Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Main Forum Thread

Trolling on message boards is inappropriate public behavior.

I understand all that. That's what makes this whole announcement so puzzling. Nothing that LL proposes to do will actually FIX anything. People will still be able to fly past your house or your open sky platform and see you doing Adult things. People will still be able to come to your house and see the BDSM stuff you keep in the basement, and the explicit pictures on your walls. People will still be able to buy a prim penis and go show it off...well, anywhere. Probably in a Welcome Area.

UNLESS...Linden Lab is planning a much more sweeping and restrictive purge than they have been telling us.

Which is it, Blondin? Are you really set on taking ineffective half measures that will do nothing except 1) add another continent's worth of land to an already-shaky market and 2) annoy and inconvenience nearly everyone? Or are you going to follow the definitions that you originally posted, and make everyone paint underwear on their skins?

Nipple torture?

If your alt is engaging in a clearly visible violent sex act, she needs to stay out of public view. It isn't a good time for her to go shopping. Maybe she can use xStreet or something instead.

So depictions of torture within the context of history/education. For example: a reenactment or historical portrayal of the Reformation, Crusades, Salem Witch Trials, Guantanamo Bay, the list goes on. Would we agree that torture in these regards, be considered acceptable?

I think we're getting resident torture right now. Can we AR LL?


/trying to introduce some levity

EDIT - apologies, this post took some time to show up and looks really bad where it is.

I don't do ad hominem. Don't need to. Thanks.

Yes, but people can upload textures with real life images.

Second Life is about Dreams and Openess.

Frankly I am shocked someone hasn't come around to creating a system like second life by now. But I am sure if linden labs continues to change things. Eventually people will start there own game company.

If second life takes dreams away and doesn't allow for openess.

People will simply leave. That is all

-End of Line-

I have a completely non-sexual toy, called "Collider Death". If you wear it and someone bumps you, your avatar falls down and appears to strike her head. A pool of blood spreads out around your "corpse".

Is this "extreme violence"? Is it still extreme, given the fact that I can still talk? Or that if I move my av, she immediately stands up again, ready for the next round?

Blondin, we wore these attachments while ice skating last winter. We had a hilarious time playing "bumper cars" with our avatars.

My point here is that one person's extreme violence, torture, or offensive sex act is another person's fun. YOU CANNOT DEVISE A SET OF DEFINITIONS THAT WILL SATISFY EVERYONE, or even the majority. I don't mean that LL is not capable of it, I mean that NOBODY is.

Yes, Gambling continent could be created on servers in the countries where gambling is allowed. At the same time US residents would not be allowed to enter. They could complain about it to thheir goverment not to Linden Lab.

True, but they can do that anywhere on the internet. The difference between things virtual and things real is that virtual things we can stop by powering down the PC or logging off or what-have-you. In RL, yes, I'd be disturbed by things I'd perhaps encounter -- but in the virtual world I can choose to self-censor my experience. Emphasis on SELF, please.

Please get back to me on that Linden Labs define Art for all of us please.

I'd love to see this played all over the news.

Cause even by college's definitions and Art people in general you cannot Define this.

Good Luck!

LL doesn't need a set of definitions that satisfies everyone. They need a set of definitions that promotes the best use of the platform.

Intent and Effect. Interesting. I can wrap my head around the idea of intent but with SL being both an individual and social activity, how can 'effect' be measured? Intent to illicit a desired effect would make sense to me. Thoughts?

Since when a company can decide and dictate what is moral or not moral? The best promotion of the SL platform would be lowering the tier.

Since when the phone company asks you not to use your phone number to advertise adult services? Do they block your phone number because you talk kinky on your phone? Does instant messengers decide what is adult or not? No, but anyone can use instant messengers. Does email companies tell you how to use your email?

Where this world is going? Only goverment can ban certain things because we elected them. Since when a private company can go so deep into our privacy and even dare to ask: is virtual nipple offensive?

QFT

Unfortunately, they are going to try. Enforcement is going to be interesting to watch, to say the least.

In an educational setting and not for the glorification of it as an act yes imho, when we covered these areas in history classes many years ago we only had books and pictures to look at now instead of visiting museums to see these objects that were used they can be seen as working models within this 3d environment.

Personally i think that because of the diversity of SL making and defining clear definitions will be hard as so many people have different views of different things. Glorifying violence is something that personally i find objectionable after serving in the middle east and having seen real violence and the glorification of the same. However in the years i have been with SL there is nothing i have seen that really offends me. In fact i even have a guillotine that a friend made and a great piece of work it is i even put the wife in it to try it out and we had a good laugh about it. So there you go in the context we used it i did not find that offensive but some maybe would have.

Education is starting to play a big part in SL and it would be unfair to make sweeping definitions to the detriment of that area for a start.

You know, it just occurred to me, that there is a very simple solution to this problem that LL is throwing at us:

The reason they are making these new rules is because they don't enforce the rules they already have... so when they add new rules, they won't enforce those either. So just keep your existing parcels and LL probably won't do anything about it. Why should you worry about having a sex club on a Mature sim in an 18+ adults-only service when the PG areas aren't controlled either? I bet the Teen Grid is full of guns and sex too.

The problem here is context:

is this an image of simulated violence (e.g. a still from a film). This wouldn't be offensive but if graphic enough it may turn my stomach.

is this a image of real violence in RL? I would fine this offensive if this image was being used to incite or otherwise glorify real violence in real life, on the other hand if this image was being used to illustrate the horror of RL violence than I would not find it offensive

e.g. a museum depicting the horror of the holocaust is not offensive, a museum celebrating or glorifying the holocaust is offensive - however the images in both might be the same.

However, we are now beginning to touch on things which have no place in SL at all (be it on mature or adult regions).

Matthew

Right, now you're onto a decent point. When this was discussed some time ago the example of extreme content was the sort of stuff you'd find on Rotten.com ...and people shouldn't go looking there for examples.

The same with sexual content, if it's gross out extreme RL images then they shouldn't be being shown anyway on public display, not even the new continent.

Good luck with proving desired effect. I recently went on a spending spree inworld on Loki Ball's stuff. I find it hilarious (the don't touch this sandbag that splats your avs brains out was my favorite), but others would find it horrifying, this I know. I'm a housewife/mom, so you'd never get your demographics researchers to likely predict that I'd find such content funny, as opposed to offensive. I don't know what Loki had in mind when he made his stuff, I just know that I do not find it offensive at all, but I'm pretty sure others might. So how can you say, even if he had a desired effect in mind, that it would actually be...effective?


I hope I'm okay mentioning the creator's name here. If not, I'll edit.

This is the whole problem! Do you think why we are all here talking about this? Because everyone knows that we here on forum are going to respect the new policy but people who dont even bother to read the blog and who are not here on this forum would not even care to change anything. And who will loose money? We will.

Indeed I do



The term police has such negative connotations and no, there won't be a secret team of Lindens lurking in the shadows, wandering around looking for people who are misbehaving. I can't really answer this question b/c I don't know the answer. The first step would be defining the line between Mature and Adult. Having these will allow us more insight on how to proceed.

Although there must be many ways to measure individual and social effects of an activity here, I would think what is good for SL as a business is good for everyone who uses SL for business or pleasure. Everyone who uses the platform suffers if the platform suffers.

The sex industry clearly considers itself very important to Second Life, but that may be in part the result of it driving out other uses that would be more beneficial overall.

I'm thinking of things like the big Latino project that the Smithsonian, Disney, and the University of Ohio just opened. There are already many spinoffs forming that will be very fruitful in the long run.

[if they are not driven out by displays of inappropriate behavior]