Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Answers to Questions

I believe the argument was in the context of the discussion of the Extreme Pornography Act. No reasonable person would mistake an SL avatar for a real person.

Age verification or account verification is a separate issue.

Frackin' unbelievable. First you support "land speculators" that are going to screw over residents, and now you are restricting our options on previously unrestricted land.

Look, I don't believe we have any inherent rights, but that doesn't mean you should discount our needs. Making an effort to go the extra mile and support us would be a show of good faith.

True, I don't currently operate an adult business. However, I would like to, but as I haven't had the time lately, it hasn't happened. With this change I suppose I can kiss that goodbye. Without getting into Ursula on the ground floor, I'm going to be stuck with a worthless mature parcel and I'm not going to pay $1000USD for an equivalent lot in Ursula.

Thanks LL. 'eff you.

I restate my original question:
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?

But doesn't age screening apply to both? The RP that would cause the most risk would also be in the more adult oriented sims. There is also an arguement in favour of age screening all of SL, which would mean disruptions from moving would not be needed but disruptions from keeping people out would be greater.

It is also worth noting that your equation applies to 'well adusted 'adults'' when the concern is 'kids'.

As for the realism of avatars, they are still intended to resemble humans (usually) and the goal is usually to make them more lifelike rather than less. Why would that be a goal if it is 'just cartoon sex?' There is less problem with furries, since they are more 'unreal.' And it is not beasiality when they are anthropomorphic. Again, it is more 'unreal'.. more cartoony or fantastic.

There is a separate US act on the books as of 2006 that requires age verification *and record keeping* that extends existing age requirements to animated sex. The legislation is under court challenge, so it is not currently enforcable, but it is not currently struck down either.

It does not matter what you or I think is reasonable. It is the courts and the legislators and to a lesser extent society as a whole that makes such decisions.

This is not even remotely true and a gross exaggeration. Child protective legislation has nothing to do with people saying "its the parents problem" when it comes to adult content. Child protective legislation is there to stop the exploitation and abuse of children from their parents, relatives, strangers and a century ago, their employers.

And a great many of us agree that it is a parents responsibility to watch the content their children have access to when playing games, computers, the internet and television. Can we say V-Chip failure?

Don't try to talk about what the legislative lobby is. I did lobbying for almost a year for the #1 lobbying firm in Illinois and now my husband is a lobbyist there.

The lobby against pornography and simulated pornography has nothing to do with corporate America and everything to do with Religious organizations and democrats who feel that as liberal as they are Uncle Sam still needs to come into their house and give them orders and protect their children from something they can easily do themselves by turning off the damn computer or television or not giving their children free unmitigated and unmonitored reign over such entertainment items as mentioned above.

The driving legislation against pornography etc is not getting stronger from people entering the political process to stamp out such degenerative material but from political entrepreneurs exploiting and capitalizing on the fear of the lazy and ignorant. It is nothing but a bullet point on some politicians dossier itemizing what they did for their district/county/city/state.

And the first half of your post has nothing to do with the topic and is a complete non-sequitur talking about relationships and people getting hurt etc...

From a website :

Today Tomi Ungerer, satirist and illustrator, turns 75.

When Tomi Ungerer is compared to other artists often the names of the very best like Goya, Hogarth, George Grosz or Daumier are used to describe his work. He became famous with witty children books but also for his erotic, sarcastic and political drawings. 1998 he was given the Hans Christian Andersen Award for his life work on children books. But still until today it is almost impossible to buy one of his books in the UK or the US.

Ungerer lived in New York during the 1950s, where he became well known with sarcastic and erotic drawings. But as this was McCarthy time, like many other artists he was under observation by the FBI and later his work was banned including his children books.

Ungerer today lives in Ireland and the Alsace where he also was born. We wish him all the best and hope he needs to carry less world-weariness on his shoulders these days.

Another reason he became unpopular in the U.S, he did illustration work for The New York Times and for television during this time, and began to create posters denouncing the Vietnam War


PS I live in UK, but i can access a lot of his artwork on the websites although not his official website.

This has nothing to do with anything.

Wanting for greater realism in a game is not proof of anything. Sorry your way of reasoning by asking irrelevant questions is rather misleading.

And what does furries have anything to do with it? How unreal is it when a furry whips out a realistically modeled dog cock to have sex with you - that sure is one damn real aspect amidst a bunch of unreal ones. OOPS, just like avatars in SL - real-like among the unreal.

SO a want for greater realism in SL has nothing to do with "cartoon sex", and by that reasoning you use i guess we should NOT want to have realistic avatars in SL if we are NOT doing cartoon sex?

Whatever.

I'm not against age screening. SL is Adults Only and should stay that way. And I think it should be done at initial entry. I don't believe in totally anonymous accounts. And I refer to well adjusted adults because adults are supposed to be the only people seeing that content in SL.

As far as avatars go, personally, they are NOT real humans, no matter how lifelike they may look. They are nothing but computer generated images, no different than any CGI TV show. We can control them and dress them up, but they aren't "Us". What happens to my avatar in SL is not happening to "Me". When I log off SL, that representation ceases to exist until I log on again.

That's just they way I see it, I don't expect anyone else to agree with it.

Yes it DOES matter what you or i think is reasonable when it comes to pornography because it is the money from the electorate that is supporting and driving the legislation and lining the pockets of politicians with money as lobbyist host fund raisers to get their anti-pornography client into the same room or same dinner table as that Senator, Representative, Major, Governor, et al. to push their anti-porno campaign.

How the hell can you talk about the political process in anyway and then claim that to a lesser extent society as a whole has an impact on the political process when there are entire books dedicated to the NIMBY phenomena or the Schattsneider theories of conflict spreading in the political arena - all which happens from society first???

I've always enjoyed the irony that many who espouse to be Liberal wish to have Government involved in as many aspects of our lives a possible. When did Liberal come to mean "Let someone else think for you?"

That is certainly the truth!

While many builds stay pretty much the same (although possibly evolving over time) over a month or two, others do not do the same. One of my neighbors changes the content and even terraforming of her plot constantly. I have gone AFK a few hours and she has changed it from say, a cave to an adult art studio. I tried to match the terraforming of my plot to hers but eventually just gave up and built a short wall.

Aren't you and I part of society as a whole? Don't we elect the legislators and in some cases the jurists who make these decisions? What you and I think is what the whole system is supposed to be based on. Those people are supposed to represent us...all of us. They may not listen, but it is imeprative we let them know what we think.

And SL could not be seen as facilitating abuse why? What about SL makes it immune as a target?

I said nothing about corporate anything being behind any of the legislation, so I have no idea where that came from.. I was actually arguing against that suggestion.

And if this was only the work of a handfull of fanatics that the rest of society disagrees with, do you really feel that the legislation would really be passing without any protests?

The amendment which includes extends the legislation to cover animated images (18 U.S.C. § 2257A) is known as the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, in honour of Adam Walsh, son of John Walsh, who established 'America's Most Wanted in the aftermath of his son's abduction and murder.' John Walsh may be a fanatic, but his position is not religion based but based on dealing with many crime and abduction cases as a civillian not to mention what happened to his own child.

But as a lobbiest I would have expected you to know that. Per Wikipedia, America's Most Wanted has been around since 1988, very much predating the existance of SL, survived a brief cancellation in 1996 but was brought back due to demand, and is still going strong. Hardly lacking in public support. Again, things I would have expected a lobbiest to know, considering it took me about two minutes to find the information. It took maybe 5 or 10 to find the Child Protection Act information (and found it first via California's state site, not Wiki).

Separate issues. Legislation in the United States does not alter a British Law.

SL avatars are clearly animations, clearly not mistaken for real people, and clearly NOT subject to the British Extreme Pornography Act. Continually bringing it up is in no way helpful.

As for children in SL, I've said it before, no children on the main grid, ever. I've also asked, multiple times in this thread, why not across the board account verification for SL. I haven't seen an answer from a Linden on that one.

Obviously, Linden Lab does not see it as a critical issue.

Yes we are and yes we do, but that does not mean the majority agree with *us*. What *we* feel they are supposed to do does not mean that our opinions equal law, or that we can ignore laws simply because we disagree with them, or even if we disagee with the process.

There is nothing wrong with letting them know what we think, and the Adam Walsh act is under review for precisely those reasons.

One other thing though, in reading over the writeup of legislation again, there is an implication that the reason that drawings or cartoons are ok is that real people are not involved, not merely that images of real people are not involved. If that is the distinction, SL may already be in trouble as real people are involved in SL sex. They are behind avatars, but that may not be enough of a distinction as they are still playing those roles.

If British Law does not apply it does not mean that US law does not apply given that LL is on American soil. Whether LL worries about it or not likewise does not determine whether it applies or not.

I agree with you on cross the board age verification.

Here's a quick hint: When a werewolf in SL pulls out his schlong, it's not a werewolf sitting at the computer running SL. Nor are there demons, vampires, robots, cats, dogs, foxes, Jogis, minotaurs, aliens, pixies, kraken, or any of the gazillion other avatars actually sitting at the computer typing away. The werewolf isn't real and cannot be real. The same goes for any part of his anatomy.

On the screen is a cartoon - behind the keyboard is the real. So Fido's Dick (hmm, good name for a grunge band) isn't real, no matter how the creator textured it. There's NO magical set of pixels that makes VR real, just like there are no magical words that can summon demons or pixies.

If there were freaks and monsters in the real world, they likely would be portraying themselves in SL as ordinary humans, enjoying their own brand of fantasy while laughing at all of us portraying monsters.

So far I'm seeing opinion, not a specific question which can be answered. That was why I answered the one question that I could see. Sorry if that wasn't what you want.

Questions like "This is wrong, how could you do this to us?" are really rhetorical questions, so I wouldn't expect an answer from LL on that.

Linden Lab certainly has attorneys reading these laws, relevant court decisions and advising the company how to cover themselves.

Again, I guess it is just perspective on my part, but no matter what is happening on the screen"Real people are not having sex". They can each hop on a poseball, and go afk and go grocery shopping or iron thier laundry for all we know. I don't necesssarily say my view is correct or anywhere in the majority, but it is how I feel about it, and will always feel about it. I call it like I see it. If it doesn't fit into the fabric of what SL is to be, fine. I'll find something else to do for entertainment.

When they aren't out chasing Ambulances, I'm sure.

Actually I think we at least mostly agree. I am also in favour of age verification at the door. I think that age verification on the adult content is minimum, but that age verification at the door would be better (and likely less disruptive).

Also, I would prefer to see these activities continue to be available. I just feel that if working age verification is not put in place, they will be shut down. I wish that risk wasn't there, but I wish that many risks did not exist in the world (and that we as society were willing to live with more risks). Unfortunately, society as a whole does not agree.

The safe harbor laws.

They state that a service provider is not responsible for the content others put out on its service. Just like the phone company cannot stop you from talking filthy on the telephone and ISPs can't stop you from putting a picture of a naked chick on a server not in their control, so too Linden Labs can benefit by saying that User Created Content is out of their control. This prevents them from being prosecuted. Any prosecution for X or Y stuff is against the person who created it. And this is how it should be - LL just provides bandwidth and serverspace.

However, the odd slippery slope is, if a service provider begins to actively try to censor materials and offer some protections, then the entire safe harbor law is moot and they can be sued for every little offense from every direction. The moment the service shows that it IS able to control its content, then it must control all of it. There is no gray area in this law. Either you can control your content or you cannot - there is no partial credit given.

So in LL's case, it would be better if they simply said that the users are responsible for their own actions and that they can't control what the users upload or do or say. Because the moment they decide to restrict content, as they are about to do, then the floodgates burst and the law which protects ISP no longer applies to them. And THEN LL will learn the price of their foolishness.

And what makes you think the current plan is not based on their advice? For all we know they have already been advised they are offside, in which case they would hardly want to post here admitting that, would they?

Again we come to the crux of the issue. LL's Age verification plan doesn't work. It never has. So, in my opinion, they are either really stupid and blind to the pitfalls *possible*, or they are fully aware and will use it to eventuall eliminate all explicit adult content and activity from SL.*more likely*