Upcoming Changes for Adult Content: Definitions

so your saying that if I lease land on a private estate i would be forced to move my area to mainland where you can not move and if all are in one location you would not even be anything but a gas cloud

If this situation were truly relevant, I'd be with you completely. But along my previous posts, I denounce this whole application of Enforced Community Standards as a thorn in LL's own side.

People want major issues with the software and service itself. We all want improvement in the technical aspects of SL. But unfortunately LL has taken up the impossible responsibility of maintaining some element of peace and order among residents.

While I would see such a feat reasonable as far as making sure deliberate attempts at interrupting the service (such as major "griefer attacks" are met with appropriate consequences (or better yet, a non-prohibitive approach at preventing such) I fail to see any sensibility to govern who is responsible for hosting/viewing content which may be offensive to the people who see it.

The reality is, that LL has gone above and beyond to make sure we all have a "happy time" while on SL. Unfortunately, albeit a noble one, it is a naive undertaking. Everyone sees pleasure in SL as something different. Using it as an action venue (e.g. whatever forms of combat one favours) to more distinct forms of pleasure. Education is as much pleasure to some as depictions of sex is to others.

I think a more appropriate approach LL should take should be guided among the following:

1. Sanction continents to host the type of content, and rate them as such. For combat would be considered Mature, since blood ans gore and the like has a chance to occur. Whereas erotica (excluding porn) would likewise be classified Mature. While obvious acts of things which aim at nothing else than emphasis on drug use while performing exhibitionist acts of sex would be classified as Adult.

2. Rather than enforce and take the role as Parent/Guardian, leave it to the parents to decide for their own legal minors of their country to decide what their child is doing on SL is inappropriate for them to be seeing/doing.

3. Community Standards should only be enforced with "iron fist-ism" (i.e. bans) when an act which has the potential of actually damaging something is committed. Such as a script which has the sole purpose of lagging a region, or anything which is not affected by the Mute button. In other words, no more instances of "I got banned because I called so-and-so a derogatory name."

4. Global content (or anything which can be searched for via web or any other means of browsing) should be automatically word-filtered for content. If it contains a "bad word" it would be automatically stricken as Mature or Adult, respectively. Understanding that a machine cannot read the content of an image (e.g. nudity) then images should be the responsibility of the advertiser. Profiles would be affected as well (obviously since one may search for them, even if Show on Web is unchecked) and Residents should be given a warning that their profiles contain an Adult rated image. A reasonable amount of time (such as 72 hours) should be given before their account gets suspended or banned.


Of course no system is perfect (read my previous post regarding systems in general) but if LL really wants a working one, I believe the above would be a good start.

...and all other online games have a policy involving actually sticking strictly to an ESRB-type rating system and following those points above. Oh well...

_!_Quick Edit to correct a self-contradiction. SL is a platform, not a game in and of itself. Games can be created, but SL itself is a community hosting service.

I just can't believe the Lindens are doing this and there is only one reason -- you're not really trying to protect the SL "experience"; you're just concerned about your bottom line and your imaginary liability. You're all just a bunch of corporate prudes most likely listening to overpaid legal snarks.

I go where I want to go in SL; if i don't like it, I leave an area. I don't go to Gorean lands, violent role playing lands, furry lands and overtly sexual areas that disturb me. I find there's no need for changing anything. Even sex between two adults pretending to be kids is ok in my book because it's adults doing it.

Is SL a place of creative freedom or not? I guess not.

SL has changed so much over the years and really not for the better. You guys are just wearing corporate fig leaves over your eyes, and you want us to wear them too.

Unfortunately the amount of logical people on SL who practice such a level of maturity when exploring SL is rather outnumbered, or perhaps overpowered by the ones who do not. Therefor I find it understandable when the hosts of such content feel a responsibility to attempt to prevent those who wish not to see content which may offend them. As I previously stated, it is noble to make an effort. But unfortunately, it is more probable that a greater amount of people will be displeased with this change, once it is made, than there have been people who would rally in favour of it.

The access controls already in place are deeper than they might appear. Teen SL is already on the main grid, that's not new. The separation is already done with estate flags and age verification.

Bizarre question. Assuming their mom or dad is even involved, since when is it healthy for a parent to discuss their sex life - of any preference - with their CHILDREN? Virtual sex life or otherwise.

You are passing off a question that is really just judgment on other people's activities, in disguise.

Today I saw The Watchmen, and I thought about the issue of what is adult.

The film has people having sex, one attempted rape, full frontal male nudity, plenty of real male nudity, and vulgarity. There was also extreme violence, including people having their heads cut open, being severely burned, compound fractures, and a lot of people being blown to very graphic bits.

Now I know that everything from The Little Mermaid (G) to The Simpsons Movie (PG13) would fall under "PG."

I know that Saw (NC-17, later R) or Debbie Does Dallas (X) would most likely fall under Adult."

I would presume Saving Private Ryan (R) or Sleepless in Seattle (PG) might fall under mature.

But... where would a film like Watchmen fall? It seems to be a good "borderline." It can be a very disturbing film and will likely press most people's buttons. But is it "adult" under this category, or is there something more to it that keeps it within the mainstream?

I wish Linden would stop messing around, and just say if their intention is, or is not, to merge the teen grid with the adult one.

There's been a lot of talk about adult verification, and rating areas as mature/adult, even pictures in profiles etc. Why ? To protect the children ?
Adults have the ability to look at something, say, "oh, I dont like that" and move on and if form some reason they don't, then SL aint for them !!

Ok, well let me throw this spanner into the works; what process will be in place to protect the adults ?

You may laugh, but just think about what could happen.
Linden merge the teen and adult grids together to save costs, oh, and the entire grid gets slower - it's not going to run any faster with more people now, is it ???

The ONLY difference would be the logon credentials used.
That’s the only protection there is... you enter one name / password and you’re an adult, enter a different one and you’re a child. Either way, you have adults and children freely mixing, in a virtual world that is for all intents and purposes, totally anonymous.

This is just a way for Linden to shift the responsibility from them, to SL users.
Right now, "I" can make a reasonable argument, even in court if needed, that SL is for adults, and the kids have their own realm, so any child that is found in SL has made a decision to come here; there was no way I could ask, force, coerce or anything else that child onto the adult grid. Oh yes, the child of course lied when they said they were over 18. Wow... do children lie; who would have thought.

The RL pedophiles and other sex offenders are going to have a field day gaining access to children and using the defense "Well, I didn’t know they were a child because they were age verified" and Linden will be able to sit back and say, "well, we did our best, but everybody knows that children and adults now freely mix on the same grid. The adults should have been more carful”.

Everybody knows what adults can get up to in SL, hell, I get up to a fair bit of it myself, but Linden "knowingly" allowing children to roam around in areas where adult play is happening is asking for trouble; and it will happen.

Ahhh... I hear age verification and Ratings for regions being shouted from the roof tops.

Age verification is, and always has been a stupid and frankly dangerous idea, yes "DANGEROUS".
It gives people a feeling of security, when in reality, there is none. They believe what the computer is telling them; after all, it never lies either.
No matter what questions you ask, the answers can be bought on the internet, exchanged in school playgrounds, or stolen from parent’s top draws when they are at work.
Short of me walking into Lindens offices and proving who I am, age verification is, extremely dangerous.

Linden, some free professional advice. Children lie because they want to play with the grown-ups, they want to BE grownups. They want to do things like buy alcohol and tobacco, and have sex, and they manage this without too much bother in the real-world, and you’re arrogant enough to think that a couple of questions are going to be enough to stop them in SL.

Are age verified adults going to be allowed into child areas ?
Are you going to have to tick the box saying “I promise Linden, that I’m under 18 and not a registered sex offender” when you sign up for a child’s account?
Immediatly on their 18th birthday, will they be magically upgraded to Adult and no longer be able to play in the tele-tubbies area ?

Give up on this stupid idea before somebody gets hurt.

If you want to do something sensible, build an Education grid that dosn't allow anything sex related.

Teen SL and the main "grid" are already one grid. They always have been. It is due to Estate settings that the two can not interact.

So don't worry about there being more people and thus more lag, they are already here.

And the converse of that: a new form of griefing. "Hey you know that mean guy that threw us out of his SL shop for particle attack/loitering so no other avs could tp in? Let's all AR him for sexually harassing us!"

An exaggerated example maybe but not by much...How many false AR reports of that type will be filed? Imagine the internet, someone's workplace, or the person's local paper got hold of that story and the person was innocent of all of it.

Disable children's IMs, is one way to protect against that type fo thing but as I think Brenda pointed out, what about being accused of impropriety via voice?

There are other possible bad scenarios than a pedo going after someone, (which is bad enough!), for instance a teen with good OR bad intentions making the unwise choice to 'play adult' and mess with someone's life or mind by going for a 'romance' in SL. *Adults* report serious RL heartbreak when an SL romantic relationship goes wrong, what about a kid who thought it would be 'fun' to play adult and 'fall in love'? Bad for all concerned.

People won't merely be afraid to (innocently) IM or talk to anyone who is a kid, who isn't age verified, but also to IM or voice (innocently) anyone past the rez date where LL allowed kids to roam right into the wide open world of Second Life. Once kids are in SL there will be no way to KNOW who you are dealing with. Say goodbye to romance in SL as a result (at least, for anyone past the rez date of kids flooding into SL).

Dear Lindenpeoples.

First there was "Keeping Second Life SAFE Together"; a knee-jerk reaction to pedophilia and explicit sexual and violent content in Second Life: SL residents were asked to report each other for 'broadly offensive' content.

Response: people rebelled, protested and some kicked the SL bucket. A couple of moral knights were flourishing their sword of self-righteousness while Benjamin Franklin turned over in his grave. ("He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither".
Nothing happened however. No big stories about people being banned for 'broadly offensive' content, nothing.

Then there was age-verification; people were asked to 'voluntarily' give their social security number to a company with doubtful trustworthiness to verify they are over 18 years old.

Response: people rebelled, protested and some kicked the SL bucket. A few people verified probably, but I know only one who did. My wild guess is that the grand majority in SL hasn't verified their age at all.

And now, after a BIG make-over of your way of communication (thumbs up for that as a side note), you ask us to define "broadly offensive" by titling it "adult" and bringing up the whole subject again.

You ask for feedback? Very well:
Please follow the great example of what is called 'the internet'. That means as much as adjusting your search engine to filter out words that fit the 'adult' theme, and give people the option to filter their search results.
Let's take Google for example. Google has the option 'SafeSearch' which you can adjust in three settings: On, Moderate, and Off. (Translation: PG, Mature, Broadly Offensive (Adult)). This also goes for images, which could translate to locations in SL.

The "tools" you have so far provided are inadequate, unreliable, privacy-invading (even if you say it isn't, people experience it as such), and not to mention a waste of energy and time. Yours and mine. If you keep insisting on some sort of 'hard divide' of what is 'broadly offensive' and what is not; if you keep trying to find a middle road where there is none, you'll eventually walk into a brick wall, or fall into that big hole you've been digging for years now.

Please guys, when will you see that with the diversity of SL, there is no such hard line or middle road? You HAVE to let people free in what they want to do, where they do it and how. What you can do to help to make my SL more predictable is to enable some sort of extended search functionality.

At the moment I have a the feeling my plumber is trying to perform a facelift... unsuccessfully I must add since he isn't a surgeon. Instead of meddling in society's greasepit, how about you guys do what you're good at and get back to your programming and develop a way to filter 'adult' content by description?

In all good fun and no offense intended, but at some point you really have to know when enough is enough. Please stop pushing the subject and find another way than to start a discussion to which there is no end. Please?

I wish you all the programming skill in the world to come up with a solution that fits your place as a common content carrier to-be

Your Offensive Broad,
Jazhara Keon

EDIT (after reading the other thread on enhancing Search)
PS. Adjusting Search does not mean 'force people to be PG or M or X depending if they verified identity/age or if they have payment info on file' in my post. It means, like Google, free for all. Like you intended SL to be.

No, they've said that estates don't have to move: they do have to tag the estate as adult, but that doesn't mean they'll have to move the islands on the grid.

So will linden then finally fix http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-1459 about getting moved to a (most likely PG rated) place if yuo crash/get logged out from a (certainly mature) sim if you are a bit too fast on logging back in? Assume you are naked (on a beach, in the shower, having sex, whatever...) and you will automaticly get into deep trouble, maybe even banned for things out ouf your hands. No fun!

Amen

Are they? I suspect most people don't go places that disturb them, or get all bent out of shape when they see something they don't like. Do you really think the people calling for the creation of Ursula are a majority of the SL population?

If not outnumbered, perhaps overpowered. Meaning LL chooses to listen to those who complain, in favour above those who practice the level of maturity in question.

And this ANYONE is supposed to be of grown up legal age (18+) as of the TOS I believe, so ... it's like the old saying, you shoot yourself in the foot.

LL has shown to be incapable of reliably enforcing any guidelines they have set forth up to now.. What makes us think that even saying this is a great idea and will make for a better SL that thy will be any different. So far we have griefers and scam artists allowed to continue unmolested on one hand, and on the other, people being summarily banned from SL with no explanation other than a cryptic form letter who when asking for clarification and explanation are answered with silence or patronizing condescention.

Based on this policy, thousands of residents invested millions of dollars into Second Life.

With the various cultures involved with second life how on earth are you going to make a universal standard of modesty? What may be perfectly acceptable in one culture is extremely taboo in another. What may denote violence to one may be a aspect of everyday existence to another.

Let's be honest who or what will be the defining point. Is what a couple does in ones bedroom going to be regulated? How far will this go? so what about estates if they advertise events that are pg but have private quarters where people do what they do will that mean my events will be adult? Doesn't the fact you can get "killed" during combat" regardless of blood guts and gore constitute a adult circumstance?
Seems a bit excessive and silly.

I wonder if it would be technically possible to prevent access and camera veiw into a mature area by means of an "allow adult content" checkbox in the viewer. That way only people who have given their consent (ie checked the box) could enter. People not wishing to see adult content would leave it unchecked and could roam SL safe in the knowledge that they wont come across an ad for (shock-horror)... a nude skin.

This would probably be quite difficult to implement but not as big a task as rearranging the entire mainland. It would also allow the broadminded majority to wander around an otherwise unchanged SL.

If this idea has already been put forward, sorry. I read through most of the posts but may have missed some.

or better yet, what happens if ALL of the residents in SL decide to move to the new "Adult-Adult" land, and leave all the puritans, intolerant, and bigots behind, and alone with each other in the shattered remains of the mainland....

I mean LL, couldn't come right out and say we want all the aforementioned losers to move to a new grid, so they tell us that all the "Adults" have to move. very clever indeed, but no one will want to be in what is left behind.

What business university, or other organization would want to setup shop in such an area, filled with nothing but groups with agendas and views that they try to force on others.

We should all pass the word and embrace this change, tell everyone that this is the opportunity to get away from the bigots and other small minded people and go to an area that supports and embraces the freedoms that we came to SL for in the first place.

So lets all move to the new "Adult-Adult" sim and leave all those who practice hate as a lifestyle behind.

While my place doesn't technically qualify as "adult" I would rather live next to those who suuport freedom and choice than in a mainland dedicated to bigots and special interests.

No, but similar things could be done, so that people could only see content that matched their preferred rating.

In one of the sequels to Larry Niven and Stephen Barnes' "Dream Park" there is a scene where one of the characters had left her goggles on an X-rated setting, and was confronted by a fellow with an enormous member... so she ostentatiously set her goggles to a public setting and it disappeared.

I think that was in "The California Voodoo Game" (1992).

I understand that Mitch Kapor has been quoted as saying "we want to make Second Life more predictable".

Mitch, if you mean, I can log in when I want to...I can teleport reliably...I can trust transactions...I won't lose inventory...then I agree with you. Make it as predictable as you can.

But if you mean, you want to be sure that nobody goes for a walk, turns a corner, and unexpectedly comes upon a giant statue of a phallus, then you've missed the whole point of Second Life.

It IS unpredictable. Quirky, imaginative. You never know what's around the next corner, or at the end of the next teleport. Most of it is good. I find a few things that grate on my sensibilities, but if they bother me a lot, I teleport away.

For gods' sakes...DON'T make SL "predictable". Then the only ones who'll be here are the bots.

Linden Lab has a history of not listening to their residents. Please, please, we're begging you. This time, LISTEN!

Hey...if you ARE listening, I have three constructive suggestions for you.

1. Run a media campaign instead of this crap. Strike back against WoW. Hire a good PR firm and some celebrities and talk up the variety, the freedom...the UNpredictability of Second Life. You'll do yourselves, and us, a lot more good.

2. Clean up the infohubs and Welcome Areas. These are the places that give people their first impression of SL. They're PG rated, but they are FULL of objectionable content and chat. Misty's idea of a "check in" G rated continent is a good one. A place big enough to be interesting, clean enough for sensitive eyes and ears. Let other residents visit (what's SL without people?), but actively police the place to keep behavior in bounds.

3. A lot of your international visitors quit because they're confused. One of the biggest jobs the Mentors face is translation, there is even a subgroup, "Mentor Linguists". If you put a freebie translator in every starter avatar folder, people will automatically have a tool, however imperfect, to help them get on with things. It will be right there on their screen when they first appear.

Can you elaborate on this? A comment from someone after I pointed them to this message:
I'm not sure why it would matter whether it's a beach or a park, or an office building or a store, so long as the landowner approves of casual nudism. This twist hadn't occurred to me.