The Proposed Adult Continent Policy Has Resulted in Good Press for Second Life

To confirm what some of us have known, the annoucement of an adult continent is almost entirely an action for Second Life to obtain good press at a time when the press had started turning on it.

Whereas a few weeks ago, the widely propagated headling was on the death of Second Life, and more recently the criticism of government spending on a "fantasy world," now the headline is "Second Life Still Alive and Kicking." In part because it's finally dealing with the smut problem.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/03/16/second-life-still-alive-and-kicking

And the major coup is getting a widely read and respected publication to carry the story.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/12/AR2009031204103.html

The latter article contains an interesting sentence that seems to deflect the concern that Linden Lab is screwing people who invested in their adult content, "Residents that own land earmarked for adult activities will not have to move, but they'll be required to rope off the area and set up age-verification controls." Not what Linden Lab told us in the forums, but it's what the Washington Post is running.

This is, by the way, why opposing Linden Lab on the basis of some sort of discrimination against adult content, or right to adult content, will fail. The media, and the money that flows from good press, just don't agree.

And that's why I say the real issue is pointing out that Linden Lab happily took money from people investing in adult content, under the rules provided by Linden Lab, and now Linden Lab is re-writing the rules without consent, resulting in signficant financial loss to a lot of people who trusted Linden Lab to deal in good faith and honor its commitments.

If you think that Linden's garbage in the forums on the issue has made them look bad, right now, you are wrong. The media are giving Linden Lab an A+ for the move.

Edit: Here's another article I found. Though it doesn't praise Linden Lab's new Adult policy like the other two do, take note that the only source of information in any of these articles comes solely from Linden Lab employees. Linden Lab is writing the press.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/virtualworlds/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=215900011&pgno=1&queryText=&isPrev=

"Residents that own land earmarked for adult activities will not have to move, but they'll be required to rope off the area and set up age-verification controls"

Which is a solution that wouldn't cause half the fuss and would leave estate owners happier, if only that were the proposal.

"But adult activities are also what has kept certain brands and companies from setting up shop in-world"

Like who? I read this a lot, but no one ever gives examples.

"While estimates show that just 2%-4% of activity in Second Life would be construed as too sexy for minors...." says Webpronews. Leaving side the questionability of the 2-4% figure why the reference to "minors"? I thought we were being told that 2-4% of activity was too sexually explicit for mature adults?!

yeah this new hit on Monday .. just two business days after it notice here ..

I sometime wonder if this whole thing is so that LL can bring more RL Porn into SL

Playboy/Huster Big money big Names ... what would that do for the place you hang out at??

I didn't catch that misstatement.

Is it sloppy reporting (of course, not confirming the information one is given by a source is sloppy reporting), or is it Linden Lab lying? Linden Lab now has the media saying that only a very tiny fraction of Second Life has the "deviants" that companies are worried about.

Maybe the way to put pressure on Second Life is to start showing the media outlets that they cannot trust what Lindens tell them about Second Life. If the Lindens will lie about the adult plans, they would also lie about things like their profitability.

Fisher-Price maybe?

WebProNews are email spammers. Or rather, the company is - iEntry. Once you subscribe you can't get out. If you try to opt out, the news emails stop and it appears to have worked, but down the road they come again. No matter how many times you opt out of all their publications, they come back sooner or later.

I think they're talking about private islands that are marked adult. They're just saying that they won't have to move.

*laughs*

No, LL is not 'writing the press', they are paying their public relations agency, Lewis PR (http://www.lewispr.com/main/) to place stories for them. Every company you've ever heard of has a PR group, either in-house or a firm. For a major story Lewis may go to industry pundits for a quote, for example whoever is putting together Gartner's magic quadrant for virtual worlds. But, as you note, SL has not been the press's darlling lately, so I imagine favorable pundit quotes were hard to get.
.

That's ok.I gave them your email address when I signed up. I had to seduce one of your bots to get it, but it was worth it for the laughs it will bring.

That's always just been a convenient excuse to avoid dealing with the reality that "certain brands and companies" are not here because there's no way to spin the numbers to convince the shareholders that it'd be as profitable for them to be here, advertising to 80,000 people, as it is to just keep using radio and TV to advertise to MILLIONS of people.

lol. You didn't need to. They've had it for years - that's how I know they are email spammers. That, plus the fact that others have also found the same thing.

I don't criticize Linden Lab for using a press firm to its best advantage.

Part of the problem is that "journalists" are just quoting whatever Linden Lab (through its press agency) tells them. (Of course, that's not something unique to coverage of Second Life; internet "journalism" tends not to practice fact-checking). Part of the problem I think is that we complain to each other about things on forums, rather than going to the press like Linden Lab does.

Because Linden Lab is supplying all the information and no one is challenging it, the practical result is that Linden Lab is writing the press.

And that's why they get away with freely lying. No one challenges them on it.

Now you tell me......

At the end of the day, sex sells copy. Tales of no sex do not. It won't be long before the "spin" that really makes the press is: "Second Life has now become so overrun with sex that it has been forced to open a whole new continent specifically devoted to the activity"

You know, I've been trying to make this point for days now. Ironically, LL setting up an XXX rated continent may be intended to whitewash SL, but in reality is a business opportunity for RL porn/violence sites. Operating in Ursula, they could now sell anonymous 3D immersive sex/violence without having to bother about streaming video or risking lawsuits from offended residents.

Edit: Even if it doesn't actually happen, it certainly could be portrayed as LL devoting resources to porn/violence, as you say.

The Law of Unintended Conseqences strikes again!

Linden Lab has never wanted to get rid of the adult content, in my opinion. They aren't choosing between companies and adult content; they are trying to have both. Whitewashing for the companies and simultaneously boosting the sex business wouldn't be an unintended consequence, it would be a major coup. They are assuming that the adult providers will stay despite being screwed hard.

The problem is that the changes of the new policy have to burden someone. Linden Lab decided that, though it and the companies it is courting would get the most benefit, the cost of the change would be pushed entirely upon the adult content providers. They already have money invested, and will just take the hit rather than giving up everything they have invested.

An adult company has noticed and we are waitng.

(Ps its more than one of us here in the valley who love tech/sex/money. You won't know what hit you.)

Too late!

I made a big thing about it in their WebProWorld forum a few years ago, and they vehemently denied it all. But then some of their regular users joined in saying the same thing as me. There is no doubt about it - they are email spammers. Their whole business is the advertising revenue from email publications, so it's in their interests not to throw away email addresses once they have them. The higher the distribution, the more they can charge for advertising.

The latest email newsletters I got from them were just a couple of months ago. I may have received more, but I only do a cursory scan of my email Subjects before permanently deleting them all except for the odd one that leaps out at me. Their normal way of doing it is to sneak one through some time after you've opted out of them, and then send more and more if you don't opt out again. But even then they start sneaking them through again sometime later.

But it's simply not true, well not until LL tell us and the United adult sims have a definite right to try and get a bailout, it worked for the sailing sims.

for those who wonder about who wont come in due to the adult content...I have this example. We have sims in which universities have had a presence. One of those required that our sims were set to PG rather than mature in order to agree to participate in our educational projects. At the time our sims were mature but we ran them as if they were PG. So, we changed the designation and got the university's involvement with no issues.

*Laughs*

I can't help but wonder if whatever wingnut evangelized this idea at LL will now be quitting to found a virtual worlds pr0n company! No matter whose stats you use, internet pornography is a multiple-billions/year business. And the total market cap for virtual worlds would be, what, 30 million max?

*thinks*

Probably I should stop talking about this and do a business plan, lol!
.

A University is generally over 18 and will often deal with over 18 material. When I was a lad at school our teacher let us read x amount of a book but wouldn't let us read the rest. When we were 15-16 our English teacher let us read the Virgin and The Gypsy, he wanted us to read Lady Chatterly's lover as he felt it was a better book for English literature but explained it was absolutely not allowed, a uni however would allow that.

Is PG really the right level for a university?

Agreed. A Linden employee sought out the Suicide Girls and boasted about in in the Linden Official blog. This is when everyone wanted to know how a outside group got their own last name.

Instead of making the verification seamless and apart of every new registration.


.