Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Definitions

Yes. I am still waiting for them to clue us in on this magic technology or whatever it is that suddenly has them so confident that users will have a "predictable experience" once this is implemented.

I of course am happy to hear that someone new to SL will finally be free from some random griefer harrassing them with their prim genitalia in PG areas, but I am left wondering how. Or am i mistaken?

Daniel Linden managed it.

In pursuit of a practical answer, let's try: Damage can only be enabled on Adult sims, and combat meters and combat systems can only be used there.

Oh, and vampire roleplay, too, and anything else depicting blood.

But what I like about Second Life *is* its unpredictability.

What makes Second Life unique is its USER created and USER driven content. I do not want to immerse myself or spend time in a virtual Macy's website. Or a virtual Stepford world.

If Second Life becomes that, I will dust off my copies of Spore and Sims 2 when I feel a wish to immerse myself in a 'different world' but it will be frankly inferior to what exists in Second Life today, naughty sims or not.

hmm... I read there: "Whoops! The article you're looking for was a work in progress, and not quite ready to be published. We still have a lot of talking left to do; we thank you for your patience while this gets worked out."

So what is discussed here?

BTW: Am I adult/mature, when SL refuses to show others my earth/moon avatar prims and only my skinned crunched avatar under it? ... It ays always, others see me normal, but I guess this is exactly opposite as I see myself normal while the others don't sometimes.
And what about all the others just wearing a painted coloured skin?

And when will these silly electric fences be banned from mainland? People still can create their private homes above 1000 m or somehting like that. Now there are lots of parcels with private love nest protected by electric fences (restricted parcel access) making exploring mainland with a balloon being a pain.

Blondin - to me, violence is anything non consensual, also anything involving permanent harm. I address the question as regards a virtual world, movie or computer game not as regards real life, in case anyone thinks this standard is lax.

"Dolcett" sims would certainly fall into the latter qualification; non consensual might be a tricky one since technically anyone in SL can teleport away...although coersion might be used in some cases. Pretty difficult to police coersion, though. But I think there are sims which are clearly violent or based around violence. (I have yet to see one that hasn't been labeled as such, if I ran across it in a search, and I do agree search filters could improve.)

I have been talking up 'sim by sim zoning' for ages, if the topic ever came up, long before all this was announced. Treat each sim as a city block.

But I think moving all sims of a certain type to some island feels icky, shaming, banishing, and will have bad results economically and morale-wise.

Here is my own opinoin . I feel if someone is having issuses with adult contents and mature contents they should stay with in the PG realm.

It needs to be clear that Adult does NOT equal Mature.

Having said that, I think Linden Labs will have a very difficult time defining terms and enforcing rules on this.

Therefore, I suggest opening a Red Light District Continent and allowing people to move there VOLUNTARILY. If someone has an Adult business or service, this would be THE place to be. And if a resident is looking for that, it would be THE place to go.

Likewise, the rather vague clause cited above seemed to be more related to a certain playground area which also sold sexual explicit materials and also was often used as a "pick up" spot for sexual ageplayers. The intent was to handle locations where it was clearly obvious that there was a link between child avatars and sexual activity. That said, the vagueness of the policy did lead to issues, including issues with sellers of skins for kids and other issues.

As Ceera said, regardless of the specific policy, you are always welcome to bar child avatars (or who or whatever) from your own policy. That should go without saying. Also, FWIW, I would not likely be intentionally going into anyone's adult content area, any more than I'd be going to a goth location or anything else that does not fit my own personal wants in SL.

More to the point, too: I think this is getting us off the path of defining what is adult content. To me, that's the real issue here.

I view this change with the deepest sense of foreboding — I think this is the beginning of the end for SL.

But let me ask a simple question: I am a poet in SL (and of course in RL) and have been a part of poetry readings in SL which are erotic in nature, and where the words 'f**k' and 'c**t' are frequently used in a descriptive, non-pejorative, way (some of these poems are published in RL journals). These readings take place in mature sims. Sometimes such poems are read at readings which are not dedicated only to erotic poetry, but that still occur on Mature sims. Is all this going to be Adult under the new guidelines?

a lot i wanted to say is already said
if you watch the video provided with the link (http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=1047748741&play=1) you could get an impression what SL is goin to be, and this different light maybe shows the true colour of this announcement.
howsoever, it seems like LL isnt interested in the "normal" resident further, they dont bring the big money.
It should have been clear for LL that a lot of ppl couldnt afford the raised tier for the OSS - as an example, but the LL-Ceos and stuff isnt touched wether those ppl leave SL or not.
In the light of the anouncement of the CEO all this discussion is a useless one and two-faced by LL,if you`re able to understand the unspoken words of Mr. Mark K. as well.
Make SL "clean" to turn it into a business area for the global players.

Sure i would prefer i am totally wrong with that....

If they really would be faithful in what they pretending to want - to prevent children of abuse, or save ADULTS for maybe harrassing content, wouldnt you change the form of registration first ? Everyone and anyone who is able to count 18 backwards from 2009 is able to do an account.

Nevertheless, for all the adults around, i feel sorry for you, if your not able to read the inworld-search results or the descriptions of the land you enter, or if you not able to not tp to a place what is rated as mature.
And dont forget to blindfold yourself and your kids if you enter the real world
Lets build a new kind of a berlin wall and put all the bad content behind

I'm interested in how LL intends to supply basic religious protections to groups other than Abrahamic religions, if their display or usage is found to be offensive or adult by others?

I also am interested in levels and how you define what is too much blood, and what is too much violence?

ok, since noone else seems to be able to pick up the ball that LL served into our half of the field by saying they would want to define the three levels with our input, here's a bit of food for thoughts:


PG: no full nudity as far as avatars go; no full frontal nudity on pictures/textures/decorations; no violence; no profanities ("wtf" is not a profanity IMO); Full frontal nudity in educational context / artistic context (classes, museums) is allowed.

Mature: whatever two or more grown-ups consent to do in their private bedroom; Fighting sims; MTV Rap videos (the bad ones); Full nudity; "sexual acts between people in a relationship"; BDSM "in private"... etc etc

Adult: Sex for money in all its forms; Shops that sell EXCLUSIVELY sex-related merchandise; extreme violence;

If the private sim has a club with no naked real pictures. All sex-beds areas are hidden in special access area totally private. and the only thing that is seen are somtimes are naked avatars dancing on the stage and there is no public sex, guests cannot be naked, there is no porn pictures of any kind, no naked pics of avatars. the place is the public club with dance floor. Will this place be considered as mature or adult?

what about keywords? Would it be allowed to use certain keywords in mature region or you plan to censor this as well?

Now no offence, but each several months you are going deeper and deeper into people's live in here. This is getting really annoying.

From what I have seen here you are planning to hunt for even single sex ball or sexy dance (who will define if the current dance is too sexy?). Maybe we should start inviting you to our sim and you will determine what is good or not because everyone interprets your law different so you are never sure if we will do a legal thing or not.

It looks like the law will get so much complicated that outsider will never understand it. You need to sit here for years in order to get what is going on around here. It looks like soon everyone will need to get SL lawyer for help.

Nobody on this forum understand what is the difference between adult and mature - and there is disagreement even between you in LL.

Instead of PG, Mature, and Adult, they should just go with two categories: Sterile and Fertile. OR perhaps.... Work and Play.

So there has been a reversal in the linden policy that a child AV near adult stuff is grounds for an AR and nobody said anything? Or are you just talking off the cuff here and not speaking for LL? If the latter, send us a Linden who can.

I'm curious as to where a place that isn't sexual in nature but where sexual themes might occasionally be discussed or where swear words could be heard often will fall.

I own a comedy club and we are not necessarily sexual in nature but comedians often swear or discuss sexuality.

Forcing people to stay in PG areas just because they (for one reason or another) disapprove/dislike other types of content is just blatantly unfair. For instance, if I don't like Role Play, why would I not want to go to a place that does it? Oh ...

Or, if I am in the non-teen SL, why would I be forced to go to some place that has activities I disapprove of? I would be so shocked ... Oh, wait, I am not forced to go.

Then again, why should I not have the right to herd people into ghettos if they disagree with me, since they obvious can't be trusted to not go into places they know ahead of time they won't like. No, that doesn't work either.

Given all that, we shouldn't just do adult areas. Maybe we should have some kind of ranking (good, bad, religious, sarcastic, &c) for each area. Areas based on what I consider (or someone else, doesn't matter) bad things would be labeled as such. For instance, lets say we base an area on a book that has bad characters. A father who prostitutes his daughters to a crowd to protect some spies for instance. That would be bad. Or, perhaps, a biography of a man who brought some country from incredible inflation and poverty into a powerful place in the world.

The only problem with those two books? Well, the first is the bible, and the second is Mein Kampf.

Maybe we are getting in politics a bit too much.
Sorry, if I missed the point here ...

Ok, so I have a flower shop with 999 different flowers and a sex-bed in public with a sign that says "Go ahead and use it". Is that Adult? Even if no one uses it?

How about 998 flowers and two sex beds?

How about 1 flower and 999 sex beds?

As for sex-for-money, I think we might need a definition there. Is buying someone a set of clothes sex-for-money? What about buying a man buying his partner one? How about buying clothes for an erotic dancer? How about for a kretek dancer?

I just ask the questions ... I don't expect any answers.

Life is too short for this nonsense. Those who are offended by pixellated boobies should get their own continent. If pixels are so offensive then pluck them out.

Linden Lab grow up, pixels don't hurt anyone.

Sorry, but I wanted to break this up so we could follow.

Religion:

I would hope that religious content would be off limits, but I doubt that it would be. For instance, there would be more than enough "good Christian folks" to raise a stink about muslim sites, or (heave 'n forbid) wiccan or orixa worshipers to get them kicked off. Pacifists would far outnumber a US Army recruitment site. And this doesn't even take into account the internecine squabbling between the various baptists, let alone Muslims. Can Apple get Microsoft kicked off with a huge campaign, or the other way around?

Violence:

Wander around some of the 'toon sites sometime, and look at the level of gratuitous violence. Shall we corral them into adult areas? Most of these are way over the top for blood and violence.

How about people who wear of sell some of the zombie skins? How about Skrat, who only existed to get the wrong end of the acorn? How about some of the military recruitment sites, which are looking for people who are willing to destroy property and kill other people?

So, toons are out, and military is in? Other way around?

I can think of a large number of people who would say that dancing is not only an adult activity and extremely sexual (take a look at some of the official Baptist sects description of what they believe), but even evil and punishable by death (some Muslim groups).

Since most of them, as extreme as they may be, claim a direct link to their version of god, who should I believe. AFAIK, none of the Lindens have claimed that, even though some people have attributed it to them.

Just another view of pointy.

Yeah, since when are zombies inherently Adult (or even Mature)? I'm very disturbed to find horror listed as being disallowed on PG sims. I've had a mainland PG parcel since I started, and, as a parent, I thought I knew what PG meant. I set up a haunted house/horror art gallery. Nothing on my parcel hasn't been seen by me, with my RL kids, on my RL street, any given Halloween. But I'm supposed to move to...where?

On a packed sim jammed between a club full of strippers, a store selling swords with blood effects and huge 24/7 group orgy that never ends.

I hope you can move for the lag

I completely agree with this point.

If age verification is made painless and most residents become age verified (though I doubt this will happen) then it will mean that almost everything that even risks being Adult will become classified as that — which will mean the evisceration of the Mature part of the world so that it is indistinguishable from PG (ridiculous classification that!). This part of SL will be abandoned by all serious adults and be left to the wowsers who make a negligable contribution to SL as it currently is. PG/Mature will become an empty, miserable ghetto and the Adult SL will become the Real SL. In the end it would have been so much easier to simply direct all of the people afeared that they might see a penis to the PG regions and warn them when they enter a mature sim. But LL have decided to commit suicide rather than take that simple path.

The likely scenario is that age verification will kill all of SL. Not because there are a lot of teenagers in SL, but more because there is a LOT of paranoia and many will not trust that the verification info is not being stored or used in some other way. And there will be a lot of people in other parts of the world who will find age verification quite difficult — or will object to it on other grounds.