Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Motivations and Goals

maybe the next idea is better...

now we have teen sl and normal sl, why not make a i hate sex sl (and i dont know where im from and how i made my kids sl) will save a lot of lag and crashes..i forgot 1 point..the people there will have nothing left to complain about..damn

"Linden Lab has created a special-use area of the Mainland, called the "Adult Continent," where Adult activities and content can be located by Residents."

I have searched for this area and failed to find it( using the places search). could you possibly provide a surl or at least a region name that can be found search.

Will LL provide land swaps for current mainland owned to ease the financial burden of moving?

I understand your need but agree that creating a new merged mainland instead of doing a reshuffle of the existing mainland is a much better answer to your problem caused by a few for the many.

Well, so far, I've only received one Linden bear (with much thanks!). Come on Lindens, don't you want to take a break from this negativity and send me your bears? Perhaps while you're enjoying your first morning coffee or chai latte?

If you don't want to see adult content, stay in the PG sims.

If this is the true goal of LL the control should be at the avatar level... not the land Location.

Yes this may require some more work from LL programing the avatar restrictions, and defining options for the avatar to self implement. But if the user is the censer LL has a lot less liability than if LL is the censer, so the work may be worth the effort.

I believe anyone with a mature ( adult) area would be glad to have the few, who don't wish to be there, not there.

Exactly...

The most I have seen this type of thing (nudity/bumping) is in a PG rated, sandbox. Usually the person for some reason, did not speak English (or pretended not to) if told it isn't allowed. If the person is in some country LL's laws can't touch, what then. How will this data gathering help?

The particle and other attacks I have seen, they seemed like kids to me. (No way to really tell) "My little brother grabbed the keyboard! It wasn't me!" when admonished by someone for griefing.

How is opening the floodgates of SL to minors going to IMPROVE all of that?

@ the quote from Blondin Linden (in Aeoff Aeon's post) above - 'check for mature' search works well already...Frankly if LL can't keep on top of people putting 'bad words' in searches so that a place comes up in PG search, already, how is this new level of data gathering going to affect it?

Even online i do not think segregation is right, its discrimination of the lowest order and is segregation like being told to go to the back of a bus. I dont see any problems with how things are now, the problem i see are those whom dont like adult content wandering into it, or deliberatly loking for what they think is offensive to their life styles. We should celebrate the diversity in SL not condemn for being different. There are things I dislike but I will not condem people for what gives them pleasure of mind. I velieve that Lnden Labs should serously consider the number of coplainers as being an even smaller minority then those who may have content others do not like. Bottom line is the silent majority that hasnt said anything yet because they are not offended, they simply avoid what is distasteful.

If the goal really is to make Second Life just like the real world, then that means leaving things exactly as they are now. In the real world, mature people make their own informed choices about where they want to go and what they want to see. There are no walls separating what is adult from what is not. We all have access to adult content. Adult enterprises are in the phone book and the yellow pages, bookstores do have an adult section, and big cities do have brothels and red light districts. If you don't want to go there or see that, simply don't, and if you end up there by accident, walk away. No one is forcing anything down anyones throat. We all have our likes and dislikes in many areas of our life, not just in the adult/not adult area but virtually anywhere. Atheists may not wish to be confronted with religious gethering places, pacifists may dislike anything related to war and the army and the list goes on. As for non adults.. they don't belong on the main grid in the first place and it is their parents responsibility to make sure they don't do it. A kid capable of playing SL unnoticed is quite likely also capable of gaining access to their parents' credit card or passport and pass the age verification without any problem. I think this is creating an awful lot of commotion over something that really isn't even a problem in the first place.

As usual every year the same weird ideas, do you recycle them?
Its getting boring.

Ok given that its true only 2-4% are adult and can be moved,
a figure I dont really belief, but ok.

What about the avatars?
I see it all the time that people have there sexual preferences in the profile or in the picks, or have a sexclub in the picks.

What with them? Will they be no longer allowed to go shopping in a PG sim, because someone might be offended?

And as many have said already the definition of adult is not so clear cut, and varies from culture to culture.

Until now I supposed that all here are adults who know what they are doing and can take care of themselves, and dont need any babysitting.

If you TP in a sexclub by "accident" (probably the same accident by which the pron magazine found the way into the shopping cart in RL) then just TP away and never come back.

I dont like overlie cutey things, if I find one I never visit it again, but I dont call for Lindens to ban all cutey sims.

Think the definition between PG and mature is enough, maybe make the client to default to PG at first, and if someone wants mature stuff then he has to tick the option, whit all the possibilities.

Guess it has been just to silent in the press about SL lately so stirring up a new controversy is good to bring the reporters back. Since quite a few agencies have closed their portals over the last year.

I thought the client already did (at least for search). What I find particularly offensive is LL's claim that residents have been asking for these changes! This seems to me to be deliberate or accidental mishearing. What people have been complaining about is the amount of mature content in search not flagged as mature (and hence showing up in PG searches), and mature content on PG sims etc. or on the opposite side, items being excluded from search on the basis of spurious text matching (such as catches out Scunthorpe).

i.e. what people have been asking for is better, consistent and intelligent policing, monitoring and use by LL of the controls that already exist - not new unworkable controls which case disruption to introduce.

Matthew

I have been reading the new region definitions in https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=6010 and it seems to me that allowed content on PG areas will be changed as well ... that it will be much stricter.

The definition of mature is:
"For instance, social and dance clubs, bars, stores and malls, galleries, music venues, beaches, parks, and other spaces for socializing, creating and learning all support a Mature designation"

The definition of PG is:
"For instance, institutions such as universities, conference organizers, and real world businesses whose users may not wish to view or interact with the broader Second Life experience"


A big part of PG land has new "mature" type of content today. Non-sexual stores, music venues, dance clubs, parks, beaches, galleries ...

There is nothing sexual about a formal dance, listening to live music, go for a walk in a nice park, swimming in the water or sunbathing at the beach (with a bathing suit on).
In rl families go to beaches and parks with their children.

The old rules for PG were "PG regions are designated to be free from sexually explicit language or behavior, swearing, and other forms of aggressive language, violent behavior and/or imagery, including horror." so that type of content was allowed on PG.

I live on PG mainland with sand and linden water. Actually a very lovely sim.
I have no banlines up and allow other people to use my beach.

Does the new rules mean that, I can not use the sand by the water as a beach anymore ?That I can not sunbathe or swim in the water ... with a bathing suit on ... because beaches are restricted to mature areas ?

Are all sims with stores, malls, music venues, dance places etc. going to move/change into mature areas ?

We can't change the rating on the mainland ourself. That is decided by the Lindens.
If the allowed content of PG changes, it would force owners of PG mainland to move.

And we probably can't sell the land and loose our investments ... nothing seems to be allowed there for ordinary people.

What an empty place PG would be ... abandoned land ...

/me Thanks Linden Labs for making these changes. I for one support this. I have run PG venues since 2006 and My patrons appreciate what we do very much.
I run one because I don't want to be faced with all the sexual content . Of course that is my taste as many others in Sl.

If I wanted to expand my business and start selling services to RL businesses. It will be much easier to do so since the content is filtered properly. Currently when I search for something I Get a very large amount of sexual content even tho I do not include Mature content in search . That is a major issue with companies and a possible liability. (Small Chance but you never know).
Personaly I think this will help LL also sell their business model.

I had to ban a resident 2 days in a row for coming into my club and Attaching his penis and bumping into the females and asking them for sex. I ejected him and he begged to let him back in and he would be cool. He was fine till the next day he came back and did the same thing. His reasoning he was having fun .. Extremely annoying and a big problem, almost on a daily basis. It amazes me how people can be and Not realizing this is a form of sexual harassment if you ask me. i kow these changes may not stop that but it is really annoying when some residtent dont care and do things to run off your guests. I would hope for more stiffer penalties on residents who do this. No mater how hard we try to get away from it they bring it to us. lol

I do have a few concenrs about the posibility to merge the teen grid with main grid. But stated By Blondin Linden

they will not be making any immediate changes to the Teen Grid. We decided to keep the two issues separate and this is '''not''' the project where we will decide the future of the TG.

So my question does this mean there will be a future project involving the merge of the TG? Seems like it is a step towards it.. But not the primary reason

Thanks again LL.
Peace all

What!!

So rather than introduce a new classification for "institutions such as universities, conference organizers, and real world businesses whose users may not wish to view or interact with the broader Second Life experience" and leaving the existing terms alone, they are


a) changing the definition of PG so that it is even further from the normal RL usage of PG
b) effectively changing the new definition of Mature to be that currently used for PG (which will mean almost everyone not a unversity or RL business on PG land will have to move)
c) creating a new classification of Adult with the definition currently used for Mature, which will mean that almost everyone currently on Mature land will have to move.

Mmmmm, minimum impact then!

Matthew

There is no may about it - the proposed changes will not address this particular problem at all. On the other hand, what you describe is a far more common and serious problem than someone accidently teleporting into a sex club without realising it.

This is the complaint to LL - their solution is not only not particularly well thought out, it doesn't even address the real problems.

Matthew

I am an Adult - I do not need someone to decide for me if the content that I see before me is appropriate or not. If it is not then I will decide to leave it.
Easy solution - landowners set a classification - users if you dont like it leave it.
landowners if a visitor is not to your liking eject / ban. Universities etc etc set up a group, detail what the group is for - scrutinise the members, charge a fee to weed out a few who wont be bothered paying to go and grief you - put the onus back on to us ADULTS.
By all means LL verify that they are an adult by using a credit card - but gezz today anyone can go buy a visa gift card from a post office.

So we'd have to specify our "preferred maturity" somewhere?

So we'd have to specify our "preferred maturity" somewhere?
Because the definition of Adult given in the FAQ reads like the current distinction between "Mature" and "PG".

Schools are not and have never been a major source of potential funding for LL/SL, unfortunately. I hope they're happy with all their broke academics running around.

oh dear Lindens, why do you close your eyes and cover your ears ???
Dont you have better and more important things to do than driving SL for a wall?
Why dont you care about the real important thigs first? like reducing the growing lag issues, fixing your clients (the new one is the most worst i have ever seen), fixing mono bugs and so on ... instead to open new "places under construction"?
I remember as is started my experiences on SL, YOU Lindens called this "A place from residents for residents". Well, today i put this as a huge lie. You are forcing us residents for hings we dont need and we dont want. Like a lot of the others here already said: WE ARE ADULTS and we are old enough to decide where to go and where not. If i dont like any place on SL because there is, for example, a fetish area, then I tp away. its so easy to do this. So stop this stupid action and focus on the real problems you have.
You are restricting us residents more and more, and it seems you forget the most important thing for you: we are YOUR customers, we are the people who pay YOUR salaris.
You really wonder why more and more paying residents keep away? Why more and more residents change to other platforms?
To be honest, the only reason you didnt lost 70% of your residents is the fact that Open Sim dont have any payments till yet and so a working buisness is not possible at this moment. What do you thing what will happen as soon other platforms will start with a currency like SL?
Instead of caring about your residents you still have, you are scaring them and push them away.

I have little doubt that the changes are supposed to make SL more appealling to new PG users. However, the apparent definition of PG is:

"For instance, institutions such as universities, conference organizers, and real world businesses whose users may not wish to view or interact with the broader Second Life experience"

I am unable to understand why existing SL residents should have to make changes to accommodate institutions and people who do "not wish to view or interact with the broader Second Life experience". Let those institutions take land in splendid isolation and restrict the viewers of those who attend such institutions to PG only. They will never then know that the rest of us exist. Seems simple.

What will prevent adult-business-bots from spamming the welcome and orientation areas?

What will prevent the any lude behavior or griefing on the mainland?


----
Seems to me the adult content problems would be resolved if Linden Lab worked on the welcome and newb areas, and also worked on more tools for land owners....
that to me seems to be like what should be worked on by LL, not a half-baked idea with no real thoughts about implementation.

Let's just MOVE the problem outta the way and hope it has the effect we want.
totally half-baked.

Will Stroker's Party at SLCC09 be forced outside into the back alley behind the Marriott this year?

A lot of this seems to be an attempt by LL to finally fix their own STUPID decision of mixing PG and Mature sims side by side in the Mainland as they have built it over the years. They must have had this idea that everyone would keep their draw distance at 64 Meters, and that no one near a border between Mature and PG would ever look across the border.

So, now they are, in effect, trying to make ALL of the Mainland PG, except for one designated "Adult Continent", by revising what makes up both "PG" and "Mature" activities so that any actual "Mature" acts, even if performed in private and behind closed doors, should be forced to relocate to that "Adult Continent".

They have made up their minds that they are unable or unwilling to come up with a technical solution that will allow residents to peacefully coexist, even though many viable solutions, such as the "Privacy in a Pocket" and "Privacy Zones" ideas have been proposed by residents. So with that close-minded viewpoint, the only way to keep the eventual flood of 13 years olds (When Phil has his way and they merge the teen grid with the main grid) from camming into the XXX sex dungeon is to isolate all Adult Activities to their own continent, and somehow ban the unverified kiddies from teleporting to regions tagged as "Adult".

But the fact that they are utterly unwilling to acknowledge is that 100% of those teens on the teen grid ALREADY HAVE PAYMENT INFO AVAILABLE, and would therefore have COMPLETE ACCESS to the porno continent if they are allowed on the grid, and having payment info on file is considered adequate as proof of adult status. Because it is a REQUIREMENT for the teen grid that they provide some sort of payment info - usually their parent's credit card.

Good thinking, I like it! But there might be an even easier option I believe.

I think there is a very very simple solution. Rename 'TeenGrid' to 'CleanGrid' and name the main grid 'AdultGrid'! The folks in TeenGrid aren't meant to be doing anything adult-rated anyway, so let those adults who prefer to have the teen experience just go there. And just don't allow any teens to enter the AdultGrid. Hell, those adults with the child avatars could go to the teen grid too then. Since those with child av's aren't meant to be doing anything adult rated.

That way people can choose their experience yes? And little johnny or whatever is still safe.

"Tick yes to certify your an adult: Yes [ ] No [ ]" Why not just have that at the registration page for SL? .. "Because it's silly! A teen could just lie about their age!"... Correct. But aside from LL manually sending a security guard to every SL user's home, and standing next to them while they are logged in, to make sure they aren't a child, what other option is there?

Credit cards can be 'borrowed' from parents. Passports, and other documents can be too. If a child is determined to get in, they will, and get in easily too.

Another thing which people haven't considered is, what about the teens who are helped in getting into SL? An adult could easily sign up and join SL, verify the account with a 100point proof of identity check, and then just give the account username and password to that teen. The adult who does that could even be their parent! What then? Maybe make a requirement to have every user enable a webcam, to check the photo identity of the user when they are logged in?

"Tick yes to certify your an adult: Yes [ ] No [ ]".. at the end of the day, that's really not far from the best LL can do before they are forced to invade our personal lives to prove we are, who we say we are.

So the solution: CleanGrid and AdultGrid!

People who want to live in a clean, G rated disneyland can live in the CleanGrid. And those who like to live in a realistic virtual world and are a mature adult can just live in the AdultGrid like the way things are now.

Although really, this solution, is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. If you want to see adult content in SL, just pull up the search, enable 'show mature areas' and find yourself a nice sexclub that fits your taste. Don't want to? Don't go there! Search for another place and go there instead. Buy your own land, make it PG only and eject anyone who comes in naked or tries to have sex in your land, or cut off their friends arms or whatever they are doing you count as 'adult' and don't like.

If we start separating and rating land to meet peoples personal tastes then when will we stop? I met a gay-male-furry in SL the other day that told me not to undress because my avatar at the time was a straight-female-human, and it was "gross" to him. Should there be 'Gay Only' and 'Straight Only' places in SL too? As well as 'Adult Only' regions? How about 'Furry Only' and 'Human Only' too (for those who are morally against furry's or the folks who are actually morally against humans too).

If we keep going the only solution will be to make a separate space for everyone to live in, and just allow folks to travel inbetween them to visit their friends in their space... which sounds just a bit strangely like the system of regions and parcels and teleporting!

At the end of the day though, none of this will ever work. LL can try all they like, but they can't stop everyone. How many folks in SL like to do adult roleplays (murder and sex!) entirely in IM's, sometimes not even in the same region. Without 'verified' accounts. Are they going to monitor peoples IM conversations and listen to what everyone sayes 24/7? Have a blacklist of words, if anyone sayes something 'possibly adult rated' then have a tech-guy check it out, and ban the accounts involved if one of them isn't 'verified'.

So there you have it, with a very minimal change to the current setup (really just renaming the grid names), we can have a adult only and clean version of SL. So do we need to have adult only regions in SL as well? ..

..Another argument for this solution LL has come up, is people have suggested before the idea that, like RL, when people are in public there should be acceptable standards for how people act. For instance, when I walk down a street in RL, I'm expected (rightly so) to wear clothes. But SL, we don't have streets. You can travel from your home, to a club, or to a friends house, with a quick teleport. So no one has to see you, or what you do, unless they choose to. So that argument is debunked easily.

.."What if a naked person visits my home!", Why did you make your home publically accessible? If you don't want just anyone visiting your home, then make it group only access and only invite people you want in. Or put in place a system of rules for who you want to come into the house, and what rules they must follow, and kick people out of the land, and ban them if they break them. Which is exactly what we can do now! And it works even!

Yes occasionally, the way things are, we have to deal with a person who is a bit of an a**hole, which we don't really like. But really, if you don't want to interact with people like that, then don't go into SL and don't even *THINK* about going out into the real world!

I really honestly can't think of a reason why we need adult-only regions, nor can I think of a way it would work.

*Smacks LL on the head with a newspaper* Bad LL!

Ban lines are totally ineffective. They only keep strangers out of an area 50 M above the terrain surface. If my castle was on the mainland, I could put up my ban lines, and any stranger could STILL enter my top-floor bedroom, because counting the basement levels there is more than 50 M between the terrain surface and the top couple of floors in my castle! And forget about any protection from intrusion is a skybox, unless you install a scripted security orb that ejects strangers and teleports them home - and even then, they can come right back!!! Even if I set the security orb to ban individual intruders by name, that only keeps them out to 768 Meters, leaving more than 3/4 of my buildable area vulnerable to repeated intrusion.