Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Main Forum Thread

I have to start by saying that i haven't taken the time to read each and every post in this discussion so if this has already been addressed please forgive me.

One of the things that makes SL what it is is the ability to be anyone you want to be. Anonymity is a big draw for people to SL. In order to become age verified residents have to fully disclose their name, address, date of birth, as well as the number of some recognized means of identification. I am a premium member so most of this information is already on file but I even felt a little, no, a lot of hesitation about disclosing all of this information for the age verification process. I'm sure that in some cultures the disclosure requirements are no big deal, but the overwhelming majority of sl residents are from the US and our culture holds a very high value on privacy.

It's my feeling that we will find that people just do not want to bother with becoming age verified. The vast majority of people who come to sl are not premium account holders. They are happy to acquire lindens through inworld employment or endeavors, these requirements would be unwelcome and many people would simply go elsewhere.

PART 2

Rather then post a second comment, I am wondering what will be the penalty or enforcement of such "morality" rules. I mean we are all familiar with the noob who walks around in public with a penis attached and visible. Just what is going to happen there. What about the large amount of people who have some form of "adult" art in their sl homes? Will these have to be set up so they are age verification restricted as well? And if the owner of the home doesn't want to be verified themselves? I am concerned all of this intent to "clean up" sl is driven by a few who would wish to impose their views on the majority. That happens irl all the time. It would be a shame if the last bastion of freedom were to fall to the vocal minority.

Unless it's true about wanting to merge TG and MG. Cancel my membership for me when that day comes. There will be no more bandwidth for the rest of us on the grid once you let the kids in.

I have only ever heard of this happening because someone was accused of being a minor. According to previous threads in the forums: if you're accused of being a minor you have to age-verify regardless of your current status, even if you've already age-verified with Aristotle or through a previous incident of this type.

What threads were you not reading!!! Seriously, what are you playing at with this whole issue, there were umpteen unanswered issues in the pages on the other threads and now you bring it back here as if the dialogue had stopped, it never did.

What's going on?

As far as I know I was not accused of being a minor, and I am not locked out of SL at all. Just that I will lose my accounts and my land if I don't comply.

Could be some phishing mail too, maybe someone sends mails to harvest private information due to the uproar and uncertainty caused by the anouncement, would not be the first time.

I apologize if this has already been asked...

If a furniture store primarily sells what would be considered PG rated furniture and offers an "intimate" version of their beds for those who like one for their personal use in their own home as well as a PG version, would having the intimate version displayed in the store be considered Adult? No adult pictures would be displayed, clothing is to remain on when customers take a look at the beds, etc.,.

I know I am not the only furniture designer with this question.

~ Desi

This about the most reasonable solution to this just that I susspect that Linden labs will not get off the dime to make it happen. Far more important for them to back the bucks and pack everyone into one area. Not to mention that a lot of residents are like me leasing space on private sims with little or no rights at all. I pay my yearly fee to play and be counted but can not afford the cost of buying a sim at this point in time. And lets face that facts if we do anything here it is lease NOT buy not even do you truely own the sim.

Also what about free account holders who are unable to purchase premium accounts BECAUSE of the current pay system?? I had a premium account but the current changes in paying for a premium account had forced me to downgrade my account. Now i am unable to get a premium account and i do want to get it back. The changes here being spoken of will not only not allow me to visit and enjoy most of the places i am a regular at it may very well take my land from me as well. Maybe a little revamping of the system to not have to use paypal to use credit cards is in order.These changes being spoke of are far more troublesome than many realize and many of the suggested changes will force alot of people out of sl for good. lets get some realistic goals and changes here, not just take away alot for the purposes of making sl LOOK better to the general public.a simple age verification will do and can be attached to a non public system that checks age against social security numbers. so there are alternatives to forcing alot of buisnessess to change and /or off the mainland.Plus buisness AND landowners /leasers often and CAN have control to control who and when/what comes to their buisnessess. for example,no avatars that are infant/child/teen are allowed in our adutl areas.any who are found there are immediatly ejected and can be banned.

This I have to aagree with. Linden Lab is just going through the motions to give the feelling they really care what we think. I would say to all lindens get out of that cubical and get to exploring the out of mainland sim and see that your numbers on this issue are not really showing the truth of the matter

I've worked for many years in social law drafting. I don't now, but I learnt a thing or 2 from that experience. (I'm not a lawyer. My government made the decision that they needed people who were more focussed on the policy issues of drafting laws first and foremost.)

A critical thing when you're drafting laws or rules, as LL is wanting to do now is, don't define things that don't need defining. Or put another way, if the words you want to use have an ordinary meaning that anyone can check in a dictionary, then don't "invent" another definition. All that does is confuse people.

Most dictionaries (we use the Ozy Macquarie Dictionary here as a standard dictionary) will have one element of "mature" that includes "...fully developed in body or mind, as a person..." . Now it's rare for any rule drafting to be black and white, there is always going to be scope for subjectivity, and here is my spin on where this becomes subjective. I would argue that a person who chooses to TP to a BDSM club and gets disturbed about what he or she sees there is clearly not "fully developed". Actually, they are nuts. Same same if someone lobs in a mature region that includes stores with sex toys and whatever, you would have to be a half-wit to be offended by it.

The only complexity in this whole issue is what is the true context of the changes Linden is proposing. The absolute first thing I did when someone asked me to draft up some laws was sit to them down and find out what was the problem, as they saw it, and why did they think having a new law would solve the problem. At least half the time, I found that they didn't need a new law, they just needed to do better with what was in place already.

Bottom line? We need to know, honestly and clearly what the motivation is for any rule changes about region classification (fluffing around and being coy only makes people suspicious of motivations) and we need to know why you think rule changes are essential. That to me is the only way we, as residents, can make sense of what is proposed and make useful contributions.

PS: A thought I had after I posted this was does Linden Labs have a legal opinion about the need to make changes to the mature region stuff? You'd help us make worthwhile contributions if you published that opinion (if it exists).

Like all attempts to partition/segregate/filter content: Badly.

You don't have the resources to do anywhere near as "good" as Google on the issue, so what does that tell you?



I don't think you even have most of the questions yet, but I have a bunch that have been neglected for answers from the previous thread:

1) Is the structure and nature of this change still set in stone? If so, why?
2) WHAT are the REAL motivations behind this change? What is it you are trying to accomplish? Not asking about the goals, I am asking about the motivations. We know (more or less) what your goals are. Don't hand us any more of that "to give residents a choice!" platitude crap. Tell us REALLY what the deal is.
3) You all kept touting research this and percentages that. OK. Can you / will you show us the details of said research?
4) Why is the current system of PG/Mature failing you, and what will be different about the additional "Adult" stratification?
5) What efforts towards training your Governance Team will be made to ensure that gross mishandling of residents (as with Carl Metropolitan) will be minimized?



Then why are you putting the MAJORITY of residents through this hassle? or do you blithely think that only a minority of residents will be impacted by this?

You've yet to provide evidence that you have come up with an effective "account" (read: "age" verification system that would make this system worth hassling with. PIOF is *NOT* a valid "age verification" system. Aristotle is a joke and a scam. Why are you going this route if you are going to use a doorstop as a hurdle? What is the point of doing age verification if it doesn't really verify anything?

May i say this will hurt them more then us bucuse ya know what someone will get pissed off anuff and go and make there own sl clone and they will not be the top dogs no more lmao i mean come on we are in a in a bloody recession and thay want ppl to come to sl well this is not the way to do it it will make more ppl leave then stay . i must say thay have shot them selfs in the foot with this one and when thay come beging for us to come back to sl bucuse thay have pissed everyone off thay have no one to blame but them selfs

PS: Its 2nd life so y force us to submit 1st life info,,isnt sl about escaping 1st life for a while not addin extra pressures to it
& while youre at it LL..make a viewer that enables u to go to preferences & check a box that allows US THE PPL THAT GIVE YOU $ YEAR AFTER YEAR to block YOUR AV from mature content YOURSELF,,then IF you CHANGE YOUR MIND ....YOU can uncheck it at a later date & stop forcin this bull on all of us!

May i say this will hurt them more then us bucuse ya know what someone will get pissed off anuff and go and make there own sl clone and they will not be the top dogs no more lmao i mean come on we are in a in a bloody recession and thay want ppl to come to sl well this is not the way to do it it will make more ppl leave then stay . i must say thay have shot them selfs in the foot with this one and when thay come beging for us to come back to sl bucuse thay have pissed everyone off thay have no one to blame but them selfs

PS: Its 2nd life so y force us to submit 1st life info,,isnt sl about escaping 1st life for a while not addin extra pressures to it
& while youre at it LL..make a viewer that enables u to go to preferences & check a box that allows US THE PPL THAT GIVE YOU $ YEAR AFTER YEAR to block YOUR AV from mature content YOURSELF,,then IF you CHANGE YOUR MIND ....YOU can uncheck it at a later date & stop forcin this bull on all of us!

Second Life is a huge success right now, and mostly thanks to the freedom within this game. I have a hard time understanding why you would want to ruin that which attracts more and more people each day.

RIP SL.

It may be less disruptive but it would be more fair. These people invested their time and money to create a presence here and your talking about damaging their investment.

I understand Linden Lab opened up open enrollment to get as many numbers as they can enrolled. But perhaps Linden Lab needs to close the flood gate a little and require age verification for everyone. Linden Lab should have to invest in a new marketing program and not leave it to its injured customers to try to survive this decision.

The way you all are going about this is to 'protect' the good people from these perverts. It comes across as a witch hunt. And perhaps that is exactly the impression you want to give these folks so they go away (ie "Thanks for the tier payments - now leave"

.

Just for the record, I still think this sucks.

Off the top of my head:

I'm annoyed that you're "discussing" this with us but haven't really participated in the threads and have ignored many questions.

I'm annoyed that this is being done under the guise of making thing 'safe' and supposedly giving naughty land-owners more assurances about peoples RL age when we all know that any kid who wants in is going to find a way in, just like the rest of the internet.

I'm annoyed that LL is trying to sell this as only 2-4% of the mainland but has totally ignored that these places are always high-traffic and cramming them all into a small number of sims is going to totally destroy performance for that entire continent.

I'm annoyed that LL is taking on another big management responsibility when they've ignored FOR YEARS the smaller ones already on your plate.

I'm annoyed that you have the nerve to say this is being done so that we'll have more options.

I'm annoyed that you won't just come out and say that you'd like to merge the teen and adult grids, even though it's not part of this current effort. We've all seen Philip and M talk about this elsewhere, you know..

I'm annoyed that you haven't talked at all about how these forced moves will happen. I've got a bunch of parcels split between 2 groups and neighbors that will want to move with me.

I'm annoyed that you haven't done a post-mortem talk about the last age verification effort, for those of us that were here at the time and remember all that fun.

I'm annoyed that you're not giving us the whole story. There are big motivations behind you doing this that you haven't talked about.

So, yeah, I'm annoyed at this.

I hope all of you lidions are reading everything that is been said bucuse this will make or brake LL as it is and just take a look at that Quote over my Message { Second Life is a huge success right now, and mostly thanks to the freedom within this game. } Do You want to be the ones that take that away and make ppl go to other places and in return you will luse 1000's of $ i would thank about that real hard. i myself have been here for 5 years and have some very dumb moves you all have pulled and some very good ones things that i give you all props on BUT IF YOU ALL DO THIS IN THIS WAY YOUR DOOMING SL AS IT IS. We the ppl that have stuck with you for years BUCUSE OF THE FREEDOM but now you wnat to take it mosty away now dont get me wrong im all for the age thing but the way you all are going about it is going to kill sl and is that what you want and ppl will leave and sl will go down the shiter like imvu did when thay did all of that bs over there WE ARE ADULTS LET US BE ADULTS!!! We all love sl bucuse its free and you can do mosty what you want to do you can be a rock star and sing for 100's of ppl on a feed and be know all over the web or you can be a furry and be a fox or a bear or what ever ya want or you can be into a bdsm club and go wild and have fun or just run a shop like Xcite! now tell me that thay have not gave all of you a ton of $ over the years all of this is spiting on every one that has made sl what it is today FREE TO DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO So it comes down to this WILL YOU LISSION TO THE PPL OR JUST SAY YOU WILL AND DO WHAT YOU WHAT YOU WANT LIKE THE SPOILT CHILD THAT JUST DOS WHAT HE WANTS ANY WAY !!! But we are what made sl what it is today the ppl have made it what it is and without us you have nothing So Please lission to all of us and not go hide like you all do when the Sh*t hits the fan Thank You For your Time

I still question the relevance of the entire situation. If we were all in a High School or a Boot Camp or something similar, it might be. But why exhaust resources on an attempt to please those who would rather complain about what they saw on their computer screens than simply click elsewhere? If every hosting company made it their responsibility to essentially babysit those who cannot take responsibility for their reactions to certain material on their computer screens... the web itself would be a reflection of some Orwellian universe.

As long as someone doesn't come to my doorstep and hand me someone's head they just decapitated after violating them in just about every way imaginable, I'm fine. That type of stuff can stay on a computer screen and if I don't like it, I simply get rid of it.

Little more than a decade ago, 3D imagery on computer screens meant little more than firing a bazooka at some aberration of science fiction before it ripped your head off. Now? For the same price as a mainstream First Person Shooter you can get a poorly made virtual suit of armour made by an amateur 3D artist. Or for the same price as an entire arcade-style version of whatever dance simulator you prefer, you can get a pretty little pixelated dress made by someone who claims to have 30 years of experience making real clothes. That is of course an exemplified exaggeration, but relative spending ratio and the situations which surround them is quite similar.

I don't mean to overly-criticize LL's efforts here, as I have stated before they ARE noble in the way that they wish to keep their customers happy to the best of their ability. But Red Tape and legal jargon will only get anyone to a certain point. After that point, the only way is downhill. Then the holes start being dug when these rules that "the community helped define" are enforced with a team which often resembles the old "good cop, bad cop" routine. We all love the good cops but hope to never run into a bad cop ever again. Again, reminiscent of something Orwellian.

So of course this is all going to happen no matter what. Even though we are all supposed to be mature enough to know that there are people out there who may be interested in things we are not, we insist on creating a controlled environment to lessen our chances of running into such people.

If it must happen, then perhaps have it be less confusing and get rid of this Parental Guidance rating. That is such a small thing to ask. Heck, it can be done purely on the client side. Where the server tells the client PG, the client will say "OK, shall replace with {insert more sensible--or none at all--rating here}" and that's that. But alas, no official answer on why it is there in the first place. Perhaps the answer is what I think it is. Perhaps, just maybe, it's yet another bug LL is too busy with other things to fix. Other things like, making sure no one has a panic attack due to what they saw on their computers.

My point remains the same. It's all irrelevant. There is truly no need to attempt to please every single customer LL has. In fact, it is futile. If parents wish not to have their children view Adult content, they should enforce it themselves. Last I checked, LL is not a child care service. If legal-aged adults wish to pitch a fit when they see something they disagree with, give them a time out.

Act like a kid, get treated like one. Try to falsely pass as an adult, get banned like one for lying about your age. Otherwise, enjoy your stay. And don't mind that hoard of bouncing noisy Mario-like pictures, that's just our excitement for the afternoon.

Take it all with 8.2trillion grains of salt if you have to. :p

I felt this needed quoted because it was something I was also asking about in the geographical thread. I have an alt that will need to move along with some artwork under my own name.

I would also like to go ahead and get on the list for those of us who know we will need to move.


Thanks,

Pho

Camera controls are client-side, and client-side security is no security at all.

If you want a workable scheme, something like SVC-205 is the way to go.

They don't tell you who accused you, if you are. It's been descibed as Kafka-esque in the past.

oh, a question I don't recall having seen before...

Somebody here made the note that clubs are inherently busy places, especially the ones that would be forced to move...

What measures will be taken to ensure that:

1. You don't overload a server by putting too many clubs on it?

3. that club traffic doesn't disrupt other businesses too badly? I know currently I would not want a store in a region that could have 40 avatars on during peak shopping times, making my products slow to load and my customers to have problems. Nothing against the clubs, but if they have good traffic my business might suffer because my customers might not be able to get in.

thanks again, I'm sure I'll have more questions later

I have a horror art gallery (think EC comics) and according to the old TOS on ratings (now missing) it should be mature or adult. I'm shocked, as I bought the PG land and set up the gallery using MPAA ratings. But last I looked horror was also suddenly a BAD THING. So now, anything along the lines of Jaws, Poltergeist or Frankenstein means I need to move my gallery to pr0nland? And I lose my investment in roadside, waterfront, bridgeview land? It was pretty expensive!

Also, I have a homestead (formerly openspace...sigh) sim that is designed as outer space...for folks to fly starships and have dogfights. I heard combat is also now "adult." Sheesh. I kept away from the sex stuff thinking it would be somehow safer...

There are a few of us non-sex businesses who have been asking for clarification in these threads and we're not getting answers. The ancient Rome/Japan sims have period combat...do they need to flag "adult?" How about the Sci-Fi sims, and Western Sims? Can those of us with non-sex, but potentially (I guess) offensive content under the new rules get some answers here? Please?

That kind of sounds like line from the Godfather.

I reflected a bit over this since my first post, also reading other posts:

1) Use common sense implementing rules, my shop is PG and I hope I don't have to cover the breasts on artpieces and statues again.

2) Make sure that unverified people can also enter mature mainland sims unless they are marked parcels for mature content. My PG shop is in a mature sim, and I don't want to move it, or since I own the whole mainland sim change the label ... the parcel labels should decide wether people can decide or not with these errrm eeek ugly red walls you know ....

3) publish the filter words you use in a search ... I would be enraged if I see that a furniture model called "Essex" is mature rated for containing the word "sex". I generally think filters are not a cool thing. If Essex is filtered out the filter is crap, if wild-sex is not filtered it is also crap, how do you program that intelligence ? mission impossible, filters DO NO WORK. Also if I want to found the famous "Fight against breast Cancer" will I have to label adult since I fall out
of the search if I don't by a filter ?

4) Nudity. I think you have to get softer there, I would ban nudity with sexual attempt = erected
penisses and so on from PG places. Think practical, not academic. on my first day in SL I WON'T give you my credit card number and by no means I will want to age verify. I want to explore first. Now ... I want to change clothes, with your rules I can only enter PG places. I WILL go nude to change or even more stupid, I hit the wrong button and have no clue how to
get dressed again. YES people think practic, that is no joke, that is even pretty likely with a
one day old newbie.

So use common sense here. Nudity is a part of life and part of an education of children, believe it or not, but we are all nude under our clothes and we have been born as amorally nude people ...

So instead of implementing stupid rules against common sense like a Tomas de Torquemada during darkest spanish inquisition you should concentrate on the REAL problems. Nudity or seeing softporn like an old MLP bed will not destroy the children. I really don't think telling a 12 year old that they have been brought by the storch adebar is constructive sane education. If you believe the opposite I wish you fun when your 13 year old daughters come home pregnant in rl .... for religious fanatics I remind them ... a saint is not someone that does not know sin, it is someone that knows sin and makes the decision to not commit it, so THAT is what you have to teach children, common sense, not information hiding, that is a boomerang that will hit you some day and much worse, your innocent children you had the responsability to protect !

But I really ask me how bright the idea is to join the Teen Grid with the Main Grid. How do you prosecute the debauchees hharassing the teens sexually ? Are you sure they get reported ? You need either to read all logs or let 90% of the really bad actions that preoccupy every responsible adult far more then ridiculous hunting nude pass by ...Also read the story we made up for the new "censored world" in my separate post.