"Broadly Offensive" material, the death of SL?

As many of you know Linden Labs released a blog recently describing a crack down on various issues within second life. ( http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/05/31/keeping-second-life-safe-together/ ) cut and paste that to take a look for yourself.

In it they briefly describe things as Broadly offensive. Focusing their attention on the sexual content within second life. What is the problem with two adults of or over the age of consent within their respective country exploring -consentual sexual role play- that is not in anyway shape or form ilegal in nature according to the laws of the land of where Linden Labs (hence forth refered to as LL) is located?

Some people make the arguement that they should not be exposed to such activities. That they find such offensive, lewd, and generally unnacceptable. The beauty of second life though (at least for now) is the power of choice. If person A finds person B offensive, or acting in what they find an offensive manner they can choose to "mute" said person. Or they can teleport away from said person(s). Worse case scenario they can log out of second life for a brief moment and wait for that person to go away before logging back in. Truely theres no reason for anyone to stay near anything they find offensive in second life.

Rather what LL has created is a new form of griefing. People purposefully seeking out things that they find offensive and harassing those that were otherwise not bothering them. Already today I have been approached by three seperate people threatening me against three seperate issues. All of which a direct result of this blog entry. The first one was a person who went out of their way to seek me out about a consentual role playing group that i am involved with. The key word there is consentual, no one is forced to join the group, no one is forced to participate, and everyone is, to my knowledge of consenting age and all of their avatars represent consenting age or older as well.

Another person harrassed me today about the BDSM / D/s lifestyle and its imoralities. As well as my choice to prefer the company of my own gender. LL What you have done is created a giant witch hunt, where now you have opened the flood gates to allow harassment of people that were not in anyway affecting these extreme conservitives.

You also describe "extreme or graphic violence". Alright then, lets continue our crack down then. You want to make "Second Life safe". Sure alright, then you will need to start banning everything that makes Second Life a success right now. You will need to ban all "furry" style avatars (of which you even now have a default furry avatar) as they could be found offensive in that they can be viewed as beastiality.

You will need to ban all weapons in second life. You couldnt have swords, knives, gernades, tanks, guns, warplanes, starships, laser guns, etc etc etc, with out violence, or graphic violence.

May as well crack down on everyone that enjoys the BDSM or Gorean lifestyles as well. Cant possibly have that in here either.

On top of that You should also ban all sexual activities as well. Close all strip clubs, dance clubs, and all stores and shops featuring sexual content like pose shops, beds, sex play items so on and so forth. That could be found offensive.

Where as i fully agree that real life imagry of "sexual violence" and "graphic violence" should not be allowed in second life. I see nothing wrong with such things within an avatar, with as i stated above you have the choice not to be around such things.

I realise that LL will not actually read this nor will they actually read anything that the majority of the responders to the blog entry said. Yet i can hope cant I? Sexuality in second life is a key component to it where people can safely explore fantasies in a fantasy world and digital realm, with out harming anyone in the real world. Sexual content is in just about everything everywhere in second life. From the clothing that people wear, to the items that a vast majority buy.

Take this away and you will lose your second life.

Onyx Syakumi said it better than i on the 16th response to the blog entry http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/05/31/keeping-second-life-safe-together/

i encourage you to read it.

Furthermore, the only reason that LL is doing this now is to push their game toward the big money corporations. Yes as the big corps come in it will be nice for LL for a while. However as LL starts banning the reasons why people come to second life in the first place the corporations will begin to leave as well as there is no more population to see the corporations, and then LL will die.

So the sanitization police have come to the land of freedom and expression: Second Life, based in the USA, a land of relative free speech.

How sad.

It doesn't matter where they are located...Money Talks.

I agree with you Naomi, and I have a very... known reputation sexuality wise, so people can come and harass me and report me as much as I want. This is a game and I play it for fun and for sex. If I can't do that then I won't play it, and if someone wants to get me banned for it by all means try and see if you can. If you do, oh well I guess I'll just kill myself! Nottttt. I'll just move on and play something else

Exactly Brenda, and the money that LL is seeking will dissapear once they start down this path.

Watch them claim that gays and lesbians are "broadly offensive" bring it on, lets go to court.

I've been IMed by a person complaining about products I sell. I'm a furry but in no way do I encourage or condone bestiality, if I felt any of my products were easily mistaken for such then I wouldn't be comfortable with selling them.

Any other person(s) who message me in such a way will be reported by myself as broadly offensive, I don't need to be harassed for things I do not force upon people nor go out of my way to publicly demonstrate. My furry avatar is perfectly clean for general use and I mostly keep to myself.

I can understand cracking down on truly illegal things, after looking at excerpts of US law I can agree that following the wording, sexual age-play is in fact illegal, though I still don't see who it hurts. I don't like it, but then there's plenty of things I don't like in SL, but they don't do me any harm so I see no reason to do them any in turn. However, this recent stance is extremely dangerous and while technical issues often threaten the stability of SL, it keeps going regardless, but this has me truly concerned.

No. Greed and bad judgement are going to be the death of SL. In my opinion.

well the witch hunters have already began.

As i continue to be harassed out of random IMs from people i have never interacted with or even seen on the same sim, i will continue to report you for harassment.

While oddly I haven't gotten a one....

I think most would agree with my recent post in the "thank you" thread that's trying to be a self-righteous group of zealots. They're worse than some of the church groups who'd walk up to me on the street and get in my face to tell me "You're going to hell!" Well... YAY! I won't be around them.

Since those prudes don't have any common sense, I thought I'd toss an idea out here for some opinions. I wrote Robin Linden earlier with a suggestion I think would create compromise in regards to SL being "safe".

Here it is:

Since the teen grid is already "clean" (e.g. no drugs, sexual content, ect.), why not open it up to 13+ rather than strictly 13 - 17? This would give those who dislike "offensive" content to have as much of a rich experience as those of us who don't care about/like "offensive" content.

Thoughts, opinions, constructive criticism? Just no rotten fruit/veggies, please.

How about ripe tomatoes? ;P

I'm not going to hell in a handbasket.

I'm going to hell in a tiny 0.1 oz. vial IN that handbasket.

Good thing I don't believe in hell (and it's always a good idea to shoot missionaries on sight--can't go to hell if you don't know about it ).

This is a game, it's not real.

Safe?! We already ~are~ safe.

Nothing here happens without consent, in fact, nothing here actually HAPPENS.

It's just cartoon characters on a screen.
It's just ADULT people writing about sex, IMAGINING having sex.
NONE OF IT IS REAL!

What the heck are they trying to keep me safe from?
SL is safer than walking do the street.
If I don't want to see cartoon characters doing certan things, I can just TP away.
THAT is safe.

It's a ridiculous notion and it's censorship.

For what ever reason LL is trying to clean up the grid, it's obvious in many of their recent actions, like this and the verification they are going to implement.

"Your world, your imagination"???
Yeah...right.
Just so long as you have ~no~ imagination.

While this won't effect me directly, I just think it's the dumbest thing I have ever heard of, and it will probably mean death for SL.
They get away with a lot, poor performance, inadequate support, no customer service to speak of, but this...people will leave over this one.

And I don't get how it is that it's so easy to see real porn on the internet, without having to prove who you are, how old you are, without paying anything, sometimes even when you don't even want to see it - yet to see cartoon characters ~pretend~ to do similar things, you have to jump through a bunch of hoops and then make sure that the avatars aren't doing something that someone, somewhere in the world won't find offensive.

~shakes head in disbelief

AR sent for name calling.

Just to point out one little factoide about the Linden Labs:

Before and during the release of the movie "300" Linden Labs built an entire sim dedicated to the promotion of said film. In the movie it shows artistically and graphically an acient battle. There is a lot of violence, dismemberment, blood, beheading and so forth. (awesome film by the way, not for the graphic violence but the dialog and artistic workings)

So tell me Linden Labs, are you only now against graphic violence since your contract with the film producers is up and you are no longer profiting from promoting said violence?

Oh yes and theres a rape scene in that movie too...


Love how hypocrytical you are LL.

Naomi

this is only going to get worst with what I read in the paper this morning about SL puting 10,000 servers in other contersy to improve preformance and they well have to abide by these other contersy rules....

oh SL your doing more then just shooting your self in the foot I think your cutting a dull knife every one of your mager arterys.


there is a reason why contery are seprate cause there rules do not work well with one anther what maybe a right in one contery is illegale in anther


I've hostly thought about getting my own island but now I histate now with this stuff going on I do not think it well be worth doing but a waist of money with way SL plan to kill it self. Once some thing remotely simler to SL comes along I am leaving I have had enough and am taking my friends with me... dout they well be missed only thing that well be mist is the money they spend in SL. I do not only find this Broadly Offensive on rules of other conterys being force on me but I find it compleatly Offensive. And they choise that SL well give me of eather acipting it or leaving I think I will choose leaving.

One more thing... As mentioned in the blog:

"...violence including rape, real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of extreme or graphic violence, and other broadly offensive content are never allowed or tolerated within Second Life..." which as everyone has picked apart already goes on to reference the Community Standards.

which i'll take a small part of right now and show you:

"... Content, communication, or behavior which involves intense language or expletives, nudity or sexual content, the depiction of sex or violence, or anything else broadly offensive must be contained within private land in areas rated Mature (M)."

Hmm... contradict much?

Love,
Naomi

Lunacy, this is.

And it's not even a question of "morality". Sex and vice is the very lifeblood of SL. It is what drives the economy, it is what people do here.

If SL wanted a "clean" world they would actually have to provide some content for their "metaverse", make it a game and pursue a totally different design and vision from the current one.

The simple truth is that without the erotic content, prostitutes and as an outlet for various vile and wicked fantasies, THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO POINT TO SECOND LIFE. Take that away, there will be no business made, the economy will grind to a standstill and then even the "normal" people who benefit financially from SL will be forced out in droves.

If the Lindens want to kill SL in order to hit the mainstream, way to go.


EDIT: Syntax mess up

Um, i may be the minority here, but i've never wanted anything even remotely sexual in my use of SL, but that other people do doesn't bother me at all. That LL seeks to suppress this aspect of SL and even encourage witchhunts(?!!!), THIS I find extreemly offensive. SL has been an intresting platform that Has been getting less and less like anyplace i want to be( not because of even the worst greiffing, because of LL) that's my 2 cents.

Doesn't really matter if you do or not. If all the pixel sex people leave you'd notice. Some of the things you buy--while non sexual--might be made by someone who either is into pixel sex or makes items for pixel sex. If that person left you wouldn't have your stuff (or more stuff from them).

Then at some point you'd leave to.

And then so would everyone else as the grid gets less and less populated.

um, did you read past the first line?

Hard Alley: Broadly Offensive and proud of it!

That's all I've got to say.

It's a popular thing to give "new" players landmarks to Hard Alley in Violet WA. It's also rather interesting to note that when we give them the landmark, not telling them what Hard Alley is, and they teleport, they rarely if ever come back to the welcome area >.>

One must assume that they learn all they need to know about playing SL. LOL!

Yes. I was using the first line as a seguway.