Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Answers to Questions

Warning: long winded strem of thought follows.

Mainly for Alex, who I think is sincere in his postings here, but just a general review of the pattern that LL has constantly followed in their business/legal management of SL, which I think this is mostly as opposed to any social or moral statement since I arrived in Jan 2007. This will probably sound like a tin foil induced soap box rant, so take it for what it is worth.

When I joined SL it was shortly after the Sep 06 floodgate opening where free unverified and unlimited signups were allowed. Gambling was still allowed but the rumblings of it going away were there.There were many complaints of rigged games, and LL refused to get involved. LL insisted that gaming would remain citing the fact that the Linden was not a real currency. They did this several times, even as many saw the handwriting on the wall and asked, and they still insisted nothing would change.There was some FBI nosing around into SL. Then LL announced that virtually overnight, all gambling operations are to be shut down, no grace period and no renumeration.

Ginko, SL Banks and other financial schemes were also going. Again, many complaints were ignored. Finalyl Ginko collapsed and the owner did a Madoff and made off with hundreds of thousands of dollars from SL investors. Some more rumors of FBI attention and LL decides to shut the banks down.

Ageplay. From before I came, residents were complaining of child avatars in sexualized situations. AR's were filed but nothing was done.....until a german expose ran that showed a situation, one that was actuallt trumped up by the TV people, but which did allegedly catch 2 people distributing child porn through SL. THEN LL decided to act. They did, but a ban on child avi's and sex, but also put out the famous "Broadly Offensive" missive,where we were told to build trust, and protect each other by reporting "Broadly Offensive " material. Of course images of vigilante AR gangs sprung up. LL was asked to define "Broadly Offensive", and those asking were referred to the Mutara Nebula. This is when the Aristotle IDV/Data Mining Scheme was launched, just as broken as it is today.

Ad farmers, landcutters,landbots, The Electric Sheep plan to have bots scan all our rezzed items and catalog it on a website whether we wanted it to or not, VAT, OpenSim..the list goes on.

The point of this long winded rant? To illustrate why people are so up in arms over this, and why there is no faith or trust that this will be anything but a disiaster. LL has constantly shown they ignore residents complaints, concerns and suggestions, offering lies and doublespeak, and acting upon them ONLY when it serves their purpose. A company is expected to act in it's own best interests, but in this case hat is intertwined with the interests of their customers in may cases, and they have repeatedly ignored that.

It's happening everywhere lawyers, politicians, and beaureaucrats hold sway.

It is why I gave up my job in the Public School System. We stopped being teachers and became nannys. Powerless nannys by virtue of schoolboards and ineffective parents.

My mum was a Head Mistress/Principal in the UK and retired early because of that and that she no longer felt she could teach under those conditions and the fact all she was in the end was a manager well that is what she felt and she was a teacher for many years working her way up the ladder.

Welcome to the Department of Redundant Redundancies Dept.

Sounds like a plan to me. There's nothing like a cig between courses. Fine dining shouldn't be rushed.

Does Joe's do cocktails?

You heathen lmao

It's about 6-8 years old, but, yeah, it's rather slow to sink in. It doesn't help that the government itself has been the worst violators of that law. While I was in the Navy, our SSNs *WERE* our IDs, and were documented everywhere with impunity. Their defense was the Privacy Act of 1974, but it ended up that the Privacy Act was being so overused and abused that it became worthless as any means of privacy protection. I do remember that our base exchanges and commissaries required us to write our SSNs on our checks, but sometime around 2002, they were forced to stop that practice.

I think it was Brenda that posted this link first but it makes good reading about SSN for those that want to know but are not sure just where and when they can be used

http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs10-ssn.htm

Absolutely agreed (with extra credit for the Pastafarian reference )!

There's also the little wrinkle that the law requires that the produced of the material has to *keep the proof of age on file* so that it can be inspected at any time by the authorities.

LL's statement about how aristotle "doesn't keep info used to verify age" would seem to indicate that the aristotle AVS won't satisfy the law in any case, or won't without a policy change that will make even fewer residents willing to subject their personal information to risk.


-V-

"Count Floyd's Chiller, Scary, MOnster Theater of Identity Theft Enablement"
"Doctor Tung's 3-D house of Identity Theft"
"The Great White Northern Exposure Segregation"


(Sorry about that last one, flipped into Holling Vincour mode in the middle of a SCTV reference- Damn me and my mixed metaphors anyway!)
-V-

I've been seeing the same notices ever since they started moving to the HAVOK-4 engine. IT has never really stopped, far as I can tell. Of course, they might be rolling out the new code for the forced re-location already, for they can beta test the client modifications.

-V-

Alex, I'm not attacking your support of age verification. Frankly, if there was a way for it to *work*, then I'd probably support it too, as along as there was some way to accomodate the folks in places other than the US.

But when *I* say it won't work, and that LL is making their bottom line *worse* by implimenting it in the way that they are, you start going on about how it's all for the children, and making comparisons to RL strip joints and bars.

Which changes the subject, as far as I'm concerned, to the question of "Where the hell are the parents of this theoretical pint-sized party animal?

Which is why LL is never, *ever* going to be "clean enough" to escape litigation, and never, ever, going to have tight enough security to keep out motivated youngsters.

As a corporation, LL is responsible to their stockholders, and to their customers. It has a perfectly legitimate model of age verification which has been working for the *far* more controversial porn industry for a decade or more.

"It isn't our job to make sure that your child isn't breaking the law by, in effect "trespassing" on our site. It is posted 18+, and your child *chose* to violate that rule, not us. Talk to your kid."

This approach has been upheld in case after case, in US state after US state. If the material is *LEGAL*, then LL has nothing to worry about.

I think that Couldbe has a point. this action is all about the *appearance* of doing something about in-world NSFW content.
most of the people on this thread are making the point that LL could give this same "appearance" by much less draconian means, and without kicking their customer base in the teeth with this "everybody out of the pool" action.

Something much less intrusive should have been tried *first*, and the In-world residents should have been given a chance to offer ideas *before* the plan was engraved in fire on stone tablets by a burning bush in Mark's office.

The *why* isn't really important to me at this point. it's the *how* that has everyone's knickers in a twist- which is why folks like me keep trying to get them to understand that their plan makes LL *less* safe from lawsuits and government meddling, not *more*.

-V-

Well, there's Microsoft... (hack! patooey! May the fleas of a thousand camels infest their hard drives!)




I'm afraid I have to agree. the number of SL precipitated plan wrecking situations in the relatively short time I've been here as been staggering.

Already have an account on opensim, and I'm hoping that things will improve over there with greater rapidity as more and more people abandon SL to find greener and more tolerant pastures. But that doesn't meant that I won't do my best to extract a pound or two of flesh from LL as a recompense for the trouble and expense they have caused me.

-V-

Interesting prediction. Do you also do weather?

"What the hell are you guys thinking???"

What is a good height to put that "A" at, so that it is sure to show up on the map?

-V-

rofl

Katheryne, I want to join your fanclub

ta

If the shoe fits I say wear it and refuse to give it back

I believe this is the "predictable experience" LL is striving to give us.

I'd say that it's because from the very start, we got conflicting levels of expectation from different lindens.

Phillip says "Only the most extreme stuff will be affected- decapitation, dismemberment, stuff like that"

Blondin says "I suppose a nude beach would be considered "mature" but a strip club would *definitely* be "adult"

Blondin says that Couldbe's store, (which is full of poseball-filled action-packed BDSM furniture goodness! ) is "Fine, except for one word in the search description", but then *won't say what it is*! Then says that someone who has a *private* outdoor garden with a few sexballs in it "would be considered an adult build"

That was where things *started*, and we have received precious little from LL in the way of clarifications since. The jumping-off points they have given us so far are so hopelessly subjective, so lacking in common denominators, or consistancy, that there's really no point in trying to guess what they're thinking about the the definition.
We've all been reduced to asking blondin "What about me?" and waiting for his answer.

Besides, LL closed the "What should be the definition?" commentary forum *last week*- so that train has sort of left the station.

The only thing that I'm personally sure of is that the Definition of "adult content" will center around five criteria. (IMHO of course )

1. it will be sexual in nature- to the degree that violence is included, it will be *sexual* violence.
2. The "offenders" will be the ones making money from sexual services of some kind- escorts, sex clubs, strip joints, etc.
3. Purveyors of the toys and equipment needed for the "sex trade" (Scripted genitalia, sexy clothing, realistic skins, sex-gen furniture and gear, poseballs, spankers and huds, etc) will probably be rated "mature" unless they have an attached club where you can test-drive the goods, or a store policy of "hop on and play"
4. It will include some things that will surprise- not only the people who get sent ("What! Gor isn't about *sex*!" But also, the folks who expected to go ("What do you mean my naked Furry/vampire/cyborg/alien with the dozen oddly shaped tentacles that reach out and bugger anyone within 50 meters and pin them to the ground so I can orbit them with my photonic dick-cannon *doesn't* meet your criteria?! That does it! I'm gonna go AR myself a dozen times!"
5. It *Will not stay the same*- The g-team will create their *own* criteria as they go along, and whether you get bounced will depend more on the attitudes and mood of the linden that checks you out than anything else. People who aren't satisfied with to effect of the "clean up" (the ones who think that it didn't get rid of nearly enough smut) will keep the g-team hopping day and night with AR's filed against people they can see through windows, people thousands of meters up in the sky, or even people who told them to get bent over a neon sign that interferes with their view of the water three sims over. It will be a nightmare of maintenance and customer relations, and before a year has past, LL will wish that it had kept all the kinky naked people, because at least SL was *fun* then and they occasionally had some time off. Eventually, the G-team will be answering AR's saying things like "My hussy neighbor is wearing a *red* gingham Bo-Peep dress instead of decent *Blue*! Come and get rid of the harlot!"

I mean, I *hope* that LL will be more sense than to let things go this way, but considering my experiences so far, and those of the other people I've met in these comment threads, I'm going to put my chips on "Profoundly misguided response".

Oops! does that mean I get AR'd for gambling?

-V-

Has to be below 400 meters. It also has to be three separate prims, a sculpty won't work.

A megaprim won't work either. (I didn't know about the minimum three prims, but engineer Del does the math on a single-prim megaprim and comes up short by two prims).

Well, even though it is so true that companies nowadays are run by lawyers who insist on putting disclaimers on everything for fear of getting sued, there is one difference.

Good lawyers vs. yo-yo lawyers' advice.

The yo-yo lawyers would advise to put on the most conservative defensive shield to "protect" the company. Why? Because they don't know how to defend the company in a real court case, so they have to resort to play defense, covering up their rear-end.

The good lawyers would size up the situation and assess the technicality of the potential scenarios decisively and makes a heads-up or heads-down decision, and move on with their business, because they know damn well they can defend the company in every case.

If all companies are playing the conservative defensive game afraid of getting sued, there won't be companies who would gamble on risking a few lives if the car blows up than to recall them, like the Ford Pinto fuel-tank problem in the past, or the SUV roll-overs problem currently.

In reality, what decides is their calculation of which cost them more money. Play defense or play offense.

Do you really think that the lawyers for the auto-makers not worry about getting sued for SUV roll-over? They know damn well it is a design flaw that the center-of-gravity is too high to be stable in sudden turns. It is just that not enough people died from it to justify a recall or re-design, so they move on with their business as usual, and fight the case every step of the way if it comes along, because they know damn well they can win.

What is in common? Consumer safety issue.

Is it not why LL worried about getting sued for consumer "safety" negligent if they don't protect their rear-end, even though not a single person had died from playing SL?

But why none of the auto-makers' lawyers worry about getting sued for consumer "safety" negligent of SUV designs, even though there are hundreds of fatality from SUV roll-over every year?

Competent power lawyers who know how to defend their company and predict they would win vs. lawyers who are scare shitless they will lose every case.

That is the difference in the calculation they make.

Maybe I could accept a multi-rational, multi-skilled team, from past to present, like: Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, H.R. Giger, Tomi Ungerer, Bazon Brock, Dante, Michel Houellebecq, Bertrand Russell, de Sade, Fellini, Peter Weibel, Lichtenberg, Sartre, Beauvoir, Peter Sloterdijk, Annie Sprinkle, Osho, and some random members of the annual Folsom Street Fairy teams, as a colorful mix of judges and jury over my stuff and ideas, concepts and styles, but not such average simple minds with no education and no socio-cultural backgrounds like "the Lindens".

The Lindens coming over like The Waltons...hahaha...good night John-Boy, good night Jim-Bob...

And even my introduced intellectual and experienced dream team - as described above - would not come to the idea, to do any sort of censorship.

LL is just a gang of philistines wich should be locked out of any museum and whatever thoughtfull room on the planet. They are just not verified to enter a position wich would allow them to act as moral-apostels.