Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Geographical Separation of Adult Content

I will narrow my objections to the entire Adult Content issue to those strictly concerning the geographic move in this post.

As co-owner of an explicit adult club on the mainland (the supposed 2-4%), here is what I think LL should consider, assuming the plans go forth as proposed:


Land Exchange and Placement -

*Will we be moved to the same sized lot and given an even exchange, and what will the value of that land be once we are moved?

*Will I have to buy the new land, and will my tier go up for 1 day while I make the switch, like it would currently ?

*How will LL determine which business gets which parcel? I might not want to be next door to a direct competitor, for example, or I might want a similar view that I paid for on the mainland, such as an ocean view.

Business loss-

*How will oblivious customers be able to find us? Can LL place a redirect teleport on the old land if it is taken over by Governor Linden? Maintaining a successful business in SL is challenging enough- I need every customer I can get and a move such as this would only cause customer loss, not gain. All advertisements would need to be changed, all customers notified, etc. Most businesses avoid moving like the plague for these very reasons. Will LL help with this in any way, for example, automatically changing residents' landmarks, picks, and classified ads?

Moving Logistics-

*Would LL be willing to move my entire parcel lock stock and barrel to a new one- with zero down time? Would that include skyboxes and teleporters, everything that needs to be done for over 2000 items?

*If not, do I have to pay land tier during the transition ? That hardly seems fair.

No clear advantage for the club owner-

*Is LL suggesting that more adult content seekers will see my club on an adult only mainland? What is to stop customers from wandering next door to the competition ? I don't see any advantage to being sequestered to an adult continent by force. We are happy and doing well where we are, on mature land. I am not aware of any complaints about my club, since the building exterior is non obvious as to the nature of the club to passersby.

The principle of the policy-

It's not fair for a law-abiding adult establishment that is not bothering anyone to be forced to move. We pay LL every month like everyone else, and should not be uprooted to "ensure that all Residents can enjoy the virtual world". How exactly does my club's existence impede anyone's SL experience ? Why now and not 1.5 years ago when we bought the mature land on good faith ?

And don't get me started on the flawed age verification process- I'll save those comments for the other thread.


Delilah Donovan
co-Owner, Liaisons Escort Club

OK I've just read the proposed changes and like most, am concerned. Now I'm fully aware that my home won't be affected, its a PRIVATE area, not public, so I can have as many sex "toys" as I like, which some people seem to be getting a little confused about - homes, do what you want in private basically.

However, we have had an "adult" club for 2 years, we have been in the same sim for the whole time and we link it to a wedding mall we also own - which can be classed as PG, yet find our club may have to be moved to what some people are calling the "ghetto" lol.

WE LIKE OR SIM. We couldn't afford a full sim outright so over 2 years bought plots bit by bit, even yesterday we bought another plot. The only plots left are a couple of 512 plots which were clearly first land and the owners never come online any more. We spent 2 years building, changing, adding, removing bits of the club etc like everyone else. So yes, I'm a little peeved to say the least to find that 2 years hard work has to be changed or moved. And what about the members who know our ladmark, it means starting over with that too. And the wedding mall, we LIKE having the connection from the club through to the mall.

I also find it very hard to believe that only 2-4% of SL is ADULT content.

Can there be no other way than changing our builds/property etc or moving? Why not highlight ADULT plots on the map in blue like the land for sale is yellow? We have a dance club next to the adult area, we have a fun fair near the shops which contain adult items for sale, moving it all doesnt make sense. And as I said before, we cannot afford to buy our own sim outright in one go, and we like the plot we have now thank you very much.

That's everything im thinking, only better put than I ever could.

A number of questions have been asked over and over and not received responses. Some of them were even really good questions.

This reminds of a lot of the "discussion with residents" over the openspace pricing stuff last year. I'd love to be proven wrong but I think we're going to be mostly ignored here.

I have been in SL since 2006, since then I have been an active customer of SL, making scripts, bulding and manage a mall, an art Gallery, escort and stripper, and other bussisnes and in all this time what I have seen from lindens were ideas about destroying SL... first the gamblin, second openspaces and I still remember when many people laughed when we said... next will be sex... now... here it is!..anyone laughs now?

If linden are thinking that corporate bussisnes are going to come to SL they are totally WRONG!!!, SL has no privacy at all... can you imagine IBM, APPLE,... SONY.... RENAULT, COCA COLA making bussisnes meetings... or even sharing private information at a place that is not theirs???.... STUPID!, but they think so...I have participated on COCACOLA first try to come to SL earlier 2007 , and I think my name is still at their sim.,.. COKES PAVILLION... it was a disaster... WE the NORMAL PEOPLE make and understand SL, northe big industry and you want us to leave... YES LINDEN! you want us to leave.

I owned 7 Openspaces.... 4 of them dissapeared... more than half, and I know from many people who owned sims, that the final figure was pretty similar...

I joined SL cause was openmind, I am adult enough, I do not want teens around me while I am making love with my wife...ooohhh!!I make sex!!yes... I am adult!not mature... I am adult! and I am at a place that is adult game.. You want to mix teen grid.. go ahead... I will leave and you will loose all my money!all my things! Do you want SL to be a second LIVELY?... go ahead!you will finish like it... closed!

I own 3 full sims...and one openspace, my home plenty of sex balls...cause I like sex at RL and SL, all of this will vanished... cause what will be the next?, my dresses are too sexy and someone will be upset and do not like?, shall I cover from head to feet?, I like to read about evolution.. shall it be penalized too??, I think yes...

I will move from SL cause they, the "normal" people , wins a battle... they will look for another battle to win..until everyone thinks like them.

I will not move from cyberspace, other things are coming!I love my freedom! but I know SL will dissapear... serious, by now you are going to loose all my income and all my experience.. DO you think IBM is going to make the things I have made here?

I very much doubt that you will be proved wrong as LL consistently proves it cares little for its paying customers. Look at the skirting round the questions by the Lindens as always and the spin is making me dizzy lol

Okay, what about this. My home is at a high altitude for privacy. It also contains a dungeon, which can not be seen into unless you cam into it. My beach down at land level appears to be a nice beach area with a dance floor and Tiki bar. I do not require clothing on my beach. I have a set of stocks along the edge of the dance floor along with a couple of other devices not plainly obvious. I enjoy sharing an occasional Beach Bondage scene with a friend, and occasional sex by the fire is nice.

My theme is it's my home, built tactfully and tastefully. The property is lined with a 10' wall on all side but the water. At what point do I cross the line from Mature to Adult? When someone waltzes near by while I enjoy a romantic moment on the beach? I'm not advertising as sexual. I can't help it if someone comes nearby and decides to intrude on the privacy I've created by using their camera controls. Yet, by all I've read here, it sounds like my home would be considered adult. There is the chance for nudity. There is the chance for a sexual themed encounter. It's one of many activities that occurs in my home. It has nothing to do with theme.

You speak of the line. Where is the line. That is the root question that has to be determined before anything else can be put in proper context. As my situations shows, I think you are going to have a difficult time defining that line. A large percentage of your "Mature" (and probably even PG) areas are going to be in this very fuzzy gray area.

I am getting more and more concerned that the focus of what makes a resident or their activities in SL mature or adult or not is aimed at the communities that they belong to.

Furry
Gorean & other roleplayers
Child AV's
Gay
Lesbian
Transgender
and on
and on
and on

Being a member of any of those communities in itself doesnt not make you mature, and certainly not adult. What a person does within those communities does.

Also, those communities (and many more that I havent listed) out number the scared ignorant by a massive majority.

They will burn down this village in order to save it... "I love the smell of napalm in the morning... It smells like.... victory...."

I totally agree with you...
In fact, now that you mention it, I know one time there was a huge discussion going on about age play (which to some is to be considered the same as pedophilia) when I brought this up as well.

Guess the time has finally come...

I have personally lived through a situation analogous to this one. Years back, I used to be a volunteer editor at the Open Directory Project (aka ODP, aka dmoz.org). It had, and has, a policy exactly like the one LL is now wanting to implement: adult content is "segregated", hidden. You cannot reach it from the site's home page, only by typing in the link directly.

For several years, I was part of the top level editor's team. We had the task of drafting policy and then implementing and enforcing it. And adult sites, not surprisingly, were a constant issue. Over and over, we had to review sites on a case-by case basis. The world is not black and white, but usually some shade of grey, and we were constantly called on to decide whether a particular shade of grey was to be classed as black or white.

This move by LL shows that they have NOT thought through the ramifications of their decision. It isn't simply a matter of segregating adult content and then all will be well. From the moment the policy goes into effect, until LL either revokes it or shuts down, Lindens will be called on to categorize "shades of grey". This will disrupt not only residents, but LL itself. Expect infighting, arguments over where things belong. And they will not end. I quit the ODP for precisely that reason: the constant bickering over "what is adult" drove me up the wall, along with several others over the years.

EXAMPLE: Content that examines BDSM from the psychological point of view. The content includes explicit text and illustration in order to be able to analyze it - but the purpose is scientific, educational, not prurient. Nonetheless, the images depict uncensored BDSM activities. Is this adult or not? In the ODP, sites such as these where shunted back and forth repeatedly.

EXAMPLE: In SL, our business logo is an image of two nude men kissing. They are sitting on the ground and seen from the side. No genitals can be seen, but they are obviously naked. There is no sexual activity, just kissing. According to the new LL "rules", would this image be adult or not?

Lindens, be prepared to deal with cases like this DAILY. I really think you have not thought this through well. At the very least, you need to come up with a VERY clear and VERY concise definition of "what is adult". And even then, you will have more shades of grey than you can begin to imagine. Appeasing the vocal minority who object to "adult activities" can only lead to a world of hurt for everyone else - LL staff included.

THINK before you act. So far, everything I have seen indicates that you have made a decision and then thought about how to implement it. But you have NOT thought about the long term consequences once it *has* been implemented.

Respectfully,
-- Miro

Im confusing with the following:
Imagine you paid a lot for the land you are on. You are obliged to move. Do you need to buy again another land? (i'm not talking about the fee, only the price of the land).

thanks

I think if Linden labs seriously cares about it's customers. Customers that throw from thousands of dollars down to the little person who came in and spent 10 rl money to get some cash in sl they need to step back and re think this whole thing?

your messaure of how much adult content is on one mainland is way off. Yes your ideals of what adult content is and what ours is is truly diffrent. which this will not stop those people. Since sl started to become more out int the rl and in magazine in a blog good or bad the one thing that drew eyes to sl. sorrowfuly people saw the sex part has been the adult content. where on the net you have had to prove your age to see this video or the latest porno from a movie star. Now you can come to sl and find a vender that sales it. lindens this is what you have made. A world where you can do anything you like weather it be off the wall for buisnes, pleasure buisnes, or make a park or landscape to make people wows over.


With throwing this onto the forums you have truly jumped the gun on this and put each of your heads on the chopping block. this on the feet of putting out a new viewer which worked well for well first few minutes then went back to old problems and more. Cause now this feels like you are trying to control the over abundance of adult content in sl. Making another mainland for it how will that help? You have in front of you your main mainland that is having problems with it's teleport system the lag not to mention people on pc's or macs having isssues.

When will this be about quality and not control? you say that you hear us well do you? I feel your just like that parent that says anything to the other one just to get them off your back. from my 125 bucks to my 20 bucks i shell out to you. I would hope not just my words matter to you.

try focusing on quality first. putting all the adult content on one main land away from the rest of the world is not going to make matters better. I don't even see that helping the quality of sl? that's not going to help lag or the tp issues or the inventory problems. For once stop making more problems and focus down on the problems in front of you.

43 pages and people are still going on about their HOMES.

Its very clear that this is about public areas such as shops, clubs, open sex areas, not private residences.

They made it very clear that your home is safe, your home is your private territory, its just the PUBLIC areas that are being compromised here.

"-- What about adult activity in private on the mainland? e.g. Is Linden Lab making rules about what I can do in my own house on the Mainland?
Nope. We are talking about public behavior and events, businesses and listings that are meant to drive explicit sexual and violent activity."

The problem is the "What is Adult" topic drives the remainder of this. Without that definition, it's unclear who is impacted, who has to move, etc.

A bigger part of the problem is, go look at the discussion in that topic. It's a fraction of the feedback and comments here. You can count the "Linden" responses on one hand. There is no productive Geography discussion to have until there is a definition that determines who is impacted. Once you know who has to move, the Geography discussion has a point of reference.

If there are people that want to limit their own experiences, let THEM form their own areas. The very naming of normal human behavior as offensive to the general population and therefore needing to be named and restricted is a dangerous step towards Second Life becoming the battle ground for culture wars. Red Flag this immediately. I believe this sets up a highly damaging precedent. I'm actually shocked and offended that SL would even consider such a draconian idea.

A much better and more pragmatic way to solve this problem is to create restricted areas for the people that want to limit their OWN experience.

Unrestricted should remain the norm.

Has this been stated as fact by the Lindens? Early postings referred to private versus public as in Privately Owned Islands versus Publicly accessible land (The majority of the Mainland). There's no such thing as private land on the Mainland, regardless of it's use as a home or business. You can Cam. You can fly. Where have the Lindens said Homes are not impacted by this?

Go take a look knowledge base Article #5198. It says:

Land inworld in Second Life can be owned in three varieties:

* Mainland
* Islands (Private Regions)
* Openspaces

A little further down, it says:

What is an Island?
An island, or Private Region, is a 256mX 256m piece of standalone virtual land...

The only reference I am seeing to "private" land is Islands.

Because following the TOS -- TO THE LETTER -- we can be driven out simply for having a graphic picture in our homes. Never mind using a poseball set in personal bedrooms...

And sorry, nothing any Linden says here, from M to Floorsweeper Linden, takes precedence over the TOS. We have to follow THAT document in how we live in SL; not what shmoe X or Y said over in the forums. And right now, it's so subjective and open to interpretation that a female taking off her shirt to change in her own home is enough to be "adult", if certain puritans are watching.

Only until the busybodies form up their "Neighborhood Watch" to peer into people's homes uncontrollably and report you for "suspicious content". They will cry foul, and people will get banned and harrassed over "private" homes... I hate being right in this case, but 4+ years on the grid, its happened before.

Give some petty tyrant a stick like this, and they will use it, regardless of how correctly, or accurately they swing it, people will get hurt who shouldn't have.
Then everyone shrugs and the whole places gets a little more Orwellian.

This whole move solves nothing, creates a pointless tempest, and for what? So LL can point to a policy and slider scale about how "in control" they are, just to court businesses and universities. Screw everyone who's paid for years and built everything... its time to commercialize and all the people who made SL worth being in are now an inconvenient embarrassment to the PR machine looking to milk SL for just one more dollar.

But the strategy is to get enough inflammatory, off-topic responses that they bury the good, on-topic reponses.

How many people who didn't see this thread in the first five minutes are going to read all 40+ pages to find the good responses? And on top of that, be able to put together a pattern of what the Lindens answer and what they don't?

One of the best ways of hiding information is burying it under mountains of other information. Make the costs of weeding out the information too high.

This whole thing, the forums and everything, seem more and more like a dog and pony show to me. My summation is, what's done is done. They are after-the-fact soliciting feedback, so the ones they get that go in line what the policy already made and set down, can be held up and LL can say 'lookie here, we listened!', and some people go away with a warm fuzzy feelings.

I find it near pointless to continue to ask the questions, that have been asked and asked and asked in this threat - the one where it SHOULD be dealt with. The two main questions are:

1) Will current land owners be given new land in the new continent of equal size and quality to their existing land?

2) Where did the 2 -4 % numbers come from?

Here's the deal. The only way they can claim their research shows only 2 - 4% of the existing entities will have to be relocated to the smut reservation, is if they've already decided what is 'Adult Content'. Without first defining it, how in the world can they say, with any semblance of honesty or reasonableness, that no more than 4% will be affected? The fact of the matter is, they can't. So that thread about defining what is 'Adult Content' is completely pointless, or the statistics are. Either way, somebody is being fed less-than-honest information.

My guess as to why they continue to refuse to answer the question about land, is because they've already decided to let the land barons grab it up, and force the land owners to sell their current land, and buy new land, instead of doing the 'right' thing and swapping them 1 for 1. If my thoughts are wrong, I'm sure they would have come out and said so by now, since the question has at least 100 posts dedicated to it in this thread alone.

Personally, I have no problems with forming the trail of tears and moving adult content to it's own smut reservation. It's LL's world, they do with it what they want. However, I do have friends who this affects, and it does, in fact, affect where I live. As it stands, with the current KB, I won't be able to lay on my deck topless.

I would have much more respect for the Lindens, if they'd just be above board, and say "this is considered adult, and you gotta either close up shop, or buy land in this area over here, 'nuff sed" It's clean, it is precise, no arguments, no debates. And people don't get all up in arms like they are now, trying to figure out or thinking they are helping to form a policy that is already in place, just not made public. Like the KB, which was not supposed to be made public (yet).

I rent a parcel. I have a home. I have a dock. According to the current 'adult' guidelines, I would not be able to lay on the dock, topless. So, yes this IS about my home. If I can't do what I please, where I pleas on the parcel I pay for, then it IS about my home.

There is no such distinction. A few Lindens have made "assurances" about this but there is in fact no honest objective way of sorting out which space counts as a "private" activity and which one is public. Everything on the mainland is publicly viewable!

Actually, it wasn't until Jeska pulled a Jedi Mind Trick a couple hours ago and said that the KB article (which DID prohibit such WITHOUT exclusions of homes) was a rough draft and should never have been published, despite the fact that it was posted in one of these threads to ask for discussion.

There is no difference in accessability between a public location and a "private" home.