Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Definitions

BabyAlice, the reason you aren't getting an answer honey is most likely because they don't know what to make of you. You and I, and some others understand ABies. Most people, however, do not. You are likely to be relegated to whatever adult level area is made. I sympathize honey. :ets out a full, warm bottle and a fuzzy blankie for her:::

For the remainder of us, we seem to need names and definitions. I utterly agree with the statement that we are adults in an adult world, and if we come across something we don't like we can simply teleport out or log off of SL. Offense cannot be given, it can only be taken. Obviously, however, some adults aren't so adult. Ergo, my suggestions.

Get away from the PG/Mature/Adult labels. Use names such as Restricted/Limited/Open or maybe General/Regulated/Freedom, but stay away from the age insinuations of Mature and Adult. Also stay away from the "ghetto" and "Red Light" labels. Those are both degrading and insulting - not a good idea for anyone involved.

As for the definitions themselves:

In the most monitored category we could have anything that a conservative minded individual wouldn't object to their ten year old seeing. Sailing, swimming (with bathing suits), horseback riding, shopping appropriate to the concept sans anything remotely racy, easy going movie theaters, pet stores, etc.

In the midrange we can introduce some more advanced concepts in the maturity division. Nudists, naturalists, GLBT, religions, politics, shopping that allows sensuality, movies and media that allow sensuality, mature art (classics that show naughty bits), dance clubs, goths, furries, vamps, combat and fantasy role play sims, etc.

In the wide open division, it's no holds barred. CARP, BDSM, yiffing, Bloodlines, Gorean community, Dolcett fantasy sims, beastiality, (and yes, I'm going to say this just to cover the bases even though I know it won't happen) ageplay as opposed to pedophilia, open sales of items supporting outright sexual motivations or adult oriented alternative lifestyles, open displays of erotic art, escorting, strip clubs, etc.

For shopkeeps, if you have one item that is limited in a category, then you move up to an appropriately less restricted category or remove said item from your offerings.

I can promise you that I will be going where the no holds barred group is headed - even if I didn't run a business requiring it. I'm just not much for censorship.

In Pride and Service,

Kadin Ansar

This is an interesting one for LL to sort out. Picks are now an integral part of the search ranking (something which many weren't convinced was a good idea for a number of reasons anyway), so any attempt on LL's part to prevent people including adult areas in their Picks is, in effect, preventing adult places from fully participating in search.

On the other hand, turning a blind eye to adult places in picks, or even condoning this, makes a mockery that profiles are meant to be PG.

Matthew

Absolutely, picks should be PG in nature even if advertising an adult location. This really means that land descriptions should be PG in nature even on mature land. Sensibly words like penis and genatalia could be used instead of words that are considered more extreme.

Land parcel photos should be PG in nature too, a woman in lingerie instead of naked for example.

Why would the GLBT help area be considered Adult? I know it is the first thing that people think of when they see people from this group.
Being a Lesbian, Gay or Trans gendered is about who they love or who they feel that they are, not just about swinging from the chandlers.
Linden Labs has been under fire lately from both the press as well as places like Australia who are working on their own filtering system to block adult or illegal content from people in their country. So this is not just an “ north American” thing like someone suggested earlier
Here is a news article dated last October. http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/263637/no_opt-_filtered_internet?fp=16&fpid=0
Does Second life have illegal content? In the UK any kind of images of rape, even if both people in the image consent and are acting out a scene is illegal.
I am sure that there are other Governments looking at this too as the CEOP,which is a UK based Internet safety organization is out here all the time looking for illegal content.
With the above filtering looming for that country, why should the majority of Second Life users from Australia become blocked from accessing Second Life because a minority of them are in the places that their government forbids them to be?
All this talk about the droves of people leaving Second life over this new policy change makes me wonder that if this is true, is Second life nothing more than a group of people all sitting behind their computers masturbating when they log on? I think not.
Moving 2-4% to a region that can be better policed by both the sim owner and Linden labs seems to be a better idea for now other than requiring everyone in Second Life become age verified so that the adult grid is really an adult grid.
To this idea would be better since it would curb griefing considerably since once the griefing gets to a point that the person will become banned, all accounts would be banned too since it would be easy for linden labs to type in the verified Real life identity attached to the alts as opposed to anonymous accounts.
This would also put a damper on people stealing content and once caught, they couldn't just transfer the stolen content to another unknown alt and open a new store seconds after their original one was pulled.
Also how can linden labs get businesses to come into Second life when they are greeted with behavior that would have most Human Resource departments cringing and trying to figure out how to shield their employees from this and potential liability.
Why are schools and companies needed in Second Life? My take on this is due to earlier blogs that people are talking about dropping premium memberships and suggesting everyone do the same.
OK fair, now who is going to allow Linden labs to make money if everyone is out here playing for free?
Like on free television, advertising sponsors of course. What happens when an actress or actor displays, even on their own time, embarrassing activities that may harm the companies image that they are promoting? They fire them and get a new one. Just like I am sure they would if an agency is doing something that may also ruin their image.
We have new leadership at Linden labs and the days of Second life being the wild west are over.
No one is being forced to do anything they do not want to, they have a choice become verified to access the adult content or not become verified and stay on the rest of the grid.

I note with interest that the Maturity Ratings FAQ has been withdrawn sometime in the last day or two, replaced with "oh sorry we're still working on this". A few comments:

I think this is basically goodness, since the previous Adult definition in the FAQ was so broad, and so at odds with what the Lindens were saying in the forums. (On the other hand, it's a bit surprising that no one realized *before* the announcement that the existing text was wrong.)

On the other hand, we now have an announcement that all Adult content will have to go sit in the corner, without *any* official definition of what "Adult" means. Which seems a little bizarre!

My suggested definition for "Adult": "Adult content" refers to any Second Life content that:

1) Is so utterly disgusting and degrading that the average person's brain literally explodes upon viewing it, or
2) Contains excessive "bling"

How's that?

Interesting side-point: in the rather bizarre NWN piece, Cyn Linden and Marty Roberts apparently said that places like CARP would *not* be considered "Adult", because their descriptions talk about, like, capture and role-play, not about sex.

Which makes it even clearer than it already was that sensible definitions in this area are even more difficult than they look...

Reply to OP:

Well, the article's been taken down, but my feeling is that the standards, as written, are far too restrictive. Anything that meets these standards is a lot closer to PG than to M.

I was showing someone around SL a couple years ago, and she referred to herself as a bitch, and she vanished. I figured she'd crashed... but no, she IMed me... she had been kicked and banned from that sim on the spot.

The funny thing is that she was a female cape hunting dog. She was using the term purely descriptively.

It would be pointless. Half the male avatars I have bought recently use the female base shape because the male mesh is so screwed up.

While i myself do hate a lot of things on SL, like the bondage, slavery,, and worse, I have a real problem with just who is going to play God with this subject? Will you follow USA laws of RL, follow the "religious right(wrong)"? Whatever you do you will lose a lot of people.
*But then that gets me to this: could this whole thing be so that there will be no free accounts and Linden's will have all "paying" customers?
*Also could be to stop some of the bad publicity that those reporting about SL like to do for good article rating?
*I highly question the motivation of all this, this is supposed to be an adult game, requirement is to be over 18 and i would think legally , with a disclaimer that Lindens are not responsible for those who get on SL against rules of being 18, Lindens should have no problems.
*next is the question of Art works, skins, items listed on land that show up in search but are either for private use or hidden areas that are not advertised, definitions of everything will take up pages and pages, enforcing will take tons of ARs to deal with, and we all know how long it takes for anything to be done with legitament AR's!
*And how will you deal with the situation my partner and I have, along with other Sim owners with same situation?.....We own about 90% of a Sim, the Sim is located on non pg land, we are called "Clan" Rolyat, we have residents, membership, a club and many areas of PG activity. We do not allow full nudity in any area visible to public, and only allow topless in club, although rarely happens, think only twice in two years now. We have over 300 members, and many are non paying, as well as many of our employees. We are concientious about really foul langueage, however we do have a club. We hav no role playiing or scripted talk as many clubs, nor are we a strip club. We only personally invite membership. So..how many employees and members will we lose over your proposed morality Gestapoship? Also, we bouight the land where we are, not somewhere else, so does this mean you can move us and everything we have willy nilly whenever you want, over anything you may consider immoral (to someone)?
I DO NOT WANT OUR ESTATE MOVED INTO AN AREA WITH THE SLEAZE! We have thousands of RL dollars tied up in this game now, and if you do this we will leave, and will not leave it as abandoned land for Lindens to profit on either. We and probably half our membership for that matter.
*I do not know how many clubs are on SL , but under what I have been reading...ALL CLUBS would end up in the "Sleaze" designated area! Well that may destroy business unless a lot of the clubs are forced to be sleazy too in order to have any business at all!
*You know, in the USA you can go into most cities and see strip clubs, watch TV and see anything (parental control is key here), there are bars where sexual talk is still permitted without going to jail yes? Many many places I have seen a strip club, adult book stores and parephenalia on same block as Churches, so moving all to a separate place would not be considered following USA laws i guess, so whos laws will these be?!
*Opening this can of worms is going to be be way more than Lindens are prepaired for, including Class action Suit. How many "moral police" do you plan on hiring?, heck would be better spent on more tecs, considering how flakey the program always is.

*The way I see this all, is it all stems to Lindens trying to get members to be paying customers, period!

Hey Lindens, you do not seem to care about the inmoral Bot owners taking our money at camp pads now do you? As in world sellers exist. I just finished talking to just one of the dealers and one of their programs says they have sold 6860 bots, and there are many more who sell bots in world and on web. There are legit uses, however i bet you do not address this bot situation as it makes it look like SL is more popular than it is. You do not care that majority is used to make money from club owners etc., is this not immoral? Moral police indeed!

Since everyone in SL is an adult, let us use the term 'Xtreme' instead. As for bling, yes, I totally agree

Would be easier to just move the handful of people to which that doesn't apply to their own region (singular).

Sshhhhh! Don't let silly things like common sense get in the way of progress!

While I am sympathetic to the idea of a new continent for Xtreme players, I don't like the idea of forcing them off their land or the moralistic connotation associated with frog-marching them out of society. There is nothing more offensive, in my opinion, than a bigot or a prude. SL is an adult world and it is essential that LL management too behave like adults on this issue.

Preach it, minister! PREACH IT UNTO THE HEAVENS!

Here's a peaceful protest that will actually work.

I'm reducing my tier one level. That's $50 a month less you'll be making off of me.

If enough of us suddenly reduce our tier fees, maybe they'll get the point.

I totally agree with both of you. Which is the reason for my post to begin with. If one can NOT post a NUDE photo of their avie in their profile or allowed to use profanity, yet people start groups that others put in their PICKS section that are quite the opposite, use vulgar language and nude or nearly nude photos. Your profile is PUBLIC and it doesn't matter if you are on a mature sim or PG sim. ANYONE can view your profile.

I disagree with PREVIOUS posts as to "we are all adults". How do you know? Sure, we would like to THINK that there are mostly "adults" on SL but the reality is ANYONE including KIDS can create an account with NO age verification and create an adult avie. How do you know that the person that comes to your sim is REALLY an adult, male or female? I wonder how many ADULTS that roll play of a sexual nature on SL would like to have their children doing the SAME? How many ADULTS here are open with their children as to their sexual activities on SL? How many adults would like their children see them roll play as escorts, strippers, participating in BDSM, getting kidnapped, getting whipped, getting gang raped, having an orgy, eating out of a dog tray, getting married or having prim babies? SL isn't like a private video game that you can buy at a store then play at home. It is PUBLIC access and again... ANYONE can create an account.

Please read my post entitled Executive Policy Review. Simply click on my name to get the list of my posts.

Great point Doreese!

SL is an over 18 community, it is designed for adults and we should assume as players that all we encounter are adults. It's up to SL to keep the kids out and so they should. I have no problem, in fact I endorse age verification to play the game.

Once we are in world, we shouldn't be dumbing it down on the off chance that there are kids in SL.

If we can't say "We are all adults" then that is SL's fault and SL's problem. I would hope they would fix that, and then as adults we can manage ourselves accordlingly, as we have been doing, without these dictatoral rules designed to protect the easily offended.

I can't answer your questions because I'm an Adult who does not have kids. Why should I be babysitting yours? That is a parents job. All MMO games have public access. That doesn't mean that children should be playing them. It is against the current SL TOS for those under 18 to be playing on the Adult Grid. Linden Research risks indemnifying themselves if they remove that line from the TOS in order to mix up the grids. If a child is on the Adult Grid, they are there illegally. Maybe Linden Labs would like to enlighten us as to exactly how many children they have caught on the Adult Grid?

I never said that YOU or I should "babysit". However I DO manage my own sim. SL had to know that some would be upset with the changes and would consider it censorship. Personally, I don't get offended easily and simply do not go to places within sl that I don't like. There is simply NO WAY to make everyone happy in RL or SL. People are going be pissed off no matter what SL decides.

Kids should not be in SL at all. Please read my post entitled Executive Policy Review. Simply click on my name to get the list of my posts.

One could consider that a bug in the system. Why aren't profiles flagged with PG/Mature like parcels, same with picks.



Partially agreed. It is one of those usual 'you cannot deny this truth' rhetorical statements, but you have some grains of truth in there.

SL is a public place because Lindens failed to provide effective privacy features, the only ones available are the ugly ban lines.

No, of course does nearly nobody want its own kids stumble onto the sex toys, videos, dirty scenes etc. that might happen in clubs, the bedroom or when the kids are sleeping. But it happens in RL too, by accident.. and world does not explode...
Of course anyone could be a KID, yes. But any of your neighbours could be a MAD KILLER, in RL too, or some other lunatic, you cannot check that either. Thats not a reason to distrust everybody and become paranoid, even if many do.

Kids should not be in SL at all. Please read my post entitled Executive Policy Review. Simply click on my name to get the list of my posts.