What are your plans when the "adult content" policy is enforced?

It was to foil adfarmers:

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-605

Thanks Oryx I have to admit I think this change is bad and should never have been done. It should have been enough to make a policy decision against the adfarmers and enforcing that (which is what they ended up doing anyway).
This is now going to bite them for people with small amounts of land who need to seperate PG and mature goods to conform with policy and be included in search for both still. *sighs*

On a side note it would be nice if you could subscribe so that all newly opened JIRAs send you an email so at least things like this don't slip by unnoticed.

Have we (or LL) actually nailed down how Search will work re: PG, Mature, and Adult parcels, and About Land/Options/Mature Content listings? Will there be a new Adult check box in About Land/Options? If someone actually understands the new Search, maybe we should add the info to Cristalle's sticky about optimizing search.

Download the RC client if you get a chance, you'll get a reasonable overview of how it will work. There's no need for a new adult checkbox because only parcels on adult sims can contain commercial or public adult content. All parcels on adult sims will be flagged as adult (if show in search places is ticked), those parcels won't appear to people who don't have the adult checkbox ticked in search.

I don't see it as "a philosophical point," but then I'm not much of a philosopher. I just don't feel comfortable acting to facilitate what I think is unfair treatment of Adult content providers. And that's just how I feel about continuing to list in non-Adult Search, from non-Adult land--especially during the transition while many who would choose Adult are not verified for that access.

(In case it's not clear: if it were just a delay in residents getting themselves verified--an inconvenience of cash flow for Adult merchants--I wouldn't care. It would still enter in to the "unfairness" calculation, of course, but it wouldn't threaten the diversity of expression we currently enjoy. My main concern is that, by their usual lethargy, LL will completely kill off a whole class of content, starving it of enough Adult-verified residents to survive. And they persist in perpetuating resident ignorance of this upcoming change--enough for me to conclude that this is precisely their intent.)

So what can a business do, to try to help smooth that transition?

What I'm doing is splitting my landholdings and doing what I can to get a chunk moved to Ursula.* If that works, I'll roll-out some products I've had in Inventory for a long time, and revise those I'm actually selling (to make them no-transfer), offering them at a very substantial discount only on Ursula--notice of which I'll prominently display on the sub-Adult location. I don't actually expect to sell any product at the sub-Adult location anymore, but use it as an extra incentive to draw more people into Adult verification, more quickly.

Admittedly, my sales volume is such that this is more "philosophical" than not. But it's what I can do.

__________
*If I don't get moved to Ursula, same plan, but with an Adult estate rental--which will cost about the same as a sub-Adult rental because markets abhor arbitrage: else we'd all be opening Adult Estate rental sims.

I was working on getting back into the animations business. Working on new animations for men and specifically couples animations for Gay men. Then this Adult content crapola started. End result I have pulled the animations I did off the market and have canned the whole idea.

I am instead reopening After Dark Prefab houses with the help of my family and we will continue in a NON adult world.

If LL can't deign to answer a simple question regarding non sexual gay animations and their classification under this new system, it just isn't worth the thousands of hours to make the animations and do them well. I have ZERO intention of moving to the Adult continent.

Not taking part in a protest that isn't even happening isn't "acting". And you say you're splitting your store? So you're keeping a store on sub-adult land? How is that any less facilitating unfair treatment? You know you can't use adult keywords if your store is on sub-adult land, right?

As I said, I don't expect to actually sell anything from the Mature store because everything that's there will be available at a deep discount at the Adult location, which fact will be prominently displayed at the Mature store. (The content there will all be PG at most--which will be true of nearly all the content at the Adult site, for that matter.) The Mature location is to be just a pointer to the Adult location, although the goods will be on offer there, and anybody whose convictions are such that they can't bring themselves to go to an Adult location may buy them at that price, in theory. (It will be interesting to see just how deeply held those convictions really are, or if I'll get folks who complain that they can't hold to their beliefs on the cheap.)

In a way maybe this is still "facilitating" in the sense that I'm still sending tier payment to LL for that Mature land. But really, any continued engagement with Second Life has that level of "facilitating." I'm referring, rather, to specific acts intended to help expedite near-universal Adult-verification, as opposed to by inaction delaying or defeating that outcome.

I'm not following your comment about "acting." I'm not proposing a protest or boycott here, I'm just talking about what I feel comfortable doing myself and where I'm comfortable spending L$s--it's to those actions that I refer with "acting." To those who feel comfortable doing otherwise, I very much doubt there's anything I can say that would make them feel differently.

To me "acting" implies making a change in behavior. It's active, not passive.

And I don't see the actions you're suggesting as a meaningful protest. If anything, they promote Linden Labs goals.

Pulling out of Second Life, shutting down my business, abandoning my land, withholding payments, that's meaningful. Paying Linden Labs MORE money (directly or otherwise, via speculators)? I honestly don't see it. I THINK I understand your reasoning, but I don't agree with it.

Maybe LL's decision that not all who apply can go to Ursula is about keeping those who miss out on the mainland to keep it active/interesting/attractive enough for children.

Obviously the Teen Grid hasn't been successful.

I think we need to pressure LL to give/swap Adult rated land to anyone in Mature that wants it.

Ursula needs to grow in size, do they still have the open sims and will the Teen Grid be freed up?

Not going to change for me, all my shops are PG at most and if I want to get jiggy with someone every 6 months in my skybox I will with no fear of being AR'd. And yeah I'll visit the sex continent and check it out or shop there, it's not that far away by teleport.

Ah, yes, reading back, that's a valid criticism of my usage. Maintaining business as usual, unchanged, is not "acting", no matter what changes take place in the environment of that business. Whether it's a sort of "sin of omission" or not, it's not "acting."
As I said, I don't really consider it a protest in the first place. And it's quite true that it hurts neither Linden Lab nor its stated goals for the Adult Content policy. And that's because I don't particularly object to those *stated* goals. I do object--vehemently--to the *actual* effects of this policy, and will do what I can to defeat them.

It may be that some protest to LL can be effective in reversing damaging parts of the policy, but I don't know what that effective protest would be. Many before us have withdrawn from SecondLife, but I'm not sure that ever has much perceived impact, considering that the overwhelming majority of sign-ups withdraw anyway.

So instead, I'm focused on what we as residents can do to minimize the negative effects of the changes. It's quite true that defeating the changes themselves would be better, but I don't know how to do that.

I'm trying to make sure that we have Linden Labs spokesmen on record so when they start suspending people who were acting in good faith we can show they were acting in good faith. If people did that during the OpenSpace debacle we wouldn't have so many idiots accepting Linden Labs claims that "it was all the residence abusers".

There goes another one. And LL can't see that these changes stifle the creative spirit that made SL what it is.

/me sighs.

@OP: Since the business I help manage and most of my SL-time is very PG-rated, and since I am "account verified" (will NOT age verify), and assuming LL can manage not to totally ruin SL in the process (which is NOT a given), I don't think I need to (or can) make any plans.

In fact, once the immense dust cloud of a typically poorly-managed project settles, and assuming that it doesn't change to actually BAN content from SL, I actually think my SL experience may get better, because I can, when in the mood for Adult content, go to the continent and wander around, "window shopping". I'm not a fan of search because it can be gamed far too easily with the bots, and wandering around seeing what inventive stuff people have come up with could be very interesting.

I'm sorry about those people who feel that their freedoms are being infringed in this move and that they no longer wish to have an in-world presence. I respect your decision, should you decide to leave SL and am very sorry to see you go.

My plan is to protest the the new Adult Content changes by staying naked + all cuffed up and refusing to patron the other Mature/PG/Kiddie sims!

YEA! That will show'em!

my plan is to find where Briana hangs out and follow her around...

It'll show 'em everything!

Woooooo!

Done.

I've sold all my land in Mainland and rented a land in an Estate.

That way and don't have to beg for a swap, don't have to mind if my stuff "seems" to be adult or mature to the Linden that will answer an eventual AR, all my friends can visit me (what would not happen if I made the swap)

Two accounts back to basic and tier 0 to LL. With the rent I am actually saving US$ 25 a month now.

Cheapier and happier

1. Nothing. My shop isn't "adult". "Mature"? Maybe. Meh. Up to whoever. Pixels are about as close-to-real-life as 'Toy Story'.

2. Also follow Briana around.

I don't sell anything Adult so I won't have to move. If the price of abandoned mainland plummets I might buy some.

you can always buy a private sim.
I thinnk thats the whole point of this for LL, to get people to buy private sims.
Me personally would not live on mainland... I dont have a store on mainland and I dont visit it often.... to many griefers and idiots.... can imagien what it will be like "if" LL decides to allow the tweens in

and I dont really sell anythin gadult either asside from sexy clothing.....

Same old propaganda about mainland being repeated here. There are just as many problems on estate land, more in fact when you factor in that the landlord can take your money and land without reimbursement and nobody will help you. Of course you will most likely reply by saying not all estate land is like that, and of course you are right but then not all mainland is how you portray either.

There are definitely mainland areas with problems but many areas without any problems. There are many estate areas with problems also. I have lived on mainland for most of my time in SL and cannot recall one a single problem with griefers I have had. Most of the idiots I encountered were land dealers who also owned private islands. Must be because I took time to find good places to own instead of buying the first thing I came across.

I wish people would actually go out and take a look some of the nicer areas of mainland before writing the whole off and talking trash about it. If you had just said that you prefer estate to mainland then I would not have responded but sometimes when I feel that people are being unfair about it I feel I have to set the record straight.

This. While if I were buying myself, I would probably choose estate for a variety of reasons, Mainland has just as many plusses and minuses. Your land is the perfect example, being your guest there has been an absolute joy. I am guilty of it myself I'm sure, but there is always a tendency to have to denigrate and deride what we don't prefer in SL. It's OK to say why we don't care for it, be we seem to have to put in the extra jab of the knife.

Thanks Brenda *hugs*