonder I used to have all the time as a teen, and I thought it would be really cool if teens could see these places. It would be a shame to exclude them from this and other cool content because there is adult content somewhere on the grid.

I mean - hasn't anyone ever seen the web? How about New York and other large cities? Do kids not grow up there?