Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Answers to Questions

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.

I got ARd last year for having two for sale signs up. It was done maliciously as there were plenty of other breaches around in the surrounding sims but only I got the slap and had to take one of the signs down.

I'm a criminal, guilty of a heinous crime.

My neighbour, whom concierge keep telling me to AR multiple times to get the attention of the governance team to shut down him and his sim abuse, still gets to go about his business of crippling the sim though.

/me shrugs

Terms of Use

It is in the Terms of Use where you really get to know how much a company respects their customers. And by the way the large majority of companies write their Terms of Use their is no way in hell they respect us. So here is my take on Terms of Use done the way I like to be treated and talked to.

Keep Good Karma (i.e. respect and follow our Community Guidelines)

Be respectful to the people in the community and the community will be respectful to you. If you treat others the way you wish to be treated I foresee absolutely no problems.

For a more in-depth explanation of what we expect from you please read our Community Guidelines.

Illegal Activity

You and only you are responsible for the legalities for what you say, upload and do on FetLife. We do not take any legal responsibility for anything illegal you might be doing on FetLife.

Registered Sex Offenders

We are very protective of our community and we have the right to refuse entry to any sex offenders. This is done on a case by case basis. If you are on the registry we highly recommend you email us before you sign-up to FetLife and explain your situation so that together we can prevent future headaches.

With respect to case-by-case basis, if you are on a registry because when you were 19 you dated a 17 year old with bitter parents we might just make fun of you but if you committed any violent sex crimes then we are definitely going to have a problem with you on FetLife.

You Have To Be Legal

We are not talking about illegal as in illegal immigrant. We are talking about legal as in age of consent and age to be able to see and buy pornography legal if you want to become a member of FetLife. No legal, no membership, no ifs, ands or buts!
Certain Topics Are Prohibited on FetLife

Anything involving under-age children, rape, murder or any type of violent crimes will not be permitted on FetLife and will be removed. Role-playing about these topics will be permitted though.

Be Responsible If You Choose To Meet Someone

I personally think that the large majority of people out there are good people, but that does not mean you shouldn't still be careful. If you decide to meet someone you meet on FetLife in real life take the proper precautions. We do not and can not screen users of FetLife and can not be at all responsible for anything that happens outside the boundaries of FetLife. Just use your common sense and everything should be fine!

Promoting Your Service/Product/Site

FetLife accounts are intended for personal use, for our members to get together and share alternative lifestyle thoughts, conversations,announcements, images and so on. Please don't use it as a storefront for your business. If you want to do that, why not purchase a commercial ad?

Unfortunately, any profile's named after a store, event, organization, website or any type of business or product will be deleted.

We Will Never Sell or Share Your Personal Information With Anyone

Seriously, no loop holes here. We will not share or sell your personal information to anyone for any reason. Our information is stored with your information hence we treat your personal information like it was our own. And we value our personal information.

You Uploaded It, You Own It

Assuming it was your media to begin with, if you uploaded any media then you retain the right to that media. It is not FetLife's (or any of it's members) media just because you uploaded it here. If anyone wants to use the media for any reason what so ever they have to contact the person who uploaded it.

On that note, don't upload any media that does not belong to you. If anyone complains that someone has uploaded media that does not belong to them we will have to investigate and we might have to remove the piece of media.

Don't Spam Users

If we find out you are spamming users then we will have no choice but to put a stop to it. It is our responsibility to protect our users and the quality of their experience. Don't be a douche bag!

Disabling And Or Deleting Your Account

We can, if we have to, disable and or delete your account. Do we want to have to ever get to that point? No, of course not. But if you are decreasing the quality of the experience of the people around you then we will have no choice. But, we want to hear your side of the story as well. We want to be fair about the whole thing. But at the end of the day we have the final say.

1% Of Your Action Belongs To Us

We have no clue how we are going to claim this but we want 1% of the action you are getting from this site. Yeah, you heard right. While we are working our asses off to grow FetLife you are getting action and we want 1% of it, damn it! We think it is only fair.

Changes To The Terms of Use

Like FetLife itself, the Terms of Use and Community Guidelines will evolve over time but the general theme of keeping good karma and we do not do anything to others that you would not want to be done to yourself will always be kept.

It is in the Terms of Use where you really get to know how much a company respects their customers.

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?

A few years ago when enterprises, governments, and educational institutions established their presence in Second Life, there was one piece of advice that we received consistently across the board, “The promise of virtual worlds is tremendous and the Second Life environment is great for some kinds of work. But, if you only had a behind the firewall solution, we could really incorporate virtual worlds into the core of our business.” Although Second Life is a safe place to work, many large enterprises and government institutions require complete control over their IT systems due to privacy and confidentiality concerns.

We understand.

Last October, Mark Kingdon, CEO of Linden Lab/Second Life (affectionately known as “M”), briefly hinted that we were working on.... *blablablablablablablabla*

and we should all note that there's around a dozen of us here on this thread. Doesn't really indicate too much support for resisting LL.

Everyone else has gone back about their business and is either fretting or hoping it won't affect them.

These have been fun conversations amongst ourselves, but ultimately that's all this is.

The only answers we're likely to get are silence.

I'm not convinced that people cannot legally give out their id, but take me for example, if I take my id to a bank in my city I am protected by European data protection laws as to what the company can do with that information.

If I give those details to a company outside Europe I am not protected by those laws, which is why the general advice is to not part with that information in such circumstances, obviously if you want to travel you need to provide id.

In the case of a bar and a strip club you show your id in person, the bar don't need to take the details and store them because it's a physical check. If I was able to go to a bar and just quote a passport number I doubt many people would think that was a good way of checking id.

I don't even do that. My stuff is found in XstreetSL.com only. When I set that up, I decided that I wasn't gonna give LL another dime for land - not after the BS Voidsim disaster. And I still won't until they abandon the next price jump on Homesteads and find a better way to clean up the mess they themselves have created in the mainland.

I'm not convinced that people cannot legally give out their id, but take me for example, if I take my id to a bank in my city I am protected by European data protection laws as to what the company can do with that information.

If I give those details to a company outside Europe I am not protected by those laws, which is why the general advice is to not part with that information in such circumstances, obviously if you want to travel you need to provide id.

In the case of a bar and a strip club you show your id in person, the bar don't need to take the details and store them because it's a physical check. If I was able to go to a bar and just quote a passport number I doubt many people would think that was a good way of checking id.

Fetlife this time..

<SNIPPED FOR BREVITY>

This site has grown like topsy down the last 12 months. Yes, It's a different kind of platform but the underlying principles here are strong. The site has grown and changed and the community has whined sometimes but they're still strongly supportive.

Who can forget the magic of Second Life before 2007? City slickers all, we trooped into the rainforrest with an enthusiasm rarely experienced in our daily lives. It was an alien world - mysterious, vibrant, alive - and who among us did not get bitten by insects? We didn't care. We danced and cried and LIVED free from the grinding banality of RL with it labels and definitions. "At last!" we shouted from the virtual rooftops, "a world for adults!"

Then we got down to business: grooming, shopping, building a home, making new friends, integrating ourselves into new communities. In a world with few restrictions, we rolled up our sleeves and learned to plan, bargain, cooperate and negotiate. What a joy to exercise talents long suppressed by RL nannies, school teachers, employers, lawyers, priests and politicians - not to mention morally self-righteous neighbors. Here in SL, we were on our own, free, yes, but also responsible for our decisions. What a thrill to live by your wits, to grasp the fabric of reality and press it against your face. Clean sheets fresh from the dryer!

This is what made Second Life successful. It was an information-rich social space in which residents could bypass the physical and social constraints of race, gender, age, class, nationality, sexual orientation and physical appearance. It was also a free-market economy in which talent could rise unhindered by the social and political constraints of formal education, employment history, credit record, union membership, professional accreditation and government bureaucracy. Anyone could come to Second Life and be an architect, fashion designer, model, dancer, club owner, programmer or socialite. It was this combined social and economic freedom that drew people from all over the world through the Welcome Centers of Ellis Island. Don't you get it, Jack? Second Life is itself a symbol. It is this symbol you have been slowly destroying since 2007.

This is the problem with using the term adult when you mean pornography.

You are not saying SL is an adult grid, you are saying it is a pornography grid. And since Second Life is a pornography grid, everyone who comes here should understand they have chosen to see pornography.

I think that lack of clear definition of terminology is a source of confusion and fallacy. Because the term "adult" is being misused, you are arguing that anyone who consents to adult content is consenting to pornography, and that's not necessarily true.

From the Mirriam-Webster Online Dictionary, retrieved March 22, 2009, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/adult

adult

Pronunciation: \ə-ˈdəlt, ˈa-ˌdəlt\ Function:adjective Etymology:Latin adultus, past participle of adolescere to grow up, from ad- + -olescere (from alescere to grow) — more at oldDate:1531
1 : fully developed and mature : grown-up
2 : of, relating to, intended for, or befitting adults <an adult approach to a problem>
3 : dealing in or with explicitly sexual material <adult bookstores> <adult movies>

Take it up with the linguistics experts. This forum is not the place to debate the proper contextual use of the term "adult".

*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!

it's people like this..

https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=97061&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

now to me, this should include all those trailer trash outfits that seem to be currently in vogue since they're meant to sexually arouse.. but as you'll see by the first response she was directing it solely at BDSMers since xcite is ok..

now, is LL going to protect me from this patently outrageous insult to intelligence??

I thought not

Deltango Vale] Who can forget the magic of Second Life before 2007? City slickers all, we trooped into the rainforrest with an enthusiasm rarely experienced in our daily lives. It was an alien world - mysterious, vibrant, alive - and who among us did not get bitten by insects? We didn't care. We danced and cried and LIVED free from the grinding banality of RL with it labels and definitions. "At last!" we shouted from the virtual rooftops, "a world for adults!"

Then we got down to business: grooming, shopping, building a home, making new friends, integrating ourselves into new communities. In a world with few restrictions, we rolled up our sleeves and learned to plan, bargain, cooperate and negotiate. What a joy to exercise talents long suppressed by RL nannies, school teachers, employers, lawyers, priests and politicians - not to mention morally self-righteous neighbors. Here in SL, we were on our own, free, yes, but also responsible for our decisions. What a thrill to live by your wits, to grasp the fabric of reality and press it against your face. Clean sheets fresh from the dryer!

This is what made Second Life successful. It was an information-rich social space in which residents could bypass the physical and social constraints of race, gender, age, class, nationality, sexual orientation and physical appearance. It was also a free-market economy in which talent could rise unhindered by the social and political constraints of formal education, employment history, credit record, union membership, professional accreditation and government bureaucracy. Anyone could come to Second Life and be an architect, fashion designer, model, dancer, club owner, programmer or socialite. It was this combined social and economic freedom that drew people from all over the world through the Welcome Centers of Ellis Island. Don't you get it, Jack? Second Life is itself a symbol. It is this symbol you have been slowly destroying since 2007.

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.

Not limited to is the key word there

and by the by, this little legal tidbit was actually pulled from another 3d-metaverse site that caters to all countries WITH NO PROBLEMS. (just doesn't have as much content)

THERE IS NOT GOING TO BE ENOUGH LAND FOR EVERYONE!!!

This site bears no resemblance to SL and from what i hear from disgruntled members the owner runs it like LL runs SL with no recourse for complaints. I imagine one could apply just about any TOS from just about any social networking site to LL but at the end of the day its now the company treats its members/customers, that is the telling thing in all of this.

Since you have either failed to comprehend it or have chosen to ignore it, I repost what I had posted to you earlier (March 22, 2009 16:00, to be exact) the last time you pulled this trick

From the Mirriam-Webster Online Dictionary, retrieved March 22, 2009, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/adult

adult

Pronunciation: \ə-ˈdəlt, ˈa-ˌdəlt\ Function:adjective Etymology:Latin adultus, past participle of adolescere to grow up, from ad- + -olescere (from alescere to grow) — more at oldDate:1531
1 : fully developed and mature : grown-up
2 : of, relating to, intended for, or befitting adults <an adult approach to a problem>
3 : dealing in or with explicitly sexual material <adult bookstores> <adult movies>

Take it up with the linguistics experts. This forum is not the place to debate the proper contextual use of the term "adult".
:

Lindens. Read the above please. Actions have consequences. Here we have an example of what you are doing to "Your World, Your Imagination". A very talented individual STOPPED WORK on a promising line of items simply because she THOUGHT the market for them was going to be strangled.

So much for the unbridled freedom and creativity of Second Life, huh?

This is ALREADY HAPPENING, and you haven't even put your new policy in place yet.

Already we are seeing the discrimination beginning, too. Places are being excluded from hunts because they are "too adult" to participate. People are getting ready to AR their neighbors, for the crime of being different.

Can't you see that this action is going to have exactly the opposite effect from what you intend? It isn't going to make the grid more friendly and predictable. It's going to do a lot more than just inconvenience a small minority of residents for a short time. This is going to FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE the way we look at and use Second Life, and the way we interact with our fellow residents...and not in any good way. You are doing more than annoying a few residents here. You are pitting us against each other. You are turning us into a world of Us and Them...and you are driving away or stifling the very creatives who have made SL such a wonderful place.

In a year's time, SL is going to be populated by a small remnant of its current residents, sadly wandering around the bombed-out ruins, looking at a hole in the ground and saying, "that used to be one of my favorite spots." That's if it exists at all.

Read the quote above, and get a frigging clue.

do you understand the meaning of moot?
just because somebody makes a law in one country does not mean its applicable in another.
learn about law before you post.

NOT LIMITED TO