Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Main Forum Thread

Funny enough if you look at the old maps it was once segregated a seperate land for selling a seperate land for gaming.......I don't think the sex was quite there yet though

So would I, but that's beside the point, which was that one of the posters here has been arguing that this change will force Gorean stores to Adult sims. I don't think that's the case at all.

Fair enough, but how does anyone explain all the years afterwards when your customers were telling you mixing PG and mature sims was a bad idea?

This already situation is getting a whole lot sillier. Strip clubs are in major cities the world over and aren't sanctioned off to a red light district.

This didn't sound like a good plan in May or June of 2007 and it doesn't sound like a good plan in March 2009.

If you want your adult continent then build it, let people choose to move there, give them extra freedoms such as being able to advertisie explicitly, introduce a new search tick box of adult on top of mature, even though most people see mature as being likely to contain adult content.

Build a PG continent, this is an absolute must in the lines of balancing choice.

Stop the nonsense of forced relocation, it really is a nonsense and should be nipped in the bud.

Sort the estate issue out asap. It really shouldn't be that difficult a point to define.

Linden Labs has already responded to suggestions for changes to this project.

and again we're back to the word filters!!!
how do you plan to enable that with out hurting educational purposes?

and on the topic of education
im sure all of us from the US studied teyh Civil War in Junior High School. at the tender age of 8-14 and see graphic pictures and even built models of battle fields for class. now how would that be classified if an educational group wanted to hold a civil war reenactmetn on say Lincons birthday, to descired the violence and blood shed. its purly educational and historic will LL show favortisium?

Ideas have been discussed. If we do a swap, even Steven on land, what would be fair for those who will have to move?

Neither ferrets nor moles are rodents.

God forbid you did enable some kind of word filter; would you be posting a list of what words are not allowed.
and would the filters be smart enuff to tell Sexton a real world town from Sex?
or so forth

Giggles guess the old saying is true cant judge a book by its cover cus you sure look like a rodent
<~~~Skips away whistling Yankee Doodle

In my attempts to try and further communicate with Linden Labs on this matter, I have noticed that I can find NO LISTED office hours or locations for Cyn Linden and JP Linden. Anyone (Cyn, JP?) have an idea when/where they are holding office hours? And if they aren't...Why not?

QFT! Actually give people a choice!!!

The blog says this is about choice but the plan above, which others have suggested too, is the only one that delivers it.

Gosh! I could image the forum posts after THAT blog!

The way in which we monitor complaints / deal with individual cases now a days are through Abuse Reports. I'm not sure how else to go about this idea of 'enforcement'. Perhaps something needs to be done with the AR UI. Thoughts?

Please don't forget those of us who are still on the mainland and suddenly have joint builds destroyed!

What would be FAIR is for Linden Labs to give the people who have to move, FREE, the same amount of land they are now using on the mainland, and for the mainland parcels to then be given (abandoned) to Linden Labs. HOWEVER... owners of mixed use parcels where only part of the content will be reclassified as adult should be given fair swap for ALL their land if they want to keep their businesses contiguous, rather than maintain land in separate continents. I, for instance, want to move my WHOLE sim, not just the quarter sim the club is on.

P.S. An opportunity for those who own NEARLY their whole sim to buy up rather than having to have a small corner given to someone else would be nice, as well. The point here is neither to gouge Linden Labs for new permissions, nor to BE gouged by having to re-purchase everything we have already bought.

Really, where, when??

Blondie has only responded to questions of how do we do what Linden Labs wants us to do.

They Completely ignore any posting that does not indicate a willingness to accept EXACTLY what they want done.

Gee, so I can make and sell the entire series of XXX hardcore sexual position animations in the Kama Sutra, which all have innocuous names like "The wheelbarrow", and can sell that in a Mature sim, but if I make a G-rated dress and happen to accidentally pick one of your "banned naughty words" to descrbe it, my dress shop gets banned to pornoland? That's so lame...

Listen carefully. Banning "naughty words" in search is NOT the solution. It will NOT work. You will mess up G-rated content sellers and the XXX merchants will just come up with new slang terms to describe their wares.

You need to do what you have abysmally failed to do so far. Come up with a clear and easy to understand definition of EXACTLY what content and behaviors must take place only on XXX land. You can not do ANY of this without that definition. Can you understand that?

Then help people to move as needed, and create a system that actually WORKS for tagging a sim and allowing verified access. Then, after everyone has moved that is going to move, if someone insists on selling or advertising content that clearly should have been tagged Adult, and is operating on PG or Mature land, they can get an AR filed against them and you, Linden Lab, deal with them directly. Which means you want this policy, you spend man-hours enforcing it.

I don't know but you bring up a really good point. Is providing an occasion of sin enough to get a build declared Adult Content? My gut says No because that is not the central theme/attraction of the region/parcel. What do others think?

like for like is good.. I have snow, waterside and flat green parcels. give me the same or the option to consolidate.

I also think that as a gesture of goodwill we should be allowed to keep our original parcels tier free and sell them. I'm happy for you to lock them down so they're no build and let those we leave behind enjoy some open spaces while we wait for someone to buy them. you can even set the price if you like

failing that, either take them off our hands in a straight land swap or guarantee that there will be no tier hike because we're stuck with unsellable mainland parcels.

Surely anything that an avatar indulges in within SL is only a graphical representation of torture, in this case? The combination of words, animations and/or sound is only a portrayal and reenactment (however dubiously linked to history/reality - but then we are talking about a fantasy world). It's not practicing torture for real.

In a publicly distributable film, censors take on the role of 'protecting' us from alleged harm by rating imagery of this type, but it's a very hot topic. There is the issue of news, education.. the 'for the moral good' of a community, for example. Filmmakers will edit out the more 'gory' bits to satisfy the censors, thereby allowing their content to be seen by, for example, minors. But when you're talking about avatars in SL... which are somewhere between the cartoon characters of video games/comics and actors in a horror film, the area gets grey. I would have thought that the current content tag, Mature, (and the ability to tick Mature parcels as Adult already, too) clearly defines (in and adult only 18+ virtual world) the type of content one would expect to see. Increasing the number of levels of ratings will only lead to a fracture of a social fabric, and be horribly complex to police.

Now, whether a real life photograph of torture in progress would likely cause offence? Interesting, our friends intent and effect are here again. For the purposes of education and history, this should never be censored, otherwise how else can we educate about the RL impact of such things. Responsible content providers, IMO, could certainly flag their content as 'May Offend', as some people don't want this sort of thing thrust upon them in any setting - but the responsible documentation and display of such things cannot inherently be offensive. It's the real world enactment of the practice - to actually 'torture' - which requires intolerance. Not the depiction. Therein lies censorship, otherwise.


As an example in film: Braveheart (1995 Dir. Mel Gibson) - rated by the Motion Picture Association of America as R for 'brutal medieval warfare'. This film includes a prolonged (historically relevant, even if the film is criticised for its overall historical inaccuracy), but visually censored scene of torture (mutilation and death by execution) towards the end.

"A man is stretched by his hands and ankles as part of a public torture, his face contorting in pain. The torture continues with a brutal throttling by way of a noose. The man, gasping and struggling to stand, is placed and tied to a horizontal wooden cross where he is then gutted and finally beheaded with a long axe. Only the man's face is shown during the gutting, and the actual beheading is off screen." --imdb.com

Now the global certifications are: Canada:13+ (Quebec) / Singapore:M18 (re-rating) / Philippines:R-18 / Malaysia:18SG / Brazil:16 / France:U (with warning) / New Zealand:R16 / Argentina:16 / Australia:MA / Belgium:KT / Canada:18A (DVD rating) / Chile:14 / Finland:K-16 / Germany:16 (w) / Hong Kong:IIB / Iceland:16 / Ireland:15 (cut) / Netherlands:16 / Norway:18 / Peru:14 / Portugal:M/12 / SingaporeG (cut) / South Korea:15 (original rating) / South Korea:18 (DVD rating) / Spain:18 / Sweden:15 / UK:15 (cut) / USA:R (certificate #33700) / Greece:K-13 / Canada:R (Ontario)

My point being, that if SL goes beyond what it has, the two level rating system (plus the ability to identify your land/content as adult - see the current About Land tab), won't it have to start thinking about content control on a multi-cultural, multi-geographic scale?

Yes, SL is a different medium to film, I agree. But if we're looking for comparisons, it's certainly one to take into consideration. You're unlikely to see Braveheart playing in a public shopping mall - minors would see it. But I'd question why someone (an adult) would take offence at the content. I imagine now the DVD of the film is clearly marked with its rating/content.

'This product may contain...?'

I tihnk you and i just are never going to agree on this issue and that is fine.

My main point is as a company, Linden Labs operated under a TOS that a large number of people worked within and spent a lot of money on, invested in etc. Now Linden Labs wants to change it dramatically and appear completely unconcerned with how it will effect all of us, as noted by the complete lack of replies by Blondie to any positng here that does not tow the party line.

The simplest solution for this is to NOT allow people posting Ads, events, etc from mature land the OPTION of clicking the mature content box. Many, many, many people on mature land DO NOT click mature content when placing classifieds, listing events, showing their parcel in search...this allows things to show up in search as PG when they are mature. Simply not allowing the option, going on the assumption that if the land is mature, so is the product, event, what have you is ALSO mature is a far more efficient way of clearing up search.

Today's Trivia Question: In what USA town will you find a strip club on Main Street?

(Google it, its fun )

Seriously though, I have a tough time picturing any town that would feature a strip club on a centralized street.

Probably not. Say someone were to put an adult animation in a pose ball. It would look just like any other prim unless someone sat on it.

We've asked LL many times about complex builds. Say somebody has a 1/2 sim but only an 1/8th sim of that would be considered adult - are you going to move the whole thing for them? What about neighbors that want to move with them? What about stores next door that are not adult but are relying on the adult traffic to stay in business?

You keep asking for our thoughts. Throw us a bone here and give us some more details on what's possible, what's not possible and what's already a done deal. Until you do that, it's going to be the same stuff over and over.