Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Main Forum Thread

I have only seen one resciently. and clearly posted my views on the move.

my point: I' 22 years old, I know rght from wrog and I know how to move away from something if I don't want to see it. these so-called adults are capable of the same, but choose not to, and to bitch and moan instead

Dear Linden Lab employees.
Pursuant to validate the humanness of my existence and my personal opinion on the Age verification subject, I have decided to write you this essay. Please take some time to look into my points, as I believe they are very valid.

I am over two years SL Resident who is very concerned about the drastic changes that will take place in the SL environment as whole with the implement of the new ‘Adult’ content features within our World.

SecondLife has been an awesome well made and continuously developed online platform and has probably been the best one released so far as I've been a Resident.
It allows us to start a virtual/second life where a parallel universe of wonders runs. What makes this universe wonderful is the precious few things to really keep us entertained after the shiney newness fades. Our hang outs, dance clubs and role play groups, among many other things, are what keep us here and that are being considered as ‘Adult’ and bad content. I base myself on my experiences in SL along with my SL friends and communities I’ve been part of.

This also includes the skilled artists behind the screens who have put their blood and souls, coffee and nights without sleep into their creations, including the awesome skin you are wearing.

*I* Am Adult Content
The following was quoted from the Linden Labs blog: https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/community/blog/2009/03/12/upcoming-changes-for-adult-content

"Based on our research, we estimate that around 2-4% of content on the mainland would be considered Adult according to our current thinking on defining that."
- Cyn Linden

In no way I intend to offend, I’d just like to say I am surprised that role play communities in SL for one can represent such a small amount of content to be flagged and taken under this new system.
We just have to take a peek at the numbers of residents who are part of role play groups such as NoR, City of Lost Angel’s, Midian City, The Crack Den, Toxia City, Samurai Island, Gor sims among many others. (Note that these are only *some* role play sims listed here, the few I mentioned here can easily reach the 10,000 SL residents, and I am not taking clubs and other activities in consideration, just some of the top role play groups.).

The three parts of The Linden's plan to respond to this belief:
"First, it will provide a way to geographically separate Adult content and activities to a part of the “mainland” designed to accommodate these activities (Estate owners with Adult content on their land will be required to flag their content; they will not be required to move). Second, it will filter search results, so that those who do not wish to see “Adult” results will not. Third, it will require that those who access or see “Adult” content (whether on land or in search) have had their accounts verified – such as by a payment or age verification method."
- Cyn Linden

I beg your pardon again, I hope you do not mind to have me commenting once more and suggesting another way around, if some people are discontent on coming across such events in SecondLife, they simply should not enter on those sims at all, when the residents teleport into such places, they have:

- The picture of the sim clearly showing them what is the sim about
- The description of the land of the sim, clearly stating what is the sim about
- The notecard givers with rules and explaining to the residents what the sim is about and if they do not wish to participate to simply teleport out.

No one forces SL residents to take part on these activities if they don’t like them; (I don’t go to real life clubs complaining about their music and to shut it down because I don’t like that style/music); the residents know the places they are teleporting into, they are not forced to go there, they go by their own free will. In my opinion the simple Mature flag to hide such sims from search would be enough and adequate, along with notecard givers containing the rules for each sim.

I find this to be bad and I’m very concerned in a lot of ways.

1.) It is bad for SL, it is bad for our SL businesses and it is bad for our freedom of expression.
2.) Our art suffers in this model, whether it is roleplay, photography, design for inworld events and products.
3.) As for role players, not every single one of them is purely interested in activities that have no sexual or violent component, I feel such constraints with loose definitions of 'Adult' stifle a natural culture appropriate for a 'second life' escape from reality.
4.) I have not been to any skin shops that only show clothed bodies to sell skins, nor does it makes any sense to me but for a fact, it will make the customer base of skin sellers to shrink.
5.) It seems odd for me to have a teen and adult grid and yet have to move half of the adult one to make it more adult.
6.) I have not seen many teens in the adult grid in my whole SL experience; (and I used to be a roleplay coordinator in a high traffic sim at some point) I came across two teens in the adult grid, which were immediately reported to Linden Labs. All that in two years.

Thank you to look into my post, I hope you do not take any offense by anything I wrote above, it is meant to politely and purely transmit the concerns of a two year SL resident that has been having a great experience in SL so far and would love to see it keep going.

Gor itself is nearly 50 sims+

Thats why I dont think this adult content only represents 2 to 4% of the SecondLife, like its stated on the LL blog and we're only looking at Gor sims, lets not get started on the whole rest of RPG communities within SL.

indeed, that 2-4% figure is bogus

That's pretty much the whole point of this debate! Second Life already has mechanisms in place to prevent someone not seeking out adult material from accidently encountering it, particularly in search, so we're all wondering why LL doesn't just simply clean up search and tighten enforcement instead of developing a new measure that, too, will eventually fall by the enforcement wayside?

How many of those are on the mainland and how many are private estates? It's unlikely they're considering private islands in that figure.

Scary thought. My tier is due on my brothel today. Do I pay it and face that fact that next week it will be baron empty land?

I'm twenty-three, also know right from wrong, and have a completely different persepective about why I feel the way I do.

Of course, to date, after thousands of posts, all I have seen is words like puritans, trolls and now "so-called adults" thrown about and yet not a single poster on the other side of this issue has cared to ask anyone that is in favor of an adult area, why they feel the way they do. Much easier to decide for them how they feel, and call them names.

Another thing I have learned besides right from wrong ... those seeking tolerance, are 99% of the time, the most intolerant of them all.

Wll, I tryto make a vald point, an adult knows whatto o whenthe don't want to see something. hence I said so-called adults

Wise words and i hope some read and act on them

Although I do not participate in Gor I do know a good bit about it and have been exposed to it off and on for the last 10 years. I don't think Gor will be included in the move as most of the sims are not mainland sims if any are. It is my understanding that the move affects only mainland sims/parcels/business/what have you. If Gor nonmainland sim owners want to voluntarily move thier sims to the adult content continent, they will be accomodated, but they will not be forced to move. And with the creation of The Gor Grid (which is not a part of SL) I think many will chose to move there when it is finally opened to the "public". Although some will say RPing Gor is about sex, the lifers and those who know it well will tell you that it is NOT about sex. If you read any of the books (regardless of how well or not well written they are) you will find there isn't nearly as much sex taking place as one might expect. The Gor books are mainly the adventures of one man in his travels through Gor with some books filling in details about certain aspects of Gor.

Many of us have asked Nany why, and gotten a different answer every time. After a while we get tired of that kind of thing. Sorry if you're caught up in the pushback.

And I'm old enough to know right from left.

They don't have to move, but they have to flag the estate (or maybe the sim, but if so that makes mockery of the whole "adult mainland" plan) as adult instead.

The most vocal proponents of the plan are clearly trolling.

a few things that really struck me at today brown bag was LL's willingness to listen to suggestions such as a showcase for Adult content. long and lenghtly disscusing about age verification, about having a more visible option when signing up to SL to be verified, Private estate question, Key Words and that big gray area of what is sexually overt. I dont believe nothing is writen in stone yet but still a work in progess and with some awsum questions from Stroker and other attendies. and honest and streight forward answers from te lindens that attendend. I think we got alot acomplished today. and still have a way to go. I look forward to reading the transricpts.

Maybe it's been fixed since then, but I just went there on Firefox 3.0.7 (GNU/Linux) and it all came up just fine for me.

Well it will be baron empty land if you don't pay it They're going to make the move painless and nothing is likely to move for a few weeks yet.

?? You didn't copy and paste it into a notecard for us? Oooh!

I'm sorry, just not true. There has been much return discussion with people who are voicing valid, well thought out points on why the move might be good.

I used Sindy Tsure's scanner to look at Payment-Info-On-File statistics.

Previous statements by the Lindens suggest they will likely accept either payment-info or identity-matching to consider an avatar Age Verified, so these scanning stats don't show the whole picture, but it does give us a rough idea how many active avatars tend to be linked to their real-world identities.


3/27/09 1am to 1pm (Timeframe of mostly European visitors)
Scanner Results (In this order: Scanned, NoPIOF, PIOF, PIU)


My present and futurely general-audience areas:
Alcis/ClothingStore: 75,31,2,42
Tethea/ClothingStore: 55,22,2,31
Kikai/ClothingStore: 90,44,3,43
Tyta/ClothingStore: 51,22,1,28
------------------------------------------------------
Total: 271, 119, 8, 144
Evaulation: 44% of these visitors have NoPIOF


My futurely-likely-"Adult" areas:
FP/FreeSexArea: 332,185,7,140
Wallaroo/FreeSexArea: 98,65,1,32
Distorted/PenisStore: 51,36,1,14
Tickle/FreeRParea: 28,17,0,11
--------------------------------------------
Total: 509, 303, 9, 197
Evaulation: 60% of these visitors have NoPIOF


In my shopping areas, 44% of the visitors are using anonymous avatars. Some posters in this thread have claimed that NoPOIF avatars probably don't spend money. But nearly half my shoppers are NoPOIFs... I know they're not using up their hours wandering around shops if they have no Ls to spend!

In my social/sexual areas, 60% of the visitors are using 'anonymous' avatars.

Even if these percentages aren't completely representative, it still suggests that moving a social area, sexual area or business to the Adult Continent might result in halving the number of visitors.

And if most destinations wind up with half their previous traffic, I don't know how well those destinations will survive.

Granted every time I refresh another two pages gets added on to this thread (and that should be a blatant sign to LL staff) so I'm not sure if this will get seen but.

While the idea of a poll amongst all Lindens seems a good idea, and yes, it's a vast improvement over current progression, it still is nowhere near a solution. Because even IF 99% of SL users voted anything adult, it doesn't mean a thing.

At least in the United States one (or many) person's -beliefs- should not and do not have the power to hinder another (or many) person's -rights-.

All that is needed is an added layer for the chooser to decide what kind of areas they wish to go to, and the option (as I have stated in an earlier post) to be either warned or blocked from entering certain sims that have been flagged by their owners.

Just spoke to Stroker and it was all voice lol

Anonymous avatars in sex areas isn't that unusual, LL could help here by verifying all the alts belonging to a main account, obviously the alts would need to be tied to the main accounts email address.

Sadly no
after and hour and half my head ws swimming
but i know of someone who did and when i get inworld latter i will get them
but most of what was discused was over voice anyways. So Text logs would of seamed very random and unfinished. but il grab them as soon as i can