RC Questions

That is a separate problem, which they may or may not address in the future. The current changes may be anticipating separation there too.

The problem is not likely "angry coders". It's more that they're rushing this release out to satisfy their "Adult Content" deadline, and at the same time they have made significant changes to the texture and rendering pipelines.
I've been hearing about plans to change the right click avatar menu for some time, ever since they screwed up attachment selection with the ray-trace picking, though I didn't get the impression that the changes were this extreme.

In RL, real estate is real, not virtual, and much much less maliable. This magnitude of restructuring is completely impractical RL (or at least more impractical than it is in SL).

If it was practical RL, city planners would be tripping over themselves to do this kind of thing.

The ironic thing is that the current policies do very little to actually *zone* things. If you at any point think you may perhaps do something naughty (like, say, host a discussion about any number of forbidden words, or, as an absurd side effect, sell an unluckily-named animal), you *have* to go live next to the strip club. -And you even have to pay for that privilege, unless you're an existing business who can convince LL that you'll loose a lot of money.
Even just how private and secret things could/should be to be safe from sudden GTeam action is still entirely unclear.

Don't get me wrong, I am critical of aspects of this plan, including agreeing with the concern that the GTeam will take it out of context.

As for the proverbial discussion of forbidden words, personally I would not consider merely discussing the words in an intellectual context as 'adult,' and that could be advertized under the current rules as 'Intellectual discussion on the subject of filtered adult words'.

The word 'adult' is not itself filtered.

If the hosts of such a proverbial discussion were concerned though, they could probably hold it on adult land. RL if someone was hosting such a discussion, wouldn't they likewise have to make sure that the property owners were ok with it?

Now if the discussion was not purely intellectual, and consisted of using the words in RP'ing adult situations, and/or 'demonstrating their meaning', or any other reality such that the discussion was no longer a discussion, but publicly offering adult services, that would be different.

Correct, but an adult is defined as a person with the maturity to take things in stride. Only spoiled children dream of a 'perfect' world in which everything is exactly the way they want it.

Being an adult means one has passed through puberty, has learned to relate to people and become responsible for one's decisions - including the decision to be in a virtual world with other adults. As an adult, one recognizes and accepts that people have different styles and tastes and that rudeness or harassment should not be confused with sexuality.

No, again, avoid the quest for perfection. All LL need do is protect themselves from legal liability should minors gain access to the grid. This can be done by eliminating anonymous accounts. There is no need to partition the community.

Yeah, the RC is fairly twitchy when it comes to updating prims, often requiring that you poke them or otherwise force a full update from the server. Disregarding the discussion about the overly-optimistic name of "release candidate", these are "just bugs", known, acknowledged and being worked on. Whether you consider it alpha, beta or release candidate-level work, that's really what the RC cycle is about; people test-running the code, finding and reporting bugs, and we're early in that cycle. I don't really find any reason for reading conspiracy theories into this.

It is, however, somewhat unfortunate that some pretty massive policy updates and their supporting code, which people really want to look at and test the implication of, are mixed in with what appears to be the start of an overhaul of the rendering system. I would much have preferred to do each in less turbulent environments. -But then again, I would much have preferred that LL solicited feedback about the policy changes *before* they silently piggy-backed the needed server updates unto other, "official" releases. It would have lend a fair bit more credence to the possibility that they hadn't already decided what to do before making a show of "listening to their passionate user base".

I was not thinking of RL. I was thinking of all the little broken parts of the implementation. RL has nothing to do with it.

Well... I guess I accept that if there's meant to be a meaningful distinction between PG and Mature content, then it would be consistent for PG-only Searches to return content from PG land only. (I don't think, however, that this is a *necessary* condition: if the PG searcher doesn't want to risk getting to a non-PG parcel, their preference setting will keep them safe, regardless of what Search returns.)

Folks who've been selling PG content from parcels on Mature regions surely don't appreciate what this change is going to mean to them. I think most just figure "hey, I'm not selling Adult stuff, so I'm okay."

If only 2-4% of the grid has Adult content, then the folks caught in this PG/Mature trap may greatly outnumber those caught in the Mature/Adult mess.

Ah, but remember, again: This is officially a *great* opportunity for you to reach your intended audience. You can, say, get rid of all those mature avatars who're just clogging up your shoe shop, preventing honest PG avatars from buying from you. Or, if you're selling mature shoes, you can now sleep a lot safer, knowing that no PG avatar will be violated by seeing them.

Yep. It really is all about choice.

I think a lot of them think porn rather than adult stuff, which seems to be borne out by all the sex bed etc makers posting on xsl who can't see why they would need to move to Ursula. Some of those have moved onto mature land "in preparation" O.O (thinks to self "what planet do these people live on?"

People have been so unsettled by the already published definitions that they've already moved, closed up shop or just stopped producing items. We're becoming destabilised by the uncertainty and insecurity that poorly managed change brings.

There are a lot of people out there who don't want to be "one of us" it seems. Filthy pornographers the lot of us and we deserve to be swept away to make SL wholesome and safe for those untold missing millions who have the emotional maturity and experience of a 15 year old.

What everyone is failing to understand, which has been apparent since 6010 came out and confirmed when the RC was released, is that we're all going to be affected one way or another. 6010 is what they're aiming for to make it safe for the unsophisticated and the only thing which is moot is whether it happens at once or over these three phases they're talking about.

Then there is the purveyors of violence. They are so quiet around here you wouldn't think they existed. In this they don't appear to though, since sex is bad and violence appears to be ok. I've never thought to look but none of the verboten words involve violent words do they? Murder, shooting, knife, bomb etc? But then it's only sex that worries legislators not the violence that desensitises people.

It's funny that pixel sex which if carried out in rl is considered adult, yet the pixel depiction of killing people - of which the act of killing is illegal in rl - is mature, but drug references - which is far less harmful than deliberately taking someone's life but still illegal in rl - is considered adult.

Have I mentioned skewed values before??

There's a lot of misinformation floating around on the various fora now and I usually can't even be bothered to correct it. This is a case of buyer beware and if people don't want to spend time investigating this, then that's their problem.

In the end LL will rely on their flawed technology and people ARing others to enforce this, so if anyone gets away with it I say good luck to them. This plan is so flawed in ever aspect that I suspect it will be quite easy to move to euphemisms and hide out on the current mainland without any serious impact. After all, one of the highest traffic sex room advertisers (bots for sure) is still advertising the sex room in pg search. FFS, this place has traffic around 120,000. To get that without crashing the sim you need to be using bots. Yet this place is still around.. despite the bot rules and the advertising rules. You don't get much more blatant than that.

SL is just like real life where to succeed it appears you need to circumvent rules.

So for me, I'll continue until this becomes a cost burden (sooner rather than later by the look of it, if the last few weeks are anything to go by for us smut purveyors) or something better comes along and I jump ship.

rant over.

They have actually said that violence is covered as adult, but I don't think people running the RP sims have caught onto this issue yet. If there's pixellated blood and guts it's going to be deemed an adult activity.

The last thing I remember hearing was that normal violence was ok, it would just be the extreme stuff that would be out the door. Remember, that wild west sim and star wars are both ok..

eta - and selling guns will be ok too

Plus they do not have to change the words in their ads.

1100: Jack Linden: Customer Relations/Support, Land

This is important. Way too many people see this as a change to adult content only. This is fundamentally a change to the search engine. And if you want a PG audience, you will have to have PG land.

I specifically asked that question at the definitions meeting. KB6010 says this is adult:

"Representations of intensely violent acts, whether or not photo-realistic (for example, depicting death, torture, dismemberment or other severe bodily harm)"

The "CSI" television series have that, in spades, to the point I sometimes get grossed out watching them. And yet we were told that would be Mature:

"Marty: Well, I'll take that one. If "CSI" were in Second Life, it would be in a mature region. So clearly, this is a good example of how difficult it is for us to craft regions that cover every fact pattern. So "CSI" would not have to be in an adult area. If it can be on network television, it can be in a mature region in Second Life. It can be network in the US; other countries have a more permissive view of what's appropriate for broadcast television."

[9:30] DanielRavenNest Noe: (Those words are quoted from the adult definition of KB6010)

"Marty: Yes, I know, and that's my point. Those are the words in the adult definition, but that's not our intent. "

WTF guys, if you didnt mean it, why did you write it? "Oh, lets just write something stupid and see how loud they scream".

(Marty Linden is the corporate general counsel by the way, the head lawyer. You would think he would make sure policy documents say what they mean)

When you build an item, a slider automatically makes it ADULT unless you define it otherwise. You can only define an item as Adult, Mature, or PG to the exclusion of the others. While certainly, a bed can have non-adult poses, if it has adult ones then it's an adult item. Creators like moi will simply have two products for sale now instead of one - a clean bed and a sex bed. And it won't matter what you say it is when you advertise it - the item already is defined.

When you search, you choose the three categories you wish to search through. Thus you can hit all three at once, one only, or stupidly none of them at all. If we have to have this broken verification garbage, then nonVerifieds have the Adult box greyed-out so it can't be selected.

And in the future, when it becomes clear to all that this myopic effort does not work and will not satisfy anyone, the viewer 1.24 can be made so that no adult item will rez unless the user is verified. So poof, the problem with sexbeds in private homes is fixed, as Moral Roberts will - at worst - only see two bodies in motion in midair and nothing firm sliding in and out between them at all. And if he turns on Adult, well, then he gets what he asked for and can't bitch about it. But having the viewer not rez adult items unless the user is verified will have to be done after this mess of bull pucky is implemented. So let's get it over with now.

Creating the new continent and making it G rated and keeping all new characters there until they verify is simpler still. But if LL is hellbent on driving off the cliff, we can at least set up better airbags before we go over the edge.

yep, it's ok to carve people up, just not ok to show a nipple.

CSI WAS in SL!! They had several island sims a year back when an episode featured SL, and they created a VR tie in with their TV show. Today, CBS would have to have their murder mystery sims all set adult as per LL.

I rather doubt anyone will bother creating any sort of TV show tie in with SL again, under LL's absurd rules and regulations.

More likely that they will flip the region rating to adult when ordered to and see hardly a dent in participation.

I thought I should perform an irony check expecting to see zero sales from my shiny new store in a PG sim. I figured it would wind up being a necessary advertising write off. Note that it is a PG store with nothing but PG type material in it. Lo and behold it is already carrying it's own weight.

I consider the situation to be analogous to the telephone, and the internet. Neither can guarantee that no children can get into adult areas. The phone people can't restrict anyone from calling phonesex numbers, and your ISP can't stop you from going who knows where on the internet. They can't because they don't have a crystal ball that tells them A) that a kid is using the tech instead of an adult, and B) the phonenumbers and URLs could be anything - anything at all.

So LL should simply argue that when the phone company makes sure little johnny can't wap while calling a phone sex line, then SL will use the exact same technology to keep him safe in SL.

It's like a gateway drug. Have a sign that says "for our more mature items, visit our Main store". then in the Mature store, have sign that says "For the really good stuff, visit our Adult store".

Phone companies and ISP's fall under the "common carrier" exemption. They don't monitor and have editorial control of what goes through their wires, so they are not responsible for what goes on. Linden Labs, though, *does* monitor and have editorial control, so they *are* responsible from a legal point of view.

(The term common carrier comes from truck and train companies, that will deliver any box of items for anyone as long as they pay. If they don't open the box, they are not legally responsible when it turns out to be a shipment of stolen I-pods or cocaine. The term got extended to delivery of information)