Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Answers to Questions

Alternate viewer behavior will depend on the versioning information they connect to the SL server with. If they claim to be 1.22 or older, they will be able to connect and function just like the 1.22 viewer will, however they will eventually need to be updated to send maturity information. After a grace period, even the 1.22 viewer will no longer be able to search for adult content. At that point, alternate viewers will need to have been updated to be able to access adult content.

Though a lot of my questions have been answered, there are still some much lingering and important ones that still need answers, I will keep them short and to the point as I have posted them many times.

5. Seems like all the businesses, sex clubs, sex object builders, and those that simply enjoy sex (smiles big) are going to be effected by this move, does this also include the person that lives in their own house (that they pay tier for) who want to enjoy sex with someone? Are they subject to the move as well?

You know, I am beginning to think Ann O'Toole is right..

Say what? You're implementing the actual maturity level of the account *in the viewer*?

My god, you (collectively) are actually willing to let a handful of scumbags with landbots acquire a monopoly on the land which will be absolutely necessary for certain types of businesses and venues to survive?

I interpreted that to mean that the server and viewer have to have some sort of handshake thing to access Adult-rated content. If you have a viewer that doesn't understand that, then no adult content is going to be available.

This would get around the potential hole of people using an older client to bypass all the security measures of this.

Because of course, RL legislators are not concerned with these topics at all...

2257 Regulations (C.F.R. Part 75) requires an asssurance by way of ID checks and record keeping for anyone that 'appears in any visual depiction of actual sexual conduct appearing or otherwise contained' on a website.

The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act addendum to the adult record-keeping requirements (now codified at 18 U.S.C. § 2257A) is under court challenge at the momment and is, for the momment, unenforcable, but extends that to animations or simulated sex.

If they get that past the courts, even if they have to reword it a bit to do so, it will REQUIRE age verification.

But of course this is all just about SL's competitors...

Thank you, Blondin. Please make sure that is clearly defined in the policies for this set of changes.

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On the other hand, this is an extremely apalling reply, Blondin. So you're saying that if, after the mandated moves are done and individuals can by land in Ursula, speculators swoop in with their land bots and buy 100% of the available land in Ursula and choose to demand insanely high prices for it, Linden Lab sees no problem with that extortion? When it is the ONLY option for those who want to run an adult business on the Mainland? Does ANYONE in authority at Linden Lab have any sense of ethics at all? It appears from your reply that the answer is NO.

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Milla? What kind of happy pills are you on? You really think the same scumbags who run the land bots won't scoop up all the sims at auction, if that is the way the Lindens sell it, and do the same damned thing? Why *shouldn't* a land speculator pay 3x as much as any sane deveoper would pay at auction, when they can parcel the land and demand 100x the rational price for the only possible land for Adult activities? And LL says they are OK with such rapacious behavior? A "responsible" land baron would not bid as high as the ones who will jack the price to the sky, because a responsible land baron knows they can't price the land fairly and reasonably and make a profit. So the ones that are willing to stoop to extortion will win every auction.

And if some gracious land baron *does* win an auction and make reasonably-priced parcels available in Ursula, you think the land bots won't be there to scoop those up in a heartbeat?

Yes, there will be some private sim owners who will be willing to flag sims as Adult and welcome "Adult Refugees". But most of those who own Mainland have their land there because they REFUSE to have any other Resident as their "Landlord"! So for most of those on the Mainland now and forced to move, or borderline and wanting to maintain full use options, the Private sims are not an option.

It is a form of abuse, if the whole reason for adding adult content to your land description is just to get land, that it almost guaranteed to sell at a premium due to supply and demand issues.
Some people will no doubt even buy cheap land, this so they can, quickly cash in on the low current cost of mature mainland, against increased value of the new adult land.
Which could also exasperate problems with the amount of land available, and push the cost of the new adult land far higher than it should actually be.

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I do think that the idea of charging a nominal monthly fee for all account is worth revisiting.

I have seen similar in Everquest (been in that since it began) and in RL. [...] Again, I have seen similar situations in other online's.

Whether it's abuse or not, I paid for my mature mainland with the premise that I could do whatever I wanted with it. Simply because I currently do not operate a public adult venue does not imply that I'd be okay with losing that option. I MAY want to have a public adult venue someday.

I understand that an existing adult venue should get priority with the land swap, but I also think it is my right as a landower to be given the option of a free land swap as well. Perhaps after all the adult venues are moved, mature mainland owners that aren't forced to move should be given an optional chance to swap land for free.

That seems only fair if they're going to change the rules mid-stream and restrict my options.

So my question for Blondin is this:
For those who aren't going to be forced to move... will we be given an opportunity toward the end to opt into a free land swap to Ursula?

First of all: Relax. Take a chill pill, and check your anti-American sentiment at the door. This is neither the time nor the place to be arguing international politics.

Your response reminds me very much like the recalcitrant child who got caught with his hand in someone else's cookie jar and then tried to argue that, because it wasn't his house, the rules didn't apply to him.

When you created your account with Linden Labs for use to access Second Life, you agreed to certain terms and conditions, amongst which were agreements to be bound by the laws of the State of California in the United States in any and all matters in which real-world laws would be applicable. You agreed to these terms; and, unless your country does not have laws governing contractual obligations, then I am afraid you are effectively a guest in the United States every time you access Linden Labs' services. Your only recourse in this matter is to terminate the agreement by demanding the deletion of your account and any and all applicable alternate or sub-accounts.

Whether it's abuse or not, I paid for my mature mainland with the premise that I could do whatever I wanted with it. Simply because I currently do not operate a public adult venue does not imply that I'd be okay with losing that option. I MAY want to have a public adult venue someday.

I understand that an existing adult venue should get priority with the land swap, but I also think it is my right as a landower to be given the option of a free land swap as well. Perhaps after all the adult venues are moved, mature mainland owners that aren't forced to move should be given an optional chance to swap land for free.

That seems only fair if they're going to change the rules mid-stream and restrict my options.

So my question for Blondin is this:
For those who aren't going to be forced to move... will we be given an opportunity toward the end to opt into a free land swap to Ursula?

I will swap my land for pretty much the same reason, I don't really want to be amongst extreme content but under no circumstances do I want to be in an area with PG type restrictions either, thats why all of my land is currently in mature sims as it gave me freedom of choice..

You know, I am beginning to think Ann O'Toole is right.

In case you haven't read her posts, Ann is a bit of a conspiracy theorist. But when there really ARE monsters under the bed, yelling about them isn't childish behavior, it's rational.

In this case, the monsters are the people running the garage-business "competitors" to Second Life, the ones based on the OpenGrid publicly-available software.

I think they've conducted a systematic campaign of complaining to LL about all of Second Life's "extreme and offensive" content, masking themselves as "concerned SL residents".

I think they have convinced LL that Cleaning Up The Grid is a necessity.

Of course, their real goal is to see SL fail, and LL's customers flee to their worlds as the only remaining alternatives.

LL had better wake up and smell the coffee, or they (and we) are going to be the biggest victims of "social engineering" ever.

But you do have choice!! This whole effort is about giving YOU, the resident, even more choices!! Geez.. Don't you read the blog? </sarcasm>

I wonder if the land prices on ursula, once they go out of control, will be seen by LL as a reason why this was all a great idea...

... One of the other problems in this thread is people trying to play word games to trap the lindens, such as saying they will just declare their adult whatever a nude beach. In RL though, I doubt there is any formal definition of a nude beach, and real nude beaches are just that, not sex playgrounds or strip bars.

This is strictly about money. It's not about any philosophical social shift, it's not about some new totalitarian censorship campaign or Moral Majoprity Crusade, no matter how hard the Patrick Henrys or America Bashers wish it to be. LL has decided this is going to fill their pockets more than the free wheeling resident created world that has brought them this far in the first place. Mitch and Phil both essentially disowned the current userbase last year. This is a sellout, plain and simple.

If you want to attack the idea, attack it on the merits of the impact it will make on LL's bottom line, because that's really the only thing that LL (or any other business for that matter) is going to pay attention to.

I actually have been wondering why they're NOT moving us to our own grid...

Funny, I thought this *was* our own grid.