Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Answers to Questions

Linden likely does not care about the performance hit, nor anything else. I'm sticking by my assertation that one of the American megachurches gave Linden a large donation, and the sight of all those zeros has caused them to segregate open minded and thinking adults from the rest of the world. They're gutting themselves and taking pleasure in doing so.

Performance: Imagine Bay City, with people. Half of them wearing a tons of heavily scripted objects.

Heavily scripted objects which will send the whole place into frequent death spirals unless http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/MISC-2329 is dealt with by then.

Blondin, is that JIRA issue on the list of things to get done before this policy is implimented?

Well, then that spells the end of most of my SL as my neighborhood won't survive the move between this and the "we can't help you move" crap.

Can you at least acknowledge that it is an issue, LL?

Isn't this regression to segregation?

When will they grow up?

erinyse isnt the acocunt they suspended. it was an alt i was using as my bank. with over 15,000 linden in it that i never bothered to verify becuase i was using it as a bank.

they also suspended my friend bitterly sweet, a deputy who by state and federal laws where she works is not allowed to give out her personal information to just anyone, let alone the state id LL is trying to force her to show them.

CLASSIC extortion, and conspiricy on top of that. and yes, the department i worked for and the office Bitterly works for are both trying to get the warrents for the arrest of all LL employees involved...

How patronising - 13 pages of posts, one denial from Blue, and then this - is the best you can manage? Sorry Blondin, at the very least you could have said it was the only thing you had time to answer. That, or acknowledge you don't have a clue about all the other very serious issues that have been raised. Another 11 pages on, and we're none the wiser.

And where are these brown bag things?? I'm a concierge resident with all mainland, have ~30,000 in non-bot, non-camping traffic and have fairly good technical knowledge on how SL works.

Aside from me being increasingly annoyed at LL, is there some reason why somebody like me wouldn't get invited to one of these meets?

I want to add my own voice of dissent with any proposal to relegate adult sims to some kind of lag-tastic ghetto. My rather firmly entrenched shop, 'Hypnodolls' is a touchstone for rather a lot of people's avatars who have no place of their own. A place where they feel they can belong and not be persecuted or made to feel as though they're wrong for being into their own form of sexuality. Losing the place we have would be catastrophic for my SL income as well as their 'safe place'.

SL is supposed to be a no children allowed community. There is an underage version of it that underaged persons can go to in order to enjoy themselves. The onus of responsibility as far as policing the entry of underaged persons in the adults only version of second life falls squarely upon the parent whose credit card this underaged person is using to falsify their account. With all the exhaustive age verification schemes we are made to suffer, the outright discrimination against sexual identity and expression that relegating us to our own island/sim represents is entirely unacceptable.

I propose that if adult content is to be ghettoed to its own sim, then conservative religious content should have to undergo the same treatment, as outright religious iconography is just as offensive as sexual content is to rather a lot of people. If you cannot discriminate religiously against people patronizing your business in good faith, then neither can you discriminate sexually. The very idea is both logistically and financially disastrous for many MANY people in game, as well as to the linden economy. I cannot stress enough how against this I am. If there is a vote to be taken, I vote very much no against the idea of adult sims being relocated to their own sims.

Second Life is already an all-age platform.

I'm all for satire, but that is not what you and many other have been trying to present, which is that Philip said he wanted to merge the teen and main grid. That statement is flatly false ... he said no such thing, nor did he imply it.

What he said was that the long term plan was to have a way that adults and children could interact toegether on Second Life. I can think of twenty ways that could be accomplished without merging the main and teen grid, and if I spent fifteen minutes thinking it over, I could come up with twenty more.

Trying to make a case that Philip intends to merge the teen and main grid, by using his rather innocent and off-hand statements ... is a little like the difference between shooting a bullet, and throwing one.

The Lab is messing this up and jerking us around enough already. In seventy-two hours we have gone from extreme and hard core, to discussions about strip clubs. At the current rate of escallation, we will be sent to Jizztown if we wear shoes without socks (my satire). They don't need any more help making this exercise a total mess, and inventing things that are not there, is only making it worse.

My two cents.

It's really nice of LL to let you few sorry losers go on and on like this. But it probably won't last more than a couple more days, you know.

Bye : )

When I started SL in 2005, it was pretty rough. There were so many things wrong with it. But I stayed because the premise was, this was our world. Ours to shape and mold and make into a utopia. It was a world without dirty politicians bowing to a vocal minority, or violent crime, or work obligations. You didn't even need a home, just log out where you liked.

And we did shape it to what we wanted! We shaped it into a world where a person's sexuality could be expressed without fears of ostracism or physical violence commited against them. Second Life became a haven for sexuality in all of its forms. But now, we do have crooked politicians: LL is punishing the majority because of a vocal minority that thinks Second Life should be a sterile, boring environment, as lackluster and repressive as the most backwards puritan communities.

They're turning their backs on the grand majority of Second Life's economy, the lifeblood of their profit model. But we can stop it. We can let them know our discontent. So far on the forum all we get is conescending and dismissive answers.

Let everyone you know in world know about this outrage. Spam groups with it, rally everyone you know, form protests. Move the protests to linden controlled land. use any means you can to show your discontent with what is going to amount to a ghettoization of everyone who is a thinking adult!

This isn't just Linden taking away our playground. This is a slap in the face to everyone and anyone who is capable of free thought and has the openmindedness to live with the fact that the players are humans, humans are sexual beings, and that our sexuality is not a crime! it is not something that we should be sequestered into a ghetto for!

We need to act, and make sure that Second Life is not made into a direct copy of First Life, where the minority of prudes force anyone and everyone with an open sexuality into the shadows!

We can only hope that irritating NK person STAYS away this time, having said 'goodbye', although judging from her reappearance in the old thread after 'leaving', I doubt she's got the strength of will to resist sticking her oar in again.

Excerpt from the 1948's Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UNO)

http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

Article 17.
(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

(2) *No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property*

You are still listening, Lindens?

There are also some other interesting paragraphs in this declaration wich could be *interesting* for us "residents". Your country signed this declaration, and if not: mine did!

Maybe you take time and read ALL paragraphs carefully? Yes? Because these rights counting also for groups, persons and biz...

I also found there:

Article 30.

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, *group or person* any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.


So what now? Hm? Tell!

Oh, I know, it is a virtual world here, but: you treat us, as it would be a real world, but you avoid to have an eye on our rights, right?!

If I point now on our rights, will you tell then, it would be only a virtual world?

And if all is virtual, how can it be then *not virtual*, art, artificial and complete irreal for 18+ eyes, ears and all other human senses?

I do think, you need to explain that for us, before you start to move here people and our art and expressions around!

I live in a mature sim, and always have because I don't want to worry about someone camming over and making a fuss over what I'm doing at my place just because they couldn't keep their attention in theirs. Here's the only question I have: Is this designed to keep the next BDSM club from springing up right next to my home just because it can? If so, maybe we should be looking at Residential vs Commercial zoning, either per sim or within the sim. Have your club. Just have it over there, so I can at least be out of earshot of the moaning.

If we're making big changes, what about better management tools? Finer granularity on permissions for one. If I can turn off scripting and building for accounts without payment info and/or that are younger than 30 days (adjustable), griefing becomes more time consuming/expensive, more established accounts have to be sacrificed. Being able to block says and shouts at the land boundary would be nice too, that way the club wouldn't be spilling ... for example the shouts from money balls that insist on telling the entire sim who's won what.

An automated response system for another. Something I can point at an item and say 'this is an attack', and it will check for other instances of the same thing, count them up and go 'yep, smackdown in progress', drop an alert in Linden mail and start quarantine of owner and the flagged objects. Scripted, active, multiple copies with the same owner and rez more of same. Is that hard to code for? That's a serious question by the way, I have multiple copies of my lamps on my property, but they're not off trying to eat the neighbor's house.

This doesn't seem to need segregation of every "adult" thing to a new sim, just a more real-life look at zoning and planning, and applying a case-by-case basis to deconflict spaces.

Been reading this entire thread.. interesting reading especially considering I am new here...

A couple devil's advocate questions:

All of you who cannot legally give out your id.. how do you get a drink in a bar or go into a RL strip club? Do they not check ID where you live? No lower age limit in such places?

And in case the counter to that question is 'SL is not RL'.... most strip clubs are age restricted and look but do not touch. How is that different from looking at pixels you cannot feel?

If age verification is considered useless becase it is not absolutely foolproof, why do we have police or firemen, even though they cannot prevent all crime or fires?

Again, just playing devil's advocate, as someone who is a newbie here and thus essentially an outsider.

And for the record, I am in favour of freedom generally (including being into many of the things that are most likely to be moved), but society is not as understanding as we would all prefer, and when faced with an insistance that any level of safety is impossible, society tends to favour outright bans rather than saying 'oh, I guess that's ok then.'

It isn't fair, or reasonable, but it is the usual end result when there is an insistance that safety is impossible. Of course the reality may be that safety is impossible, but pointing that out usually has the opposite effect of that desired by those pointing that out.

What I'd heard was similar but not quite the same: A small yet very vocal minority of "puritians" had started harrassing enough about it. Christains, prudes, worried parents, elderly, ect. None of which tend to be the target audience obviously. What I believe is basically LL is doing this because they're forced to. Or scared into it (common christain tactic).

And honestly I don't think christianity itself has much - if anything - to offer SL enough to put money into it.

This is going out on a limb, but I believe the issue is basically LL is being accused by these "puritains" that they're allowing children to have sex. It's hard to defend against this accusation without looking like they'd support it (even if they don't support it), so they're forced to make obvious steps to show they're against it: Age Verification.

I doubt LL actually *wants* to force age verification, of course. They know this *will* disrupt the community in ways that could potentially destroy it. And I believe they're trying to find a balance between 'proving' their standing and not wrecking everything for the sake of it.

Well, me is from Europe, and for bars and specific clubs... no ID check in Germany and Austria where I lived/live so far. (exception: if one looks younger than 18+, then they ask for a ID) Nudist zones at north-sea (Germany) east-sea (Germany) and at many lakes and rivers in Germany and Austria checking nothing: everyone welcome from everywhere and in age from 0 up to 99 or older..., so to speak. Also there is for example a bigger free unfenced naturist zone direct in Vienna for example. Also no restrictions for saunas and so on.

In one word, we make no drama from being nude or sexy clothed. We have no nipple-scandals and we do not force medias to censor themselfs with 1-5minutes "safe-times" while broadcasting live-events. And we do look with big eyes and open mouths, when the USA starting to hyperventilate and to go hysteria, when a nipple pops up on tv-creen followed up by weeks long debates and general censoring.

I can take here a sunbath naked in my garden if I want, even while neighbors can peeking in. No one makes a drama out of this.

The other theme, you brought in, the hmm? how to say in my basic english? well, the overall situation - security versus freedom - in a society, depends strong on, how maybe matured a nation is in general. Some governments seeing that more relaxed, some seeing it more strict.

But if it goes about my own property, home, my private space, or expressions wich we can call art, artificial developements, virtuality, we have no restrictions. Since we create all self in SL, is this even art, artificial, virtual and a freedom for self-design and self-experiment for 18+ people, in wich no gov and no private company has to put their noses in.

Same like in internet: we have here strict laws and mechanisms (but no ad hoc censoring or something) against child-porn and Nazi - propaganda. There the justice and executive system (police) takes immediatly and effective action, if such material is discovered.

But all in all, all sorts of medias are unrestricted and free to use for everyone. Porn and whatever is, as everywhere free to use from18+ on, but no age checks in internet, except pay-sites. They do check via credit-card for example.

In general is it impossible to safe freedom while making the world more tight for individuals and groups for paranoic security reasons.

Freedom is, in general, the higher value. Safety comes secondary. Otherwise it would lead into totalitarism.

If we think back a timeline along until 1 million years ago, from today on backwards, Man was never before as safe as today. Thinking on wars, epedemias, poverty, torture or whatever, then we do live in ourdays, measured on the circumstances in the crystal palace wich we call *western world*, very comfortable, except the usual loss of lifes by illness, accidents, criminality.

But these things can't happen in Second Life, since we have superhuman strength there, with abilities like high speed flying, endless muscle-power, x-ray eyes (cam) and undestroyable bodies, hahahaha and some more.

However,we do pay here for a technical platform, we are 18+ and we do not need to be guided by a fake-moral as adults. I, for instance, do not accept any kind of being bigot from a private company or a government.

And I do not accept sorts of totalitarism. They are payed good by us all, they have sure noticed that we found ways to handle things by ourselfs in game - there is a culture and a common sense in general grown up over the years. newbies cannot easily taking over the system of spoken and unspoken rules, wich we handle in company with the TOS (wich is - by the way - the most hardest and the most consumer-not-protecting TOS I have ever seen in my life and biz life.

LL started a campaign against windmills. They are in Don Quijote mode and in crusade mode, caught in a self-declared war on eros, so to speak, and this is: bigot.

They do that not for moral or ethical reasons. They do that for interests and avisited new target groups, wich they try to give an advance insted to follow the former idea, to offer a platform where we can create and act along universal rights and the highest possible form of free expression as: artists. Everyone is here an artist and everyhting here is art or artificial. We do create all self including the characters of our puppets/figures.

This thing here is art and not real. And art has to be untouchable for censorship of any sort.

To verify ones age, is sure possible to establish and to use some more smarter and more user-data-safe ways, than LL and this unsecure third party provides them.

But as we know: if LL buys something or collaborates with something, then is it ever sub-optimal and not high class and often they do collaborate with no-name products and even not very international. All is not good researched and as cheap as possible, while the fees wich we have to pay and the stress wich we have to eat, is very well and very tricky developed and constructed as the trap as it is, best seen again at the actual case, about wich we talk,,,

Well said, and... these groups of wich you talked, acting very tricky. They perforate and penetrate medias with highly errected ( to use this term...) theories and they do rape (to use this term...) our most sensible and intimate zones, wich are: our brains.

They do provocate situations as long until we start to react and to quote them in our reactions and in this way they have a cost free spreading of their words and in case of LL a cost free spreading of their influence into LL's behavior and at least into our behavior.

If we talk about violence, they are experts in it: highly aggressive in their way to express things and equiped with a enormous pushing attitude. Also they know how to corrupt freedom and free environments, if necessary with money, or with a bunch of bigot attorneys wich are helping them, even with the bible in pocket and the golden mastercard for the next reachable escort-sevice in their wallets, when the daylight work is done (lol) these bigot folks.

Maybe they took over the brains and the pockets at the lab meanwhile. Watching the USA from Europe, it would be no wonder, if the bible belt were now wrapped around our international necks too and pulled tighter day by day until we are out of breath, if we are not awake, careful and smart dissident

But however and if such people has an influence or not: we are definitly in a trap now, because we see totalitarism at horizon in our SL-world (and not only there) and it is not a hallucination, unfortunaly...

ok, with this quote who else can see a linden flying over pornotopia in full bondage gear with a ban whip? o.O

Anyway, heres some legalese that might help ll as well.

I stole this from another site and modified it to suit the purpose but it has alot of stuff that would hold true for SL (and cover thier asses legally)


This might be worth it to look over and change to suit the needs of LindenLabs as a whole and SL.

I think that it's more of a "don't give out ID numbers/passport/etc on the internet or online" Showing your id card to a bartender is different than giving your social security number to an internet company. One is simple and fairly consequence-free. the other is sheer idiocy, and is acually illegal in some places in europe, as well as something that can get you fired at the very least.



Excellent point. The difference, of course, would be that those would be *actual* naked parts within reaching distance, on an *actual, real, live unscripted woman*
SL is cartoon titties that aren't within reaching disatnce at all.
The fact that LL wants to impose stricter standards on *cartoon* nudity and sex than are imposed in real life on *actual* sex (for adults, anyway) is sort of funny, in an apalling way



Well, because policement and firemen actually save lives and property, by their deterrent effect, and by their actions. The particular age verification service that LL has chosen is actually *worse* than nothing at all, because of their proven habit of hanging on to the data they collect (and selling contact info to advertisers in the past), and because few people outside the US can use it at all.
In addition, someone itching to sue LL over their child logging on and seeing some cartoon skin will no longer think of it in terms of a child breaking the rules, but in terms of LL failing in its stated responsibility of keeping underagers "safe" from such things.

If I had been caught with a penthouse as a kid, it would have been *my* fault. I'd have drawn the punishment, and had to take responsibility (I ought to know- it happened often enough! ).
Nowadays, parents will blame everyone *but* the child, except for *themselves* for not supervising the child closely enough.


The best thing LL could do to deal with this is to use the same standard as everyone else on the net- use the checkbox, and then if there's a problem, shrug and say "we were lied to. The kid said he was 18 and we had no reasons to doubt him. where were his parents, by the way?"

Of course, that will *never* happen, just like LL will not think carefully and realize that they are going to all this trouble to protect *adults* from *cartoon* porn and violence. Hell, even the south park movie was only rated "R", and LL is going to apply a "x" rating to what is practically the same stuff that was shown on the TV show

(Remember the one about cartman grinding up a kid's parents and feeding them to him in Chilli? *that* one was on regular TV!)

Nothing personal against you, alex- you're just asking questions, but the more I learn about this, the more cheesed off I get. LL has decided to rain on *my* parade because a few whiners are too lazy to click a mute button, the "teleport home" button, or turn down the sound. And Those same whiners are trying to "defend" a bunch of people who are too damn lazy to police their own kids.

A pox on *all* their houses!

Speaking of shakespeare- Ever read "Titus Andronicus"? Rape, dismemberment, canibalism, incest... Better stick old bill off in pornotopia too. He can join the *bible* there! Or isn't the story of judith screwing an enemy general into a stupor so she can decapitate him something that makes the list?

And if not, why the hell not?

OKay, off to bed with me- I'm getting cranky
-V-

there is no need for that, troll.
we will see.

I've seen that one, have you seen the new one? I think its called, Sleep, Pray, Queef. and has to do with terrance and philip getting pulled off the air because of a show about queef jokes, however people think that terrance and philip were ok with thier fart jokes and toilet humor, but god forbid somebody replaced it with queef jokes and toilet humor... (in the end, its still a expulsion of gas no matter what hole it comes out from and sums this issue up nicely actually) SL is making a mountain out of a molehill and stirring up a huge pot of OMGWTF if this isn't thought over after a long period of deliberation and tactiful thought.

1.4 You are prohibited from utilizing the Service or Interactive Areas unless you both (a) are 18 years of age and (b) have reached the age of majority in the jurisdiction(s) in which you live. If do not meet both of these criteria and nevertheless attempt to utilize the Service or Interactive Areas, you are committing the crime of theft of service and we may, at our option, report such crime to law enforcement.
1.5 By entering into this Agreement and/or utilizing the Service, you certify under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States and of Canada:
1.5(a). That you are the higher of (a) 18 years of age or (b) the age of majority in your jurisdiction, or older;
1.5(b). That you are familiar with all local laws or other laws in force in your area governing or affecting your legal right to access erotica or adult-oriented materials;
1.5(c). That you have the legal right to access adult-oriented materials and this service has the legal right to transmit them to you; that you are requesting adult-oriented materials for your own private enjoyment, that you will not access or view these materials in a manner observable to a minor or to the general public, and that you will never share these materials with a minor or in ANY WAY make these materials available to a minor;
1.5(d). That you live within a community where the community standards (and any additional applicable standards) do not consider (i) textual, cartoon, animation, rendered, or drawn depictions of sex acts, no matter how unusual or hardcore, and/or (ii) video, audio, photographic or other depictions of sex acts of any kind between consenting adults as obscene or otherwise illegal.
1.5. That you are able to and will only access these materials on a computer that is viewable only by you, and that you agree not to access these materials on a computer that is viewable by any other person who does not meet the requirements of, and agree to, these terms.

1.6 THIS AGREEMENT IS BASED ON VARIOUS MATERIAL PROMISES AND REPRESENTATIONS, INCLUDING THOSE SET FORTH IN THIS PARAGRAPH: YOU make the following material promises and representations. If any of these are false, or later become false, WE have the right to terminate this AGREEMENT without refunding any amounts YOU may have paid. Whether or not WE elect to terminate, WE may recover any damages WE may have suffered as a result of any of the following being (or becoming) untrue, whether or not subsequently corrected:

1.6(a). YOU TOLD US THE TRUTH WHEN YOU SIGNED UP: When YOU signed up to with US, YOU provided US with certain information (i.e. e-mail address, phone number, etc.). All of this information must be true and accurate. If it changes, YOU must immediately notify US of the change. The provision of current, accurate, and complete information is a material term of this AGREEMENT.

1.6(b). YOU WILL KEEP A CURRENT PAYMENT METHOD ON FILE: If YOU need to pay US regularly for service (i.e. with a premium account), YOU are responsible for keeping a current payment method on file so that any amounts YOU owe US (i.e. for a renewal) may be automatically charged.

1.6(c). YOU WILL NOT BREAK THE LAW: YOU agree and warrant that all of YOUR use of OUR services, the virtual world(s), OUR web sites and other system, and/or OUR Equipment shall at all times comply with all laws, including, but not limited to, all federal, state and local laws throughout the United States of America and all federal, provincial, and local laws through Canada. YOU affirmatively represent, agree and warrant that you have and at all times shall have all necessary intellectual property rights, including, but not limited to, all copyrights, trademark, patent and service mark rights and rights of publicity, both in the United States and throughout the world, to reproduce and disseminate, via the World Wide Web, SecondLife, and the internet, all code, marks or materials of every kind which YOU utilize in conjunction with this Agreement..
1.6(g). YOU ARE LEGALLY ALLOWED TO DO BUSINESS WITH US: YOU are not a resident of any country or affiliated with any organization prohibited to do business within the United States as defined at http://www.bxa.doc.gov/DPL/deniallist.html and http://www.treas.gov/ofac. YOU are not a resident of any country or affiliated with any organization prohibited to do business within Canada. YOU further agree to comply with all export control laws and trade laws. You shall, upon YOUR request, provide US with assurance of YOUR compliance with this or any other provision of this AGREEMENT.


only if you live in Canada or the USA... the main bulk of SL residents do not.
in my country these laws are moot.

*sigh*

I'm guessing you never read any classic fairy tales as a child, watched Disney animations, or pondered why Goofy can walk on two legs and talk while Pluto can do neither.

But, seriously - it is THIS sort of narrow-mindedness that is why we are even having this "discussion" right now!

if the map is correct, its close to 500 now