Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Main Forum Thread

Get on the ball, LL. I talked with Concierge, the folk you pay to help estate owners and your corporate/educator clients (I classify as both, but no, you may not lump me in with the idiots demanding adult content control. I'm not stupid enough to offend my clientele based on their own private tastes). Two staff, two negatives. Not a scrap of information regarding what counts as "adult", no information regarding how an estate even flags, nothing whatsoever. Just a pointer back here where we haven't heard anything quantifiable. However, let me sum this whole mess up in succinct language:

YOUR USERS DO NOT WANT THESE CHANGES.

(Wait, hangon, must edit in another allcaps statement)

YOUR PROFESSIONAL CONTENT DEVELOPERS CLIENTS GENERALLY DO NOT WANT THIS. I know mine don't care for it one bit. One of them has been asking me about more stable, less likely to turn on them alternatives on where to use their recent educational grant. I'm thinking possibly an independant Unity simulation, or an opensim variant.

I humbly request that someone write a new 'Tao of Linden'; The old one is currently sitting in the outhouse muck-bucket. While we're at it, would someone please salt mister Kingdon's words regarding customer response time, and chop them up into bite-size samples for easy consumption?

this really bothers me also. as a merchant that deals with prooducts in the new rattings gray zone its almost as if i have to pick who i want my audance to be, and by doing that ill loose almost 1/2 my sales
soo not good

They do?!!!

news to me too, maybe there's an extra secret club we're not aware of!

Well, that is one layer of the issue. The more important one is simple fairness though. It does not matter if you are talking about adult content, pg content, or what .... the same rules should apply to all.

What amazes me is we in the BDSM community take great care to cover up and be well behaved when in pg sims. Yet the lindens have no problems dropping us naked into a pg sim when our sim is down and we relog etc.

So they can't even manage to land a perosn who was in a adult sim back into an adult sim, but they now want us to face more restrictions and force more changes on us. They also expect us to "Trust" they will do it with care.

Show a quick show of hand how many feel they will be forced to Move

I'm going to have to Move.

MystressAnna Lovenkraft

I raise my hand up super high!!!!!!!!!!!

Me. I'm going to have to move my whole sim.

........meanwhile back at the CEO's office with his feet perched across the table reading the Sports Illustrated Magazine...........

I'm still unsure on how I feel about this issue.

However, I have already lost business due to it. As a mall owner I've found people unsure if their content will be classified as adult or not. So they are opting to not expand until hard decisions have been made.

From what I understand the mainland sim I own is setup as a mall and doesn't have a theme other then shopping. So I would assume that would leave someone free to rent a shop and place for the most part whatever they like in their shop. I do have a T&C that must be greed to when renting that states among other things "Follow all of the Second Life rules & terms that you already accepted when making an account." Which might not be perfect legalese, but most people understand.

However, With some content being listed as "Adult" would someone wishing to sell prim genitalia be allowed to setup shop in this kind of location. If they are. Would they be required to have a behind closed doors kind of setup? (I guess like a porn shop has blacked out windows and such) Or, Would they simply be required to goto "Adult land"?

Someone also owns a club on the sim. Will this restrict the kinds of events they have. Such as things like "Best in BDSM", or strippers?

Not me, but one of my fave PG places will probably go away since the owner will get moved.

Ok quick show of hands,

Even if your on a private estate, How many think they will suffer financially and traffic wise with the new "Required payment on file" rule for Adult sims.

KIDS : not at the moment, but its their desire to one day have them here.........in other words, when you're back is turned in 6 months time, they'll slip them in via the back door!

Thank you.

lol - another worthwhile poll given the policy changes and tier hikes since 2007
this would be a very interesting question indeed.

Do you trust Linden Labs ? YES or NO

My photo studio incorporates a gallery of my work. It's entirely possible that, in somebody's mind, two or three of the displayed portraits cross a line from Mature to Adult.

Based on my experience to date, it depends entirely on whether (a) any Linden ever looks at it, and (b) which one.

I don't think that the adult rated continent is really planned to protect anyone from seeing offensive content. It is all a matter of preception. Linden Labs is simply tired of the bad press they get on adult content. If you read any serious article on Second Life adult content is almost invariable mentioned if not featured in the article. It seems like what many articles boil down to is nice idea too bad about that Adult Content problem.

I think Linden Labs is hoping that if they push it off to one corner they can say, "see all fixed. Only people who really want to find and use this ADULT content will, and only verified adults." They can then spin the rest of SL as being more mainstream.

I think they should focus more on the people they have attracted and that are currently using this virtual world. Forget about what the mainstream media is saying. Listen to your user base. My first suggestion would be to fix some of the problems before you go and push for a bigger population. We already have problems on most weekends from the amount of users.

I can't see any good way of implementing this adult continent. I am not sure what the way to combat the perception of out control adult content is, but I don't think this continent will do it.

And this is an argument.... how? All of what you wrote there is everything I have already said on the subject. What's your point?

Here are some of the questions the Lindens can't asnwer, or will not,

How much does the average free account spend on sl every month?

How much does the average free account contribute to sl's daily traffic?

What percentage of free accounts visit adult areas or sims?

How many free accounts rent land in private adult estates or on mature Mainland areas?

How much do free accounts contribute in donations to sims, tips to dancers and dj's, etc?

How many of these free accounts will not stay if this proposal goes through?

How is SL going to verify alternate acounts?

How is sl going to deal with Alternate acounts all having the same payment Information?

Is sl going to guarentee that they will not start charging to verify accounts by either a fee or forcing them all to become preminum?

The full quote appears to be "Surprise, we are doing it. Tell us what you think so we can tell anyone who complains afterward that they had their chance to speak up. BTW, we're doing it."

I had the opportunity of meeting with a RL business client today (not a corporate, but certainly big enough to bring many thousands of dollars into SL, I would have thought - their initial yearly budget for virtual/3D interaction and deployment is around 100K USD, including consultancy, development and staffing). The issue of Second Life/virtual worlds was brought up, as the Managing Director is a Resident and uses SL in her leisure time - and *I* was asked about this very debate regarding changes to adult content. I explained as much as I could - we visited the blog and forum and discussed the plans, especially the issue of 'adult content'.

No-one in the meeting had a problem with *any* content, if it was already in a Mature zone and governed by the existing ToS - in fact the MD was more concerned about Linden Lab's current attitude towards it's customer base and wants to hold back from investing in SL, to connect to a potential market, as she wasn't happy using SL as a vehicle for her company if Linden Lab carried out these changes. She felt that the key selling point of SL was its eclectic mix and that this policy was destabilising. They aren't in the slightest bit interested in duplicating RL, or entering into a virtual world which was 'predictable'. Far from it. On the topic of 'adult content' - the unanimous reply I received was, "Well, it's an adult only world, isn't it? If you don't like something that you stumble upon, you move on." They also have no interest in connecting their brand and services whatsoever were minors might be encouraged to be, so this was another issue.

They have tasked me to explore other more open-minded and creative thinking virtual worlds as alternatives. An onerous task, as I do think SL, in its current form, IS the best solution for an open-minded, forward thinking company to explore. What was interesting though, was, that we couldn't satisfy their wish to find an equivalent alternative adult only multiverse after a quick scan of the options available. I imagine what will happen is that they will eventually sink their budget back into their web development program and wait for OpenSim, if the changes take place.

I'm also one to apologize. I've been dealing with a few people on this thread who feel that there is little more to do with anything I say than correct and belittle. It gets to the point where I can't differentiate "not knowing" from "being intentionally obtuse."

I would rather put a time of 9 months on it, and i'm pretty sure you're going to need the front door for it.

Well i'm going to have to ask at least 7 vendors to either change their products or leave the Fetish Mall in order to remain on "Disney" Mainland.....as the remaining 110+ spots would be more PG or Mature content related.