Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Main Forum Thread

I'm starting to think this is just how things work at the Lab. I know at my work, every decision that gets made ends up being a battle of egos and personal agendas. Rarely is any decision made that is done the right way ... its usually done so each mega department gets a little what they want ... and yet we make money hand over fist, even during these difficult times.

I feel bad for everyone, but don't feel like the Lone Ranger. I know when the Lab released the OS sim, I was living on a quarter private full sim, and my other three neighbors moved out to get open space sims ... same prims, more land, more privacy. The sim I was living on ended up renting to things that you just couldn't live next to, unless you wanted to not be able to get to your home half the time, and/or wait five minutes for your hair to rez. I lost everything in that deal ... ditched the land, builds didn't fit on the new land so I had to rebuild ... blah, blah, blah ... I took a hot bath, had a bottle of wine and a cry, and moved on.

had tht happen alot, sim crashed get logged into a pg one. I hate that!

Seems to me Linden Lab has no choice but to abandon the open source movement and deploy a new closed source encrypted viewer.

This is because of "Naked Life". A viewer that was modified to not render clothing layers.

What you gonna do about that Mr. Klingdon? Take away skins completely and put underwear on the base layer? Everyone required to wear the default noob skins with the clothes burned on permanently?

Come on now you don't seriously think you have a choice in this matter now do you? You cannot ever have so-called PG (non mature) with Second Life unless you eliminate all user created content and make the client so it cannot render nakedness and then not release that client as open source and then make it mandatory to connect. It is your one and only possible path forward. So I fully expect you to proceed with this trajectory because anything short of it remains lawsuit bait from the 5 or 6 religious freaks that are forcing this issue here because nobody else on the planet will listen to their insane ranting.

Hey Linden Lab started it! That was the term they used, I had no idea what it meant at the time

Walking around with Uzis and saying you are looking for a Linden is probably not a good idea.

Remember, a sim owner can always impose rules beyond the LL rules. Many sims have a No Weapons policy. You should have been given the option to remove the weapons if you wanted to stay, in my opinion.

I really am stunned. I just attended the VW-BPE panel discussion Nany was on. And dangit if she wasn't GOOD, like really good. I would probably rate her 2nd in her presentation out of the 4 presenters. #1 one person was someone who seems to have been a professional non-profit staffer who has been doing it for years.

Nany was well spoken, had excellent points she hit on, and didn't come off as anything other than a hard working, well intentioned advocate.

The only glitch was my question I passed to the moderator (which was not inflammatory at all, I was actually looking forward to giving Nany some more time to speak) seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle.

All that said, it makes how Nany acts in here even more tragic. If she would give the same type of effort and make the obviously well thought out statements to her arguments for the adult partitioning, she might just sway some people on the fence.

Give it a shot Nany, you are damn good at presenting when you want to be....

hmmm, I wonder... maybe the Nany in the forums is a hijacked account. Maybe I should IM in-world Nany and ask her.

*shaking her head in disbelief still*
Patasha

talked to quite a few of thm over the last few months on certian issues, I forget what reason I had at the time, but it was far from "bodily harm" and it was a LL-founded and ran sim, as far as I remember

And they could have had a no weapons policy. Hell they were banning everything else at the thing.

well, didn't notice one, but but there were carying weapons themselves lol (I would know it was a topic of conversation I had wiht one of them)

LL's servers and main offices are on US soil ergo they have to obey US laws.

C&P from a JP Linden post of 3 March 2009:
"We have four key guiding principles to work from, and we’d like you to consider them and share your thoughts:

1) We will create clear and consistent definitions of what constitutes adult content, in line with our Community Standards,

2) We will enable easy, reliable, and consistent ways to be able to access content by type - the goal being to ensure that Residents can choose what they want to see, purchase and experience.

3) We will implement effective Resident services and dialog to ensure that those who provide Adult goods or services can continue their activities without long-term disruption or loss of business.

4) We will implement account verification systems that provide an additional level of assurance for providers of Adult content that only adults are able to access their content. Such a system might be tied, for instance, to a verified payment method like a credit card, a validation by our age verification provider, or another credible method of validation.

Please use this thread to share your thoughts on these goals and to ask any questions you may have about why we will be making these changes for Adult content in Second Life."

Note that there are 4 GOALS that LL say they WILL create, or enable, or implement. That sounds to me like there is no option here for residents to re-write or alter those goals. So be it, SL is their BIG playground and like it or not, THEY do get to set the rules. Secondlife.com is a registered domain, hosted on their own servers.....
Registrant:

Linden Research, Inc.
945 Battery Street

San Francisco CA
94111
US

Domain name: secondlife.com

Created on: 2002-04-29
Expires on: 2010-04-29

Linden Labs provides a website that its clients pay a fee to play THEIR game on THEIR servers. They hold the right and obligation to state how THEIR game is played... despite the fact that MANY clients pay money to BUY land [comparable to buying hosting space with any other webhost] those clients do not own anything... they are just tossing money into a webhosting business. And if the terms of service [or the client's opinion of same] changes, it is inherent upon the client to find another playground in which to play. As I see it, LL's failure is in not providing a clear definition of what is acceptable where, and not enforcing what is already defined [from TOS "You must be at least 13 years of age to participate in the Service. Users under the age of 18 are prohibited from accessing the Service other than in the area designated by Linden Lab for use by users from 13 through 17 years of age (the "Teen Area". Users age 18 and older are prohibited from accessing the Teen Area. Any user age 18 and older who gains unauthorized access to the Teen Area is in breach of this Agreement and may face immediate termination of any or all Accounts held by such user for any area of the Service. If you reside in a jurisdiction where the age of majority is greater than 18 years old, you are prohibited from accessing the Service until you have reached such age of majority." ] It is up to LL to enforce that [and all other] term(s) of service.

As I compose this post, there are approximately 70,000 users online in SL. This whole topic has in the vicinity of 6000 posts when the related threads are considered, with MANY contributors having made multiple posts. So the total number of users who are speaking out on these goals seems like it is possibly a very small proportion of the total user base. It would be nice if everyone could/would be heard, but I doubt that can/will happen.

There has been a lot of name calling and apparent intolerance throughout this discussion.... silly me thought the real and virtual worlds were large enough to allow for everyone's opinion; I guess that was quite an error. Some have posted that it is their RIGHT to do what they want where and how they want to do it..... I am not sure that is true, as I believe that the rights and freedoms of any individual end where they encroach on the rights and freedoms of others. That means there has to be respect and tolerance of all. When it comes to judging what is acceptable, that will vary with the individual, colored by their own personal standards, tastes, and culture. No one individual is the ultimate judge; the closest we have to that is the terms of service as provided by our host, Linden Labs.

As for my own preferences, when I encounter anything that I dislike, rather than bitch and gripe about it, I just teleport home and relieve myself of the stress of judging someone else by my standards. How's that for apathy?

Don't shoot the messenger for stating their opinion..... just wait, [however long it may take] for LL to give definitions of the acceptable game play. And then be prepared for a barrage of differing opinions as each of us is judged by our peers.

One has to wonder why a PG ( parent or guardian ) category exists on a grid that explicity states 'over 18'. I just don't ever recall seeing anyone with a parent or guardian on a PG sim.

Why should they care about that?

LL will be creating a new forum specifically for people who insist on making references to 'brown bags' which some users find offensive...

</tongue in cheek>

I think that the best way to proceed here is to place some definition in the terms-of-service in regards to obtrusive scenery, this could include incredibly ugly builds that destroy a view (fairly extreme-cases only), but more importantly would include things like pornography plastered to the outside of an adult establishment, and also include things like shouting reward-chairs and so-on.

The idea here is that if content impacts a land-owner's enjoyment/use of their own parcel, then the owner of the content should be asked to correct it (first by the land-owner), and if they refuse, then they will be relocated or have offending items removed. So, an adult-establishment which is contained within a nice, elegant building, and has clearly marked signs warning of the content inside, would be just fine. But a build with in-your-face adult-content would be abuse-reportable.

To this end, special adult areas could still be created as a sort of red-light-district, where it's okay for adult parcels to do whatever they want (within reason). However, it would still be okay for people to own adult content on mature land, so long as there is sufficient warning (e.g - "Adult content upstairs", and that they enable any reasonable features that prevent non-verified users from accessing these areas. By reasonable I of course mean something like 3d permissions zones (https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-99) rather than tall ban-lines that let people view the adult-content anyway.

Because, despite LL's best efforts, it is impossible for LL to deliver G rated content as long as there are third party clients that disable certain features resulting in the dreaded nipples and bits showing.

Imagine what the Herald could do with that client at a SL birthday keynote.

If LL wants to make any part of Second Life forced G rated (LL's "PG" is actually G) then they have to prevent nakedness period. Only one way to accomplish this.

Being the ignorant Amerocentric trollop that I am I never gave any thought to this at all but my hubby pointed out this might have something to do with the 'Extreme Pornography' law passed in Britain? Any thoughts on this from across the pond? Would the British LL office be criminally liable under this law?

That has happened to me too. For some reason, it is always the same place, so there must be one place that I am directed to when SL has some problem. I have ended up there a few times, but, thankfully, only once naked. I think one man was angry...but, I think I made a friend too. I could not get out right away either, there were a couple of moments when I was frozen there naked. Thank god I looked hot.
BT

My SL client just crashed because I resized the window, and when I opened up the client once more, it came up with the 'Resident Survey'.

Is your Second Life experience getting better or worse?

Well I must say I would LOVE to actually fill this survey out, but because of a strange bug that is appearing in this latest client, I can't actually click anything on the front login page above the blue bar. So I can't fill out the survey. If I could, I would say, "WORSE YOU FOOLS".

care to quote that law?

Hmm... curiously i haven't seen as many staff posts answering questions on this thread. Some questions are very fascinating, and seem like they require a bit of thought.
Yes i am against FORCEBLY moving people. Look back into history people. What has ever truely been accomplished and what good has forceble relocation been in the past. To those of you that support forcebly moving people please keep in mind that this will make a huge impact on a lot of peoples RL as well. Some of us used what we do in SL to help support us in RL as crazy as that sounds, and also if you find what you landed in offensive, hit ctrl+shift+H and leave quickly. Hard to imagine teleporting home when you've landed on a sim that has adult content. Most landmarks for places i've seen even tell you that there is ADULT activity. So make sure you are reading where you're landing not just clicking take me there when i search for random words. As for you people that like to skydive into a sim, watch the lovely little land info bar on the top. You really can not predict wha twill happen in SL or where you will land, but yet again the lovely shortcut to teleport quickly away is there. I've searched through my old landmarks and landed on peoples homes,or hey i landed in an all womens club from where there used to be a store. Did i complain about it, no. I simply appoligised, and hit the teleport to home keys.

I'm a DJ and the 2-4% comment makes me laugh. They apparently need to get out of that 2-4% area a little more because from what i've seen and where i've been. there is a vaster number of Adult themed sims. As a matter of fact the home i rent is on one of those so called adult themed sims. Almost every club i have ever worked at would be considered adult themed and i will tell you i have worked in just about every form of club there is. I know of quite a few people that survive on just what they make from thier club earnings in sl and turn to rl cash. This will hurt them severly.

SL is my place to go and clear my mind after a stressful day. Where i can get together with some close friends and we can either chill at my home or even go to a club and laugh at the bad emotes. But where we go is up to us as the USERS WHO AGREE TO THE TOS. As the user it is your preference to view mature and adult content. If you don't lie what your seeing, or you find things offensive in a sim, there is a simple solution. Just leave. If someone is wearing clothing you find offensive, don't stare and go oh my god that is so offensive. Just either ignore them or walk away. Common sense will take you far in both sl and rl.

As for the kids that figure out ways to get on to SL and are under 18, it is the PARENTS responsibility to monitor thier computer activity. NOT the rest of the world. I'm going to make a point and i know some people are not going to agree with me. The world isn't all nice and pretty like a Barny cartoon and to make it seem that way is false.

Oh I havent a clue! - let me go find it - so sorry!

hehehe - this is what happens when you listen to your spouse!!!

yea, any DJ knows better, (I'm one too) pa lyrics anyone? you don't like what you're listening to, there's a STOP button for that

no poblem, I could get it from other sources, buti t's best it's posted here methinks (US resident)