Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Main Forum Thread

This is pathetic !

Sims have flag of PG and mature

Classifieds Also

So, why create more things ???


Ah, I'm pretty curious about the localization of search results !! Who will be the genious that will solve a puzzle like this:

Dick in Portuguese of Brazil = Cacete
Bread in Portuguese of Brazil = Cacete

I'm sure that a filter by world in search will cause so many consequences like this !!!

Better publicity. At the moment, it's true that people can get on SL underage, and go absolutely anywhere they want. It's part of what those people that feel like attacking SL use to do that. 'Our kids could be on there, and they aren't stopping that!'

So, enact a verification system and so on, and you solve that (Kinda), which is better publicity and saves LL's ass a bit more.

Also, if there ever IS a merger (Maybe there will, maybe there won't.), then we're already set to take part of that.

Rule one: if kids wnat on to the adult sections they will get one, no matter what you do!!!

Rule Two: Most kids can get age verification info, hell some know it better than their parents.

Rule Three: WE Are not their parents, so why are we all being forced to be them??

Fact is if you want to see Second Life shrink and loose hundreds if not thousands of sims, simply put in age verification that requires free accounts to give sl info or creditcards.

They will leave in droves. They said so last year and many did so last year and the idea was dropped

now here we are again with lindens ready to attempt to daage the memebership again

I never said it will actually prevent anything. It will prevent a kid from joining on pure impulse occasionally, though. Hell, I know kids will do what they want, I joined SL at 17, and was a Guide in Everquest at 16, both of which require 18, and the latter being the harder to fake, for me. If a kid wants in, a kid will get in.
But it DOES offer LL the ability to say 'Look, we do just about everything we can. If they're getting past that, that is completely your fault. If they're verifying with your information, even more your fault'. By requiring verification (Even just for the Adult section), they can take away any chance of being blamed for kids getting on the grid, or at least seeing naughty stuff on the section they get into. They have measures in place to PREVENT that.

I agree with you, and just about everyone else who says this. It will not help, not at all, and LL will see a huge loss in membership. But I'll stick around. I just want to make stuff, so I've no fear of anything affecting me.

Some simple questions for this option, if this whole thing goes through.

1) Is there a cutoff date? If I offer payment info after these policies are enacted, is it no longer good enough for verification? IE, are you only grandfathering in accounts with payment info already?

2) Is there a payment required when said information is offered? Will we be required to upgrade to a premium account to keep our avatars Adult-accessable?

3) How long will payment info be considered valid payment info? IE, how often will we need to renew?

4) If payment info is removed as out-of-date, will the adult flag be removed as well? A credit card expiring does not take years off a person, after all.

is it me or everytime something fun comes out lindens take it away!! have u noticed any thing good in last year from them.. not me just lag lag more lag more crashes and more and more friends quiting cause of all the fun being taken it is a game suppose to be fun!!! i guess this is y red light is gettting so popular the dont take away ur fun... what million dollar lindens dont realize its more than a game to some.. like me who makes rl money on sl!! harder and harder to do when all they do is run off players of the game and jack prices of everything cause not as many ppl paying them LINDENS IT IS A GAME A WAY OF LIFE A JOB STOP TAKING THE FUN!!!!

So payment info on file that Linden Labs uses EVERY MONTH to get my tier fees from my bank account does or does not count? Only my XStreet PayPal (verified 7+ years) information counts? And this DOES replace "age verification", which does NOT work? SL's age verification system has rejected both my valid SSN (the IRS is pretty sure that's me) AND my valid state drivers license. If I am FORCED to move my club...it would be nice to know I can go there.

Ok please someone tell me where did any linden get the 4 to 6% will be effected. Wait is this some Liden that has not logged in for three years??

Under any "normal" claisification of what is "Adult" I would bet over 50% of all private estates and over 35% of the mainland would contain Adult material.

Now lets look at the Verification. Want to bet there is a charge going to come with this soon?? Lindens can see all those alt accounts getting dinged. I personally have to ahve three alts just for my businesses thanks to the limits on groups etc.

Now lets look at free accounts, want to guess how much these people spend on sl?? Free does not mean they do not spend. Most europeens on free accounts will never veify they will leave, and that is not just tlak tha tis them stating it and these are avatars that spend a lot of money here.

Want to guess how many businesses and sims rely on these free accounts to survive??

Want tog uess how many of my friends, your friends, etc we will loose over this verification mess??

Want to guess how many sims will close.

Want to guess how much your sim or land will be worth soon??

Do this and not much.

So the big question is:

How does Linden Labs plan to compensate us all when our land drops in value and our Businesses and private sims don't generate the traffic because they decided to change the rule after we all spent our time and our money to build them up??

Where do we send the bill, Mr. Linden??

This is not just a change in policy but a complete change in the rules and the wy the grid operates and this is not jsut effecting a game, it is effecting my Business, my sims, my money!!!

I am very concerned about the way that sex and gender diversity will be affected by the "adult content" changes. People seem frequently to conflate transgender and intersexed embodiment with "perversion." As someone who is intersexed in RL, I can certainly counter the claims made here (see post #50) that "No one in SL has the excuse of being 'born' a hermaphrodite for example" to justify embodying outside dichotomous male or female options. The tone I encounter frightens me. Is a male avatar in femboy dress engaging in "adult behavior" by walking around a mall? Is the transgender resource center a site of "adult activity?" Are intersexed and transgendered avatars to be confined to a concentration camp on the mainland?

OH wait hun, they will want me to cover my tattoos, hide my collar, never ever wear my restraints etc, unless i am in a adult sim. This rediculas "changes to adult" is actually changes to SL.

Only problem is, someone lied and tried to claim that you and i and and the rest of us only make up 4 to 6 % of sl. Strange how we generate a hell of a lot of the online traffic then.

Lets see now, visiting only the bdsm sims, mmm over 4000 people (all you have to do is use the map to tell you how mant are in each sim), so 4000 of the 68000 on line. WAIT that is way more than 4 to 6 % and i have not even included gor, trans gender, sex clubs, escorts, shall i go on??

Ya right 4 to 6 % 40 to 60 % maybe

Regards,
samatha

I apologize that I may be late in this discussion, and if I am covering old topics, that just shows I am too busy running my little 'empire' to read 1000's of blog postings. Anyway, I have spent a fortune in time, money, soul and heart to build something very unique that I consider a positive force in the 'Femdom' Community. I am very active in that community on many levels, and actually market out-of-world and have quite a team of people working with me to nurture the vision and practice of what is known as 'Future Femdom'. What I do is very unique and absolutely would qualify as 'adult' in nature. (I am VERY careful about who I have in my company and what experience they undergo). I am very clear about those matters upfront with anyone.
While I actually welcome stronger measures to age-verify, to me this seems to be the only real issue that needs adjustment. Geographic changes and changing adult definitions, etc etc are endless traps from which no one will escape without misery. Even LMs alone are precious when you have as much marketing as I do. (I am a Goddess who markets).
People are complaining about being forced to move and land values and an adult 'ghetto'. I agree an Adult Continent would be a travesty at this point. 2-4% seems impossible to me, also, as a realistic assessment of real Adult Content. The entire strategy will make some businesses suffer a little, and many suffer a lot...and many close.
Speaking as someone who is here for fun as well as Business as well as Her own Mission, the impression I am left with is that Respect For All Of Our Hard Work is being thrown out the window. I doubt anyone could calculate how much value my (or others') commitment has been to date with regards to my presence here. I am greatly saddened. Greater minds must be tapped to resolve these issues than are being used now, it seems. No good can come of rash action.
I really hope to be involved in this ongoing discussion in as deep a manner as possible, as a very active member in the Femdom Community and as one with connections to many corners that will be affected by rash decisions. - GINA

Any kid who has a parent with a credit card can submit those details while mom is asleep. And because mom is asleep, the kid has access to mom's driver's license. With those two numbers, the account appears to be verified as set up by an adult.

Late last year I learned that someone with whom I had spoken on the phone, who said she was 19, had been busted by her parents. She is in fact 16. And she is still on my friends list, which indicates to me that her account has not been deleted. I am not inworld now so cannot check her profile, but bottom line is this:

the only way you can be sure someone is an adult is to see them in person, which is hardly practical for either party. Thus, you must rely on them to tell the truth when asked.

The tier I pay now is miniscule, but I know samatha has multiple sims and she is not the only one. Driving me away from SL will mean nothing to your income, but only you know how many sims there are at present and how much you stand to lose if they close. I am not the parent of a minor, but if I were, it would be MY responsibility, not a sim or store owner or even Linden's to ensure my child was staying where they were supposed to be. And I was a father before I was 18, so don't expect me to believe any measures you can conceive of or implement are going to solve a problem those who are in fact responsible for will not deal with themselves. Kids are smarter than that.

Is that even an honest question? =\

As I've stated before--and what should be common knowledge by now--when LL opened registrations to anonymous accounts, they also opened the 'adult grid' to absolutely everyone. It's the defensive patch system explained in Deltango Vale's post earlier.



Read first, THEN vent. Please.

In essence, the existing 'mature' standard is enough to work with and no new standard is really necessary.... and that was a standard easily understood by everyone who assumed it, I am sure! Changing definitions after the fact or adding new divisions will only divide everyone into chaos. Perhaps only I equate Mature with Adult? (not that adults can't be immature.....joke).
This is a world that turns due to the actions and hard work of adults.
Adults should have a certain priority in this regard.

There are infinite grey areas that will appear with such a division.....if a Lesbian Dance Club decides to have a special Naughty Night once a month, must they become separated geographically? What about them being a Lesbian Dance Club in general? The word Lesbian? How about Womens' Empowerment Movements (which I deal with on a daily basis through my efforts)...if we have a Chocolate Orgasm Party will we be subjugated to such divisions? Sexual Freedom is an adult concept, of course...and it is also a Mature one. - GINA

Yes it is just 1's and 0's, sever space just like 3D webspace, but with one simple difference, I can sit in my 3D webspace and look directly into the webspace next to me, in fact if I don't want to look into it I have to build a wall, even then if I stand to close to the wall and turn I still end up looking briefly into the 3D webspace next to me.

My wall does not stop chat travelling into my 3D webspace either from a neighboring one, or the scripted shouters I mentioned previously.

This is why people care about their virtual land and what is located around it.

What really is the point in paying the inflated tier costs of Second Life, if you cannot create the 3D environment you desire?

I am sorry but this really seems a good move by Linden Labs to me.

Recently LL cleaned up Adfarming, then stopped Landcarving and now they are moving mainland adult content to a new mainland continent.

Their reasons may be different to mine but the result will be a more desirable mainland for all.

The adult continent doesn't need to become some sort of SL Ghetto either, that will be down to the people who build there not LL.

I have two contributions to this discussion, two ideas in regard to "what to do about adult content / moving adult sims".

#1 -> What is wrong with the existing system? There is already a PG / Mature rating required for every sim. All you need to do is enforce it. Require Mature sims to put up walls so that PG sims cannot view their material. Require PG sims to police themselves to root out mature material. If someone does not want access to mature material, bingo. Go to a PG sim. As for traveling chat and scripted shouters (god I hate those things)... there is already a "restrict spatial sound" setting in the About/Land menu. Why not add "restrict spatial chat"? Make it so chat literally cannot travel outside the parcel. I think almost everyone would appreciate that!



#2 -> Or, if you insist on segregating mature sims... don't require them to physically pick up and move. Rework the map. It's not like you have to hire a moving truck and drag all their prims cross-continent. I know for a fact, you can "relocate" an entire sim with the click of a few buttons. So click-click, voila! All "mature" rated sims are conveniently grouped together. Mainland sims with mixed material should be segregated according to their current rating (PG/Mature). Sure, it will cost you man-hours... but will those fees be more than the cost of unbelievably heavy server load, when half the sim-owners on the grid pick up and move? Or the cost of lost income, when hundreds of tier-paying businessowners say "forget it" and switch to OpenGrid? Or the cost of a lawsuit, when sim owners unite and require LL to buy out their parcels at fair market value? Because you know it will happen.

Has it occurred to you that some of those people who would be forced to move by this new policy may also care about their virtual land and what is located around it; that they may have chosen their current land because the terrain was flat or on a cliff face, because the plot was landlocked or surrounding by water, because it was an edge plot or central plot, because the terrain textures were tropical or mediterranean, because the plot was by a Linden road, the house of a close friend or related business, because they liked the name of the sim etc.

Many of those are now worried that they will be given a random plot to move to on the new continent whose only resemblance to their existing carefully chosen plot is the area.

Matthew

Restrict spatial chat sounds like a great idea to me.

Walls round mature Sims no thankyou.

PG sims should already be policing themselves.

Mature material is not the same as tacky sex club filled with naked noobs, who like to wander around and see what else is about.

Why not put the naked noobs in a continent of their own and call it the adult continent

Whether the naked noobs are actually teenagers or not is immaterial to me, at least the mainland will look a little bit better.

Welcome to the hell that is the dealing with the badly-supported forums, basically barely limping along on piecemeal patches, duct tape, bubble-gum, and baling wire. You got bitten by a bug where certain SQL keywords, when placed in the same post, cause the "forbidden" bug.

Linden Labs: You can't even do something as relatively simple as update a vBulletin-based forum so that this SQL bug goes away and so we can use vB code again. How on Earth do you plan to pull off something far, far more technically complex as what you are proposing here?

Further - How do you expect us to TRUST you in carrying out this highly-charged, sensitive, and technically-complex idea of yours when you have shown you can't even manage the technical complexities of a vBulletin forum?

Im a UK ex pat living in Holland and verified my age as did my SL partner and RL wife and i dont expect to be dragged into court for doing so lol and neither of us had any problems verifying and as a result we have not seen any problems because of it.

Just my 2 cents worth on verification

PS: I would love to see the law that says i cannot do this can you quote a reference for it please. Many thanks

The Second life web page is separated into 3 distinct parts, Secondlife.com, secondlifegrid.net and lindenlab.com. Second Life is hosted on The Grid and the Grid is run by Linden labs.

Second Life is not The Grid. Second Life is a complex organic society.

We are long past the days where anyone in LL, or any of it's residents for that matter, could fully understand Second Life, it's workings and it's interactions and it's future.

Tampering with The Grid, is harmful enough, it breaks content, causes financial loss and to a certain extent social upheavals. Tampering with Second Life its self is exponentially more harmful and ultimately destructive.

People talk of the Financial implications, the time and money invested, but the larger investment is Emotional, the friendships formed, the pain and Sorrow endured, the growth of character, of tolerance, of understanding people from different backgrounds, countries and cultures. I doubt that any longer term Resident of Second Life can say that they have not been emotionally effected by, or have not broadened their Real Life experience, tolerance and understanding as a result of Second Life.

What Linden labs is proposing here directly impacts that greater social order, it is not moving 2-5% of content to a new continent, it is surgically removing a large part of the social interaction of a complex society, an ecosystem that has grown beyond the wildest dreams of the platforms creators and, as this and many other recent discussions have shown, the Labs ability to understand and control it's creation.

What are Linden Labs in this view of Second Life? They are the owners of the grid and the developers of the platform, but can any one really own Second Life, the society as opposed to the web site?

Linden Labs have God like Powers in that society but do they have a God like Understanding of such a complex environment?

Decisions like this should not be made by Engineers, Accountants and Statisticians, they should be made by Sociologists, Psychologists and Philosophers.

Moving 2-5% of the mainland may look small on paper and I am sure has been cost justified on the balance sheets, but what of the social and emotional cost to the society as a whole? has that even been considered? I wager It is priceless and the longer term impact will effect far more than the Labs bottom line.

Yes it has occured to me.

I didn't say it was going to be entirely fair to all parties.

Many adult areas are designed tastefully or placed out of view in skyboxes etc., unfortunately they will be asked to move, along with the less attractive looking sites.

Owners of these places must be justifiably worried about where they will be located and what neighbor they will be placed next on the new continent.

They are worrying for just the same reason I am glad to see the segregation of adult content.
Bright pink glowing boxes placed out with loads of sex pose balls, shouters etc.

Linden Labs needs to be considerate of these issues when handling the move.

As I mentioned before the new continent doesn't have to become a sort of SL ghetto, people with existing tastefull adult sites should be given priority in parcel selection in my view, so they can lead the way in moulding how the new adult continent will look.

Yes I know I live in some sort of strange dreamland, LL will never do anything like that, but I mention it in hope.

I'm curious to know how you decide an adult site is tasteful or not. And how you decide it without provoking a civil war ...

Europe is not only UK and Holland...
And the world is not only USA and Europe.