Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Answers to Questions

If you spent a little more time engaging inworld, you would know the answer to that question. Or do you know the answer perfectly well, and are just being bloody-minded? You certainly seem to enjoy arguing for the sake of it.

I would think so. I don't have much of a dog in this fight, but if I did I would like to know WHY I have to pack up and move something that I've spent a lot of time and money building, on short notice. The "Because I said so" explanation never worked for me.....much to my father's chagrin.

Thank you, Sindy; I just had an epiphany on what to call this farce:

"Resident Choice" Theater (with apologies to Bruce Schneier)

Alternates:
"Think of the Children" Theater
Puritan Prude Theater
Age Verification Theater

Alex, with due respect and courtesy, you need to formulate your thoughts clearly. Otherwise, you are chewing up space.

Mystery Linden Theatre 3000

Let's all sit back and make snarky comments at all the cheesy things LL does.

Isn't that what we do now in the forum?

What I was thinking of too. We have gone for how many pages of just discussing legal definitions now? Ok, that is because not a lot of communication was happening, but we need to show that there are unanswered concerns out there.

To get us focused try this. Say you had a 1-on-1 meeting with the lindens about the policy. You could ask one, and only one, question. What would it be?

That statute does not apply. "Actual Human Being", “actual sexually explicit conduct”, the law stated is merely to maintain proof that persons over the age of 18 participated. But it seems you do understand part of the laws intent. Which is to verify that any performer is actually an adult. The reverse of your scenario is where it applies. Adults that look young enough to pass as a minor, or be digitally manipulated to resemble a minor. This is the aspect of the law having been challenged. Underage is a violation of the Child Pornography Protection Act. On April 16, 2002 the federal courts ruled virtual pornography Cannot be subjected to the Child Pornography Prevention Act. They may be evaluated by the Miller obscenity test. On May 19th 2008, the Supreme Court ruled that adolescent depicted sex scenes would be in violation. By the way this would potentially include the love scenes from “Titanic”, as well as a whole gambit of other mainstream movies. However they still have focused on “Actual Human Beings” with these laws, not virtual. Censorship is a slippery slope. I don't see how this is affecting LL's through the law you stated.

Remember, Blondin said The Providers would be busy with their self love session for a few days, coupled with the fact it is Easter, you probably won't see any new answers for awhile.

What is Linden Lab's strategic plan for the next ten years?

My belief of the real motivation:

LL is a business, money is their motivation.

More people with PIOF means more people likely to become PIU. Kaching!!

Persons wanting to run both an "adult" business as well as a mature business they will have to have parcels on both continents. Potentially upping their tiers. Kaching!!

Business gets closed for A R's Lindens reclaim the land and auction it off. Kaching!!

They already do things that don't seem legally correct. in the real world if a landlord collected full rent from 2 tenants for the same property they would be sued. The tier system is set up so if two days after billing you sell down to lower tier, that month you still pay the higher tier. Linden Labs collect tier on the same property a second time from the person who purchased your land. Unless it is abandoned, then they get to auction it off. I know many real life landlords that would love to be able to do that.

With the homestead scenario they likely calculated how many people would leave and raised the price accordingly. Therefore they don't lose money.

Lets face it they are in business to make money, not friends. They have a unique product and they know there are users who would not likely leave. Unique in that it is stable and offers freedoms that similar programs do not. They aren't forbidding Adult activities, they know its a good part of their income. All the simple solutions offered in these forums don't give them the financial increase a new continent will provide. As well as the people who now will likely have a credit card available for use with just a few simple clicks.

Why are you really doing this adult-content stuff?

When you finally release the details of this, will you buy my land at the price I paid for it at purchase and cancel any further tier payments if I decide that your new business practice is not acceptable to me and will be closing my business down.

No. Because the proper "legal" terminology for SL avatars would be "computer-generated image". A "digital image" is a JPG/PNG/GIF of a real person, or a Photoshopped (ie, "computer-manipulated" image of AN ACTUAL HUMAN BEING. I think a judge would be hard-pressed to even rule a computer-generated avatar with someone's RL image skinned onto the 3D model applicable under this statute.

Basically, cartoons, even realistic-looking ones, don't count.

Well, there's plenty enough material to work with to keep even Joel, Crow, and Tom Servo busy 24/7 until the year 3000, and most likely beyond.

What is your decision making process? Ouija Board? Cards? Astrology?On which side it's hanging when Mitch gets up in the morning?

Mitch said in January 08 in Davos that they want to have all ages in - plus any biz wich may have an idea to avcoid traveling costs for meetings and blablabla, and a 3D cam plus 3D voice and super-realistic looking avatars made by scanning of customers bodies with a, like he said -100 dollar cam.

Wonderful ideas, complete for the trashcan, since I saw the most modern video-conference systems of the world at CeBit.

No serious company will do the duckwalk and walking around with dead eyes and paying extraordinaire overpriced fees when they can have, this:

http://www.sfgate.com/blogs/images/sfgate/techchron/2006/10/22/MAG53295499x333.jpg

Edit add: and this is an old photo, 2 years old or so, - much more up-to-date systems are available meanhwile - where you think you sit in one room with people, while they are 8000 miles away....but the pic gives an impression - the three screens in background installed on the table = a real conference situation. No chance for SL to top that.

We have a room like that a couple hundred feet from me. It cost a hell of a lot more than private sim, probably more than you'd pay for a dedicated SL-behind-the-firewall system. It doesn't work with people's laptop cameras in hotel rooms or whatnot. I don't think I've seen anyone in it two days running. I've sure as hell never been invited to a meeting there.

On the other hand, we WOULD need a dedicated SL-behind-the-firewall rack to use SL for real conferences, whether they "clean up the mainland" or not.

We have a couple of rooms more elaborate than that. We call them Engineering Collaboration Rooms and they are used at least twice a day. I don't know what they cost, but they probably would buy an island and pay the tier for about 5 years.

Can someone with some techy knowledge help me out with this one? I just clicked on one of those popups that says 'The region you have entered is running a different simulator version, etc.' (I do this from time to time, more for the hell of it really - I don't understand most of the stuff that's posted.)

The first item in the Release Notes for the 1.26 server on 7 April is 'The largest change is the addition of the Adults-only code'. Now, I realise LL have been working on this a long time and would have to implement the changes in stages. I've checked a couple of other servers since, and the code hasn't been added yet (I was in Cub, if anyone's interested).

What I'm curious about, though, is that if the code is being added now, does this mean that in fact LL's implementation plans have been finalised, or does it just mean that whatever has been added can be tweaked later? (Apologies to those who understand better than I if this is an idiot question!)

Could be true. But what makes one in a hotelroom, while not traveling, if such a conference is made for no-traveling? The costs, hmm, hmm,hmm, depends on the company and the technic they ordered, - for globalplayers it is peanuts (Siemens or such)

On the other hand: a finance CEO, 35, female, at night, with notebook, a better cam maybe...laszive stretched on a hotel-bed, conferencing from Brisbane, with serious clothed grey suits in London, 12 AM CET, could be interesting.

If it is then only an avatar....boring...

But to be serious:I am ok with the firewall idea, wich was expressed by LL a few days ago.

Not that these serious, ascetic, high concentrated acting, best prepared people running into my vampire-fangs by accident. And no, I am in no bloodlines clan, I use only the tools and the mimics, I am never in mosquito mode at landing zones and I am only once a month intriquant, a liar and corrupt plus blood thirsty, exact at full moon midnight each month. Aaaaaaah, yes. I use social skills and faked-charme to catch my victims on my individual ways, wich is much more fun - I will see how the chances are when the biz ladies dropping in, but if needed I bite male CEO's too, after a boring long conversation in a boring textured smooth-jazz-piano-PG-bar, or so, exact when one starts to cry at midnights after a few Martinis, about his damaged marriage because of his work-a-holic lifestyle and his lazy bones at home and then, when his mind is so blurry that he clicks any suddenly blue pop-up sign on the upper right - then it is too late for him - blood is blood, - hehehehe (and this all for only 0,25 l blood, I must be stupid...)

My secret target is Blondin Linden, maybe, one day, while he "reviews" a smut-shop...or Cyn? Hmmm. Very difficult, but not impossible. Mark would be the hit. He is a noob, not much on, there are chances to surprise him while a hectic celebration of something. If he hits the Yes-button, he is done, lol.

I don't think we know what LL did to implement this stuff yet.

If I were to guess, I'd guess that, best case, they're just adding the code that blocks somebody from entering a region if that region is 'adults only' and the resident doesn't have payment info and hasn't verified using aristotle.

Just having that ability in the sim doesn't necessarily mean that they will use it and it doesn't have anything to do with which residents will be forced to move to restricted regions.

It's not an idiot question.

The server-side code to flag entities as adult or not has been added. The interface to actually do so has not yet been released. Per Prospero's responses to comments on the blog entry for this server release, he swears that this server side modification does not contain any policy-specific logic only the code needed to enforce whatever policy they eventually implement.

Therefore the following assumption would appear to be valid: That some kind of segregation and filtering change has been a done deal since long before we ever heard of it.

Given Prosperos track record of openness and honesty over the areas he's responsible for I would lean towards believing him regarding the absence of "policy logic" in this release. We therefore do not have any actual evidence from this event alone on whether the associated policy decisions have already been made or are still under review. For that particular field of speculation we must look to the Lindens comments on this and the previous threads on the subject. I will not add to the fog but lets just say I have drawn my own conclusions.

Now I am not being silly here, but are our avators likly to be in trouble over this as well, I am not talking nudity obviously thats not allowed in a pg place. I mean more like dressing sexily, or in my case dressing one of my avtors in whats seen as 'mistress' gear because I think it looks cool could that get me barred from PG areas? or for that matter somone just wearing dancing silks or something very revealing without showing anything naughty, bottom line, do we know how our avators are going to be treated in this?

I'm curious about this, too. Blondin said there would be updated guidelines coming out next week. I don't know if this is just regarding Adult businesses, or if it will deal with individual residents.

Will wearing shackles or a chastity belt in a PG or M region get you an AR? How about invisible attachments?

How about group titles, or titlers?