Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Geographical Separation of Adult Content

Blondin, not sure how much you travel in Second Life, but maybe you should look at some malls and plazas in Mature Areas and see how many of them have places that sell genitalia and implants, or Adult HUDs interspersed with the stores that sell clothing or furniture or other "non-Adult" items and see how much people would REALLY be effected. There are malls that are PG and do not have any of these items, and that's fine and their choice, but now you will be further regulating those type stores and therefore, reducing the places that they can go to further the economy of SL. Perhaps your figure is right and perhaps not, but even though places like Xcite and Sensations which sell body parts are one business, they have satellite stores in dozens, perhaps hundreds of malls across the grid, which will end up having to close if that mall is not within a certain region or if a private island owner does not wish to put the Adult label on their island. How does this fit in with the original blog post of not causing long term loss of income?

Move the ones who dont want any chance of seeing it, not the established businesses.

Provide a guaranteed "no sex or ultraviolence here" zone. Dont disrupt everyone else.

If you make everything that SOMEBODY could consider "adult" move off the mainland to the new continent you'd better be prepared to create a lot of new landmass and relocate folks at zero cost - and those people on the borderline who got ARd by folks with a pole up the *** will probably not be too happy about being forced to move into the "sex ghetto"

Trust me on this, you'll get MUCH less grief by making a brand new safe zone (where you wont need to move people, its up to them if they want to buy there and abandon what they got) than you will by trying to sort through the wild and varied tapestry that is our current world and work out where the tyranny of the majority places each of us.

Every one of us, even you Lindens, is in SOME kind of moral minority.

(edited for typo correction)

All true, but perhaps a red herring? People who do "adult" things are not going to have to move lock-stock-and-barrel to the "adult" continent. They only have to move the venues where they do their thing. It is not the number of people involved that determines the required space, but the extent of these venues.

When I see 20 green dots in a sim, it's usually bots and occasionally an innocent club. When I see 40, I know for certain it's going to be an "adult" club. These places are heavily patronised, but occupy a tiny proportion of space.

I have no doubt that there are huge numbers of secure skyboxes used for these things, which I pass by unawares. But it seems these private places will not have to be moved.

(I may, of course, be flying around in all the wrong places!).

If you operate a sex skybox as a business it will have to move.. Look at the previous Linden posts..

The people who lovingly created and developed SL have almost all left the building. This is the most transparent corporate decision I've ever seen. Has absolutely nothing to do with improving their customer's service and experience. It's all about polishing up the marketable image of SL to make it more palatable to corporations. The sad thing is that it's a concept that will be impossible to successfully implement and those big corps they're drooling over still won't be interested because big business is afraid of embracing new technology.

Kinda interesting as an example of the dangers of not knowing what's great about your product.

Interestingly, how many companies have access to the kind of fantastic feedback found here in these few threads?

I'll be off to bed now. Perchance to dream, perchance to be moved to adult-world.

Only if people pull the "staging." out of the URL...

As an adult-content provider in Second Life (The Museum of Sex Furniture), albeit on an estate, I am generally in favour of this scheme.

While it involves some serious challenges, the new adult continent presents great opportunities.

It will make it easier to merge the teen and regular grids. It will give Linden Labs an excuse to clear out some inactive parcels on the mainland which hold adult content and resell them. Proximity of adult parcels will boost traffic for adult content providers and provide easy access and choice to adult-content consumers.

But residents in mainland sims should not be penalised if they move to the adult continent in order to preserve their adult content. At the least, they should have priority allocation of parcels in the adult continent before speculators or new content providers.

Residents should not have to sell mainland and rebuy adult land at a loss. On the other hand, making the move to the new continent a straight land swap is problematic as well, given the many factors that influence land price other than area.

Much content is built to suit the idiosyncratic shape or terrain of their parcel. Furthermore, different properties have different commercial potential – an established business moving locations could be a serious issue. Traffic, landmarks and neighbours have all been cultivated and are an asset that will be lost and reset to 0 in the new sim as mentioned previously. Is it possible for Linden Labs to hold swapped parcels for a time, say 3 months, and set up teleport redirects? I also suggest tier relief as a mitigation of the costs involved in relocation and reestablishment.

As mentioned previously, restricting access to payment info/age verified will cut the potential audience of a parcel, a further burden on landowners.

In order to protect the land market, parcels resumed by Linden Labs on the mainland should be released onto the market at a sustainable rate.

Some consideration should be given to renters, although I am not sure what form this might take.

A further anti-speculator action would be to ensure that people seeking to move had an adult-content parcel prior to today's announcement. Parcel owners should be given sufficient notice prior to any forced return of content to inventory.

Is it possible to make the change very gradual? So that land which changes hands after a certain date is covenanted against adult content?

The new continent is likely to be high-use. Some efforts should me made to mitigate this, perhaps by covenantial minimum limits on parcel area.

People are also worried about private property being adult-rated. Surely any parcel that doesn’t appear in search can’t be considered public, and should be immune to the need to move. Content that can be seen from adjacent blocks should be restrictd, but if it can only be cammed with difficulty, it should be alright.

Just some thoughts off the top of my head.

I am looking forward to an adult-content section in the Showcase.

And there's the rub - nobody left to populate the sanitised zone.

Whichever way round it is to be, it brings to mind the Morlocks and the Eloi. Are those the fates that the Lindens plan for us? Is that at last to be the real game of SL? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine)

The number quoted many believe are incorrect as too mature areas i think it only is number of obvous places that one can just 'walk' into, there re man mature places that do not have any outside indication of content inside. I know of several such places that the onl way one might guess are mature is the parcel names. If the percentage given was derived simply by serch then man places were misse because one wouldnt know what is in a place unless one actually visited. Many of us know of mature places that one has to enter to realize they are mature or adult conteent.

O.o

Again...

PLEASE post your supposed "research" data and methodologies, or we can all assume they were either nonexistent, or woefully incomplete and inadequate to the task of basing such radical decisions on.

There's no point in pursuing this any further until you all "come clean", as it is rapidly showing severe warning signs of being a complete and total farce.

Of course, you have the option of declining to honor this request for information; you are a private company, after all. Just as we, as your customers, have the option to find another company which acts in a more respectful and proper manner towards its customers to give our money and support to.

In short, you are trifling with things best not trifled with, so you BETTER BE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN what you are doing at this point.

Most tech corps look at both LL and SL as a joke they wouldnt put real money into either. They dont even want to be accoited with LL's customer service and lack of a secure site REALLY bad PR for a real tech firm... gamers wont come here because the platform is more then a little unstable the same with LL... The Lab doesnt have much going for it right now... this will just be one more very bad thing going down.
btw its already on gamer and computer enthusests site and all are laughing at LL havnt seen 1 post that says its a good thing lol

So Much THIS! My personal stake in this entire enterprise is incredibly minimal(A club I dj at will need to move), but every single friend of mine who will need to move their build has had one major axe to grind with this whole thing, and that is it. If LL seriously expects everyone who will need to move because of this to sell their land at a loss and then pay the sure to be premium prices for land on the new 'adult' continent, then they have quite officially given the finger to the userbase and told them to sit and spin.

So far I haven't seen an official mention of if this will be the case or not...

Well, a number of the people I know spend at least some of their time working as strippers and escorts, so I occasionally get invited to strip shows and places with escort services, even though I don't personally hire escorts, and rarely bother with strippers. Several friends are into various kinky scenes. I'm a Furry, and most furry sims have a higher proportion of sex-related stuff present, because we are more laid-back about such matters, in general. I've also been an active merchant, selling clothes and non-sexual furniture in a wide range of malls. I've considered cashing n on the adult market, and have made custom adult items for personal use by friends, but I don't choose to sell adult goods on the open market.

When I go visit someone at a club they are working at, or when I go shopping, I don't check the map to see if it's Mainland or not. But virtually EVERY mall I visit has at least some adult content that would run afoul of this ruling. I've seen huge public areas that were devoted to kinky play, with pose balls out in the open - things that would make your toes curl - many of them not at all to my own tastes, but if I didn't like the scene, I just moved on. I don't spend a lot of my time in Adult venues, but I don't avoid them, either.

My guess? ***If*** you clearly exclude ALL personal use or display of Adult Content within an enclosed space, and only concentrate on the people who offer sex-related products or services, then from what I have seen, your figures are low by a full order of magnitude. It's more like 20% to 40% who run afoul of what is in the current Maturity Ratings FAQ regarding "Adult" content.

But the Maturity Rating FAQ, which is, to date, the ONLY place I have seen explicit standards stated, makes NO exception for non-commercial use within the home of a resident. Nor is it al all possible, short of living on a non-public private island sim, to prevent strangers from camming in to your private areas, no matter how you try to hide them. So make it more like 40% to 80%, among residents that I know or have met, who have at least a sexgen bed or sex-related pose balls in their home or in the open on their private property. And if private use is not excluded, they would ALL have to move, or delete their adult content.

Further to my earlier comment I just tried a brief experiment.. just a few one-word searches...

sexually explicit keywords (sex, bdsm, kink or kinky etc... ) averaged around 20k hits in search all (I'd have preferred to use search places but you cant get a count there once it goes over 100 hits)

Searching on "Family" brought up an equally high number but over 70% of the hits on the first three pages were definitely entries that would qualify as "adult"

trying a few more innocuous keywords couldnt get above the 20k mark until I entered "club" where it went up to 60k.

I know its not statistically significant, but if these numbers are borne out by the more precise queries that LL can run over their own data then I suspect that about 1/3 of the content in SL is capable of being classified as "adult" by enough folks that it will need segregating.

If LL create a "safe" area then thats a new revenue stream for them - a place where those who have stayed away from SL because of the adult content in many places can come in and feel safe. It broadens their customer base. If they make folks relocate then even if 70% of the people who are impacted take up the offer and do not leave then its still a reduction in revenue, along with the associated ill-will.

The LL bottom line would be better served by creating new rather than changing what is, no matter how you reckon it. Unlike other situations they have faced, this is a case where that bottom line is best served by the same action that suits their residents.

imagine how inattentive LL will be with griefer/abuse reports, and tickets regarding system performance and stability in this shiny new porn ghetto. who cares? it's just the perverts complaining again.

i'd sooner take my ~3,600$US in tier money per year and leave than be forcibly evicted from the mature land i purchased, flagged as mature, and try to enjoy within current TOS guidelines. i would also estimate how much i spend on clothes, but that would just be too depressing.

go ahead. make my accountant's day.

Sounds like that's what is next on the Mitch Kapor/Linden agenda. Go after the adult biz owners first and then everyone else later. Force individual 'mature' mainland owners to purge all sexual content from their parcels. No Sex Beds, No Sex Mats, No Whips and Chains for the BDSM crowd. Etc. Etc. Unless you agree to move to the all new and improved 'Adult' Mainland. For a nice fee of course....

By the way, if LL thinks that doing this is the magic key to enticing lots of Corporate and University clients to use SL, think again...

Universities virtually ALWAYS end up with adult service businesses right on their borders. Strip clubs, adult video stores, bars, and worse. Somehow, they manage to survive in the real world, without creating a mile-wide DMZ between themselves and adult content.

I am a registered Solutions Provider. I deal with commercial and university clients, and potential clients, regularly.

If a University or Corporation doesn't want Adult activities as neighbors, they buy one or more sims, all their own. They don't buy Mainland.

If a Corporate client is at all serious about conducting business in SL, then they are going to REQUIRE security from intrusion that can ONLY be had by owning a private island sim. Your mainland is WORTHLESS to a corporate client that wants to hold business meetings in a virtual world, unless all those meetings will be restricted solely to public information topics - stuff you could openly talk about at a public park or in a restaurant full of strangers.

I think some sort of "Education Continent" would be a better solution. You could require it to be rated G or PG and make it completely Disney-fied for those whose eyes burn easily and for those that see the devil everywhere they look. The new accounts that signed up for class can also choose a welcome center inside the new prudesville and would never have to see anything that is not meant for their class, unless they go looking for it.

I suspect most who complain about adult content look really hard for it and would never be satisfied knowing that it exists somewhere in the virtual world.

Ok my question is, what if any verification of our age do we need?

If there is none and it is just a warning...what's the point?

And lastly if it is stupid like a credit card, does that mean a college stundent or unemployed person of age is screwed if they don't have or don't want a credit card number floating out there?

I have been a resident of SL for only about four months and have spent that time building up my business, in which I have invetsed a lot of time, a lot of money and a lot of work.

My business is a club which features an escort service and strippers. In building this business I have bought (with other members of a group) land occupying approximately thre quarters of a region, some of it at extremely high prices, and of course pay high tier fees on top of that. I have also invested a lot of money into generating a high traffic rating.

I would appreciate more clarity as to how I will be assisted with the move, and how you will even know that I am one of the business requiring assistance. My specific questions are as follows:

- will my land be exchanged for identical parcel sizes and shapes on the new mainland?
- will LL move all of my buildings and content for me?
- will LL ensure that I am not being charged tier fees for the old and new locations during the move?
- will my current traffic be diverted to my new location if they turn up in the old one?
- how ill LL know that I need this assistance? do i have to keep checking back here, or can I register my name somewhere right away?

I would sicerely appreciate answers to the above,
thank you.

OMG! There's Adult content in Second Life???












Can someone pass me a landmark, please?

Sure but it would get filtered

Does forced relocation of undesirables into isolated ghettos remind anyone of anything?

This. Just as in RL, it isn't enough for some that they don't do it or see it, but they don't want anyone else to be able to do it or see it as well.

The Olympics?