Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Definitions

Again, how is that not already covered under the CURRENT rules?

My gut says that you would be fine regardless. But what is the context of the pics/blood?

The technology has progressed as time has passed to a point where we are better able to address these issues.

If I'm reading this correctly...

I can make love to my girlfriend on my sex bed at home in my private residence..on my mainland while being watched through various methods by 38 peeping Toms and that is only mature...

However because it would be overt nudity..I cannot go topless sunbathing with her on a beech unless it is flagged Adult....

Neither may my fully clothed sub be seen in public area's with a chain attached..because that would also be of an adult theme..

To add to my first example..if we were making love in the same place but using bondage items..cuffs gags etc..but still being spied on by peeping toms then it would be adult....


I see nothing but grief and greatly reduced income and content for every one including linden labs..didn't the open sim sell of and the fall in income teach you anything at all.....

also I think you might find that the effected people and area's might be a little off...

Which you'll find out as your product grosses less and less with every little 'improvement' you make.

be honest this is just because you want to stop running the teen grid as a seperate entity..this has nothing to do with having people's quality of life improved..
or making the place safer..

if this goes ahead then I for one will be forbidding my child from going near secondlife until they are 18..

Putting kids on the same grid as adults what ever you put in place is going to make it more dangerous for them not safer..

The issue as I see it is that LL is bowing to North American pressure. The question is is this pressure coming from religious conservatives or from short sighted investors and equity holders who are looking for the almighty dollar?

I am a BDSM Mistress within SL. I enjoy the companionship of two beautiful female submissives. We all live in a sim where it is loudly broadcasted what our group believes in. Why then, must I be subjected to standards from someone I have never known nor want to to?

It is my opinion that Teen SL is failing and LL wants to cut their losses. The only way they feel this can be done is to open the gates and let the kids in. How many of these kids will pay premium or tier fees? How many will rent land in the sims? How many will purchase items from our wonderful group of designers? Anyone want to venture an opinion on that?

It will be a matter of time before GLBT sims are considered Adult and moved to god only knows where. Don't say it won't happen Lindens. Remember your lies about Openspace?

All the bally hoo about being a global community disappears in a puff of smoke the moment some North American group starts making noise about a perceived illegal activity. Has LL ever thought about moving the servers off the North American mainland? No, that would cost money!!!

Once again, a vocal minority with an agenda is going to dictate to the majority. Why is it that LL can provide hard percentages about the amount of "adult" activity held within SL but seems to be unable to provide the same type of hard data when it comes to telling us exactly how many people are complaining about us "freaks"? By the way, how many of those voices are from alts??? Ever think about that LL? That the minority may be stacking the deck through the use of something that you created and actively propose the use of?

I think it is completely sad that LL now thinks that they understand morality. How much of our input will they really use in any decision? Since when was North American ethics the gold standard for the entire world to follow?

Both of these examples were on a private island sim, but could just as easily have been made in a suitable Mainland location. Neither sim exists any more.

Case study A:
I was once the sim builder and Estate manager on an Residential island resort sim (Wailele Isle), which had a large public outdoor swimming pool, with a hot tub and two water slides. My home was on the hillside above the pool, with a view of the pool area. Several other homes also could see the pool area. We had some very simple rules for residents and guests using the public pool, similar to the rules at most Nudist Resorts or nude beaches:

1: Clothing was optional. However, male genitalia should not be aroused and visible to the casual glance. Flacid was fine. (At the time, female prim bits capable of showing arousal did not yet exist).

2: If a couple was getting amorous in the pool or hot tub, that was fine, but any aroused bits had to remain below the water.

3: Anything said in open chat should be PG-rated. More intimate conversations should be by IM. If you had adult bits that "spoke" on their own, they should be set to whisper, silent, or owner-only chatter.

4: If you wanted to use any directly sexual animations, please take it indoors, and do not do it in the public area.

This still allowed nude hot tubbibng and swimming, and some wonderfully romantic lead-ins to amorous activities, but people would be descrete when matters turned more x-rated. None of the pose balls in the pool or hot tub area were anything but G-rated. Most were things like relaxing in the spa, or laying on the rim of the pool and lazily moving a hand through the water. It was strictly a social and recreational venue, not a public sex spot.

I would hope the new rules for adult behavior will be lenient enough to still permit this sort of a social setting in a Mature sim. People are NOT engaged in hopping on XXX pose balls in plain sight, but nudity and some PG to R-rated visuals may occur. It isn't a business, and the rules were set to make it very considerate of the neighbor's sensibilities.

Case Study B:
The sim next door, Nohona Isle, which I also built and managed, was also residential, and featured an extensive system of caves that were set up explicitly for romantic adult encounters. Nothing sexy ever went on in public, above ground. Within the caves, the pose ball rating got more racy as you went deeper, with sex beds and a dungeon in the lowest levels. There were about 40 pose balls sets, ranging from kisses and cuddles, to sitting beside each other in a hot tub, to XXX acts, plus two sex beds and three "dungeon Furniture" items in the lowest level. It was not possible to hear anything from inside if you were not in the caves, and it was not possible to get near the XXX pose sets in the caves without first passing several warning signs that said the area was for XXX adult encounters, and open for free use.

This was NOT a business. It was a recreational location provided by the sim owner, who also ran a strip club and an escort service in the third sim in this grouping. Occasionally an escort might bring a client to the caves for some different scenes, but more often than not, the area was open-use.

No one could see or hear what happened in the caves, without going inside and voluntarily getting past the entry warning signs.

Would a place like that be allowable on the mainland in a Mature sim, in the new rules? I think it should be, if in fact people can do as they please within an enclosed location. Or would it have to relocate to the adults-only continent?

At least you morning is over.

I'll tackle your question about violence with a one word answer ... AVATARS!

I belong to an air combat collection of sims. We regularly shoot at each other, shoot each other down, go down in flaming heaps, drop bombs on each other, sink boats with people on it. The scripters are all hard at work making the smoke, smokier ... exposions, emplodier, flames, flamier ... to be honest, it's almost more art form than violent. One guy has a thing where body parts flew off. Never laughed so hard in my life as the first time I saw that.

These are avatars ... there is NO actual violence taking place. It isn't now, nor will it ever be in our lifetime, realistic enough to ever be close to being considered a depiction of violence. It will never be more than enough to make any sane adult do more than say ... "Wow, cool scripting work!"

Now, from a more practical sense, unlike sexual content, combat sims tend to be just that ... sims. There aren't going to be 1536m combat areas. It generally takes at least one and usually more sims to have any sort of engaging combat immersion. Combat sims tend to want more people to play, and are generally very well marked. Anyone that "accidentally" teleports into one of these areas and was quickly "offended" was probably a)doing it intentionally in order to whine about it ... b)needs to put on the big girl panties.

So (and I apologize for the length of this) my answer is that there is no violence on Second Life. THEY ARE AVATARS, run by people that live in a world that attempted mass genocide on the global scale, twice in the last century.

This is pointing out the Minnow in the pack of Great Whites.

So, you should have been better able to manage the EXISTING rules, right?

Why haven't you? I mean, if "technology has progressed", then enforcement of EXISTING rules should have gotten BETTER, not WORSE, then we wouldn't be sitting here wasting electrons debating about yet another ill-conceived policy to fix something that isn't broken, right?

There are different levels and there comes a point where content crosses that line between Mature and Adult

It's hard to consider anything in SL as extreme violence. I'm sure countless cartoon mice have committed just as many terrible violent acts on their cat adversaries as we will ever see in SL.

Cartoons, comics, animations, video games its hard to imagine what you can do in these mediums that might be considered too violent for even very young children to see.

So I'd say only photo realistic depictions of real life, gratuitous violence should be considered adult.

I have a rather new business with a whopping 18 items. About 1/2 of them would fall under the proposed "adult" classification and the other 1/2 fall into a PG area. I purchased mainland for the store 2 weeks ago in a mature sim knowing I did not want to violate the current guidelines. If forced to uproot and move my store to a new "adult" area I am left with several options:

1 Move everything and take the hit on sales of items that people not wanting to go to an "adult" area.
2 Remove my "adult" items that are for sale and lose out on potential revenue
3 Maintain shops in both areas and have my costs double.
4 Give up on the business all together.

Some choice to make...I don't like any of my options.

I never got into business in the 1st place to make money. I do the creation for fun and wanted to share my thoughts with others.

So much for upgrading my account for the free 512M.

Hmmm... I have an avatar depicting a skinned red fox, goes around with the title "fur is murder". I have not used it in a while because I've had too many people tell me it was too disturbing for them.

Should this avatar be restricted to "Adult" regions?

More dangerous? seriously? Second Life is dangerous? How?

This is the exact kind of paranoia that has gotten us into this mess.

Second life is a cartoon fake world. You are safe in your home when exploring it. You have to PROJECT danger into it...the danger is not real. I can be blown up..I can see pixel sex and nudity...I can have any amount of things done to me in SL, and yet I am still safe and cozy in my home in real life. This is the beautiful thing about SL.

Sure.. wouldn't necessarily want a young kid (say 3-10) seeing what is in SL...because it can be crude and hard to explain...but remember that it is still all fake. Kids that play video games, watch movies, listen to music, and surf the web these days between the ages of 11- 18 have seen it all I'm afraid as far as violence goes at least. Nudity too. Mature themes...all of it.

It is up to parents to keep their kids informed and "street smart" regarding entertainment and online activity....period. You cannot hope to effectively protect them from "mature content" with these kinds of policies.

So it's OK if the parcel owner say it's OK?

Any avatar on an adult verified account will be able to access adult content.

For kids, yes it is, and that's nothing to do with any pixel depictions of sex they may see there (my two would just think that was funny). There are predatory adults who would LOVE SL to merge the grids so they had access to underage teens.

Point 1 Yes SL is VOLUNTARY (but...)

To address the issue about SL being VOLUNTARY, I agree only to some extent. Even if I voluntarily joined SL there is stuff I'd rather not see at all or be forced to see simply because it's visible from a place I like to visit. I chose a PG sim for home and shop because I did not want to see XXX signs and shops outside my workshop windows, and I like having clear windows.

BDSM, XXX shops, explicit sex, and blood and gore all do not offend me in the least, but I have no interest in seeing these things on a regular basis. I want to be able to visit some quiet scenic park with the assurance that I will not see these things. If I wanted to see them or not I should have the choice to go there or not.

I believe that SL residents do have some right to visit a particular location without having to be exposed to objectionable material that they were not planning to see. Zoning has this merit because it affords a resident control over his experience in a world where LL cannot control the content level wholesale.


Point 2 Drawing the line (major issue)

The stickiest issue here is not if we need zoning or not because we definitely do, for the reason I outlined in point 1. The issue is where the line is drawn.

The world does not have a universal standard for offensive and not. Sex with an 11-13 year old is today considered paedophilia but nature has declared that women may conceive a child as early as 11-13 years of age. In olden times, 15 was normal marrying age for a woman and in not-so-recent China, 12 was an ok age for women to marry. There are cultures that allow multiple wives and others that don't. Japan will pixelate genitalia in porn (print and video) while America does not.

As such standards are arbitrary, it becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, to create that line.

While I agree that there are places that are obviously sexually-themed and places that are generally offensive, our problems are not there. Our biggest problem lies where the line is drawn. In a discussion of Fuzzy Logic, the illustration was Fuzzy Wuzzy. Like plucking hair off a bear: at how many hairs plucked do you consider the bear no longer furry? In our case: at what tripping-point does a place go from sexually-themed to not sexually-themed?

Unlike the bear example, I do not think we can apply the principles of Fuzzy Logic's degree of membership to the determination of degree of sexual-theming. That's because there's nothing that can be measured with any precision/repeatability.

If no reliable line can be found LL will need a designated censor who being human will eventually be found inconsistent in assessing the degree of sexual-theming. There will be complaints of lack of even-handedness.

This line, if it can be found at all, has to be determined by both LL and the residents. LL because they know what tools they have available for grading, residents because they have the larger body of what-ifs (as illustrated much in this thread).

But NO LINE = NO RELIABLE ZONING


Point 3 Private quarters (a suggestion and issue)

What we do in private is our business even if we're on Mature / PG / G sims. Do we make a rule that windows must be opaque at least from the outside or is some declared level of transparency acceptable? Is sex on your open terrace considered public?


Point 4 Enforcement (a suggestion)

I suppose after the initial zoning enforcement will be driven primarily by ARs. If someone is doing the nasty in a house that has windows made opaque and some voyeur cams in and takes a pic. How does that work out? The reporter can declare in his report that it was on an open terrace and because it's a very simple matter for us to make walls appear and disappear you have no way of proving that a wall was there or not there.

That is unless you change the AR engine to take a snapshot of the actual server data (not a pic but the actual object data) that the camera could see and perhaps a bit behind the camera and include the location of the reporter. The report will have to include the UUIDs also of active animations, textures, and scripts. Why all the data? In a world where anyone can change appearance to look like anyone else, you need something to prevent false accusations.

While it will make for reliable enforcement that's a lot of data. So make the reporter pay for it, perhaps L$500 per report. If the report is valid, then the L$ is refunded (you can even supply a bonus to encourage good reporting). The L$ charge will force people to be serious with their reporting and thus not overload either the server that stores the ARs or the enforcement team.


CONCLUSION

I very much like the principle of zoning. But before you pull it off, you need to establish objectivity of standards and reliability of reporting.

I would like to further expand the definition of "Adult" and "Mature" content in SL.

I personally believe that all religions that practice evangelicism or proselytization are of a distinctly "Adult" nature. The decision to enforce your personal morality or religious will upon others (regardless of method) who may or may not be willing, in my opinion is very near violence in its description.
It is non-consensual and for many it is considered broadly offensive behavior.

I do not want to ask that they be removed from second life, or forced to stop. This is, after all a free environment where they have the right to their opinion and personal practices and interests. Second Life is probably a great place for them to socialize with people of a like mind and discuss their beliefs, more power to them that's what SL is all about! However I have been repeatedly exposed to this behavior in my time in Second Life (which is considerable) and I feel it is beginning to impact my ability to enjoy the free, open and creative environment that I have come to know and love as Second Life.

Therefore I would like to request that any organizations in SL who practice this behavior be required to identify themselves as such, and to please flag their parcels, estates or content with "Adult" or at very least "Mature" tags. I do not want to be acted upon without my consent by this personally offensive material. If possible I would like a way to completely block it from my viewer, whether via a global mute setting or geographically relocating all of it to a location I can avoid.

No, I am not being sarcastic, I am very utterly serious. If we are going to be practicing censorship with such broad and sweeping effect, I feel it only fair to be all-inclusive.

Thank you for your consideration and time.

Really?

Why would you use two words that are direct synonyms of each other to refer to different "levels"?

Once you draw that line in the "top" of Mature and segregate it off into your misnamed "Adult" stratification, what is left in Mature that wouldn't be considered PG?

That's the problem you all keep avoiding facing here. You've yet to demonstrate a need for such a stratification.

By your own current rules, Mature IS Adult. What you are attempting to relegate to Mature is actually already PG.

So, I ask again, what is the real nature of the problem you are trying to solve here?

Nope. Typical german town close to a university campus. Having sex shops and other sexually related things in mixed/residential areas is not too uncommon. You have sex shops in the main shopping streets, in mostly residential areas. Its not much different from selling shoes or clothing. And a strip club and disco are often not too different...

But even in this case...it is not SL that is dangerous. When I was a kid my parents educated me on not talking to strangers...and they did not sugar coat what might happen to me if I did...it was very clear to me, and I would never have allowed a predator to convince me to go meet them in a park or something if I were to encounter them in an online world.

If some pervert is talking inappropriately to them in a voice enabled sim...then you teach them to leave, or to use mute like everyone else does. There is no danger. An 11 year old is more computer literate these days then many 40 year olds..and teaching them this basic level of security would be easy.

All of this "danger" can be avoided simply by teaching our kids how to defend themselves against it.

They are safe in your home.

Second Life is not the real world.

So the definition of adult content just means places or actual items as well? Will people in PG areas of the grid such as infohubs or sandboxes be protected from unsolicited exposure to adult items, representations, or images better than they are now?

I ask because i was just reading the KB about adult content and saw a question about vendors of such content -

"Vendors in Second Life already enjoy the benefits of a full-service virtual environment with a large and growing audience of consumers and a strong inworld economy. With these policy changes and search controls, they'll be able to more easily target the customers they intend to reach, and will enjoy the density of a focused market (both in search, and geographically). For Adult content vendors, this initiative will also provide an additional layer of assurance that only verified adults can access their material."

How exactly will this work that the adult products sold by vendors will remain in the adult only continent? Sorry if I am not getting it, but i am coming across conflicting information. At first i thought this would only apply to certain venues, but after reading the part i quoted from the KB, I am now led to beleive this applies to products as well?

Ugh this is turning out to be even more confusing than trying to figure out what was "Broadly Offensive"

(sorry about the bold, I just wanted to highlight that bit without stripping away all the context)


This concerns me greatly. Just over 10% of the items sold by me in my store (far fewer if I include the items I allow my friends to sell there, none of which are adult in any way) are of a sexual nature. It sounds like you're saying that search will be filtered to exclude my shop in its entirely as a result, and the only way I'll be able to advertise "freely" (at all?) is if I choose to flag my shop as Adult. Do I have that right?

And further, this is not because of the actual content displayed in my shop but because of the anticipated actions of my customers and whoever else may decide to stop in and take an intimate poseball set for a test ride?

This is troubling indeed, if I have not misunderstood.

Thanks, truely, for the response, Blondin, but it doesn't really address my point. LL could have, if it wanted to, hired somebody to wander the welcome areas & HIP and do some basic enforcement. You guys didn't do this. EVERYBODY knows these areas are a disaster and hell on newbies and have been for years but still nothing has been done, despite LLs talk about NUE and keeping SL safe and all that.

It's got nothing to do with having the technology and everything to do with having the will to make things better. As much as you probably don't want to hear it, LL has shown us again and again that it doesn't have the will or staying power to deal with the long-term governance issues that this new deal is going to involve. Dealing with welcome areas is nothing compared to what you're opening yourself up to.

Please, PLEASE, talk about this and tell us why we should think this latest round will be different.

Not in my place, they won't!! Assuming I still have a place once the new plan goes into effect, that is. LL might be ok with kid avatars in very-adult areas but I'm sure not!

edit: this is a complete 180 in LL policy, BTW. The previous rules very clearly said that people allowing kid avatars in adult situations risked an immediate ban.

edit edit: from https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2007/11/14/clarification-of-policy-disallowing-ageplay