Spitting Over Daniel Linden's Fence: A Playful Analogy

And even the judges themselves have contributed to the problem. Instances of Activist judges adjudicating from the benchare increasing. It was suggeste that the Lindens don't have the resources to Polic the Grid, and I can see that. But they are suggesting every Tom, Dick , and Ruth submit AR's on everyone . ho's going to go through those and seperate the true offenses from the frivilous ones. Perhaps they will outsource that as well? Coming soon from ESC.....JudgeBot.

I really think the wheels have come off out there in SanFran. I will give LL credit for being visionary, daring, and innovative, in the concept of SL. And will give them slack on the technical shortcomings to a point, it is untested technology. But there business practices, from World Mangement, to Customer Service/Financial Operations/to communication is abysmal. Maybe selling off is the best thing to do. They keep adding stories to the building while the foundation crumbles.

Your analogy is flawed. Speed is measurable and a speed limit is a discrete number - if the limit is 60, 50 is clearly under, 70 is clearly over. "Broadly offensive" is subjective, it can't be defined in absolute terms.

Making laws/rules is never going to be simple... thats why we have so many and they grow expotentially.. the main reason is, people will always contest that they are unfair and cite some law/rule from another place.. constitutional rights, human rights, freedom of speech etc etc... add to that the fact SL in multi-national, who is going to lay down the laws that will be suitable for all concerned?

The analogy is only cited at a single 'city', although is a foundation of the problem, it would only be a small part of the building blocks.. on that basis we could see many different laws/rules appartaining to individual sims (cities) depending on those cultures that 'own' them. These could exist within 'global laws/rules' but no doubt would become in conflict at some stage.... oh dear, here comes RL into SL... will WW3 take place inside SL?

I figured the number two was more accurate myself. Number one is impossible simply because not enough of us really pay attention to our surroundings to care to report things. We report only those things that make playing impossible or difficult.. such as griefing. Otherwise, we're just going to TP out.

As for the screwing activites in a PG area? That.. is AR-able, but not under the 'broadly offensive.' That falls under the header of 'inappropriate to the area.'

I don't think they're really suggesting that. I'm sure LL would be thrilled if no one ever AR'd anything at all. They've always been hugely libertarian in their thinking and have given residents an extremely wide latitude to define our own standards. What they're doing by speaking out against the "broadly offensive" and then making excuses for not defining what that means is playing a bit of a semantic shell game, not for our benefit, but aimed at the press, governments, and special interest groups that have begun to sniff around the periphery. It has a lot more to do with establishing plausible deniability and limiting liability than with any real desire to play censor. At least that's my take on it.

I am in agreement on your theory, maybe I am just overly wary, since my time here has been limited to what seems to be the most unsure period Sl has gone through. May your take be the right one.

*moves* (off-topic for RA)

I think the real reason they haven't announced it has more to do with the political fallout. So far there has been a huge debate over what the threshold should be (or even if there should be one). If LL tells us what that threshold is, the debate will only intensify; there will be those that will say it goes too far, and those who will say it doesn't go far enough (see the first quote in my signature). What is worse is that this debate has made it into the press, by not defining the policy further they avoid the talking heads debating it.

I can see why you'd be wary if you've only known LL in these times. What I've seen, and what Chip would have seen even more of, is how loathe they've been to set limits, to engage in making any kind of subjective judgement on content/activities etc. There have been times where the community has been very, very vocal about things they consider objectionable, a lot more vocal than they have been on the subject of ageplay.

If you'd asked what was "broadly offensive" in 05, people would have said 'Bush signs'. LL didn't want to regulate resident content, so they weathered the storm. Even more relevant, this isn't the first time ageplay has caused a stink. When it was just the residents screaming "we're offended", as many have, they didn't flinch.

This time around, their hand was forced.

Even more so in Current Version Feedback I would have thought.

As they should. Taking any action in that case would be favoring one political agenda over another.

Agree with this. It's also curious to me why people are calling on Daniel Et Al to lay out the rules clearly and granularly which would define "broadly offensive *as determined by the community*". It's the community's job to do that, not Linden Lab's. The task at hand is to figure out how we as a community can collaborate with the Lindens to define and communicate these standards.

Daniel and Robin have so far focused on extreme subject matter - specific content/behavior that any reasonable person would agree is obscene beyond acceptability. It's easy to lay down rules regarding child porn, rotten.com style depictions of violence, and it's of course easy and ESSENTIAL to lay down rules regarding activity that could put the Lab at legal risk.

It's going to be an extraordinary undertaking to figure out where the pulse of the community is with regard to the more run of the mill content which *could* be "broadly offensive" but not necessarily a clear and present danger. I don't know about you, but I'd rather Linden Lab not endeavor to produce those standards unilaterally.

It wasn't generally the politics people were offended by, or what LL was being asked to decide on.

Why was this thread moved to "Current Version Feedback" when it has nothing to do with the Current Version? Why are a dozen other comparable discussions allowed to continue in RA? Arbitrary enforcement is one of the strongest reasons people are so concerned about Daniel Linden's blog.

As for the analogy being innacurate, I disagree. The laws of my state are specific and exact, including laws on behavior. In a just society, vague or unclear laws are challenged in court. But there is no court in SL. If we were talking about a temporary suspension from SL, or a warning system, that's one thing. But when the consequences for crossing this invisible line include confiscation of property worth potentially thousands of real life dollars and absolute, permanent banning from the system, absolute erasure, something is seriously flawed. Let's not forget that LL PERMITTED depictions of sexual child-play for a long, long time. There were entire sims built for that particular purpose, with LL's tacit approval. They were permitted to advertise explicitely and freely and publically. LL accepted the sim owners' tier payments and advertisement payments, knowing full well what was going on in those places. Yet during the German "media" event, LL banned two adults who were engaged in virtual sexual child-play, on a private sim, confiscating their property and possessions, apparently without warning, without recourse, without any notification that their activity, though permitted in the past, was no longer permitted either publically or privately in SL.

Clearly LL redrew that line. Maybe that line needed to be redrawn....but not arbitrarily and without warning and without a clear explanation.

Clearly they intend to redraw it again. Daniel's blog certainly indicates the line has been moved... what he says contradicts the Community Standards! Yet they won't clarify even THAT point! And Robin said at the townhall that the activities Daniel's blog mentions aren't the last of the restrictions.

Clearly they need to apprise residents of where the new line has been drawn so that we may either abide by it or evaluate the risk/reward of SL as a platform and decide whether it is worth continuing to participate in this very very insignificant activity called SL.

(Wish I could cut that down some, but it's all more or less relevant)
What about rape?
IRL rape is a horrible thing, but in SL all so called "rape" is actually consentual, it's just the role playing of a rape scene.
Where does that fall?
Obviously "real" rape (i.e. truly non-consentual material on the grid) should be banned, and should be easily reportable: the victim sends an AR. NO OTHER ARs should be accepted about rape except from the victim, because if it's a 3rd party they won't know if it's consentual rape or not.

However, people can still find the idea offensive.

At what point is it "broad"? Do we need to poll all 6 million accounts? All 1-2 million active accounts?

Well that's where we have a problem.

As far as the real life law is concerned, whenever you do anything in SL, information sufficient to reconstruct a picture of the fact you're doing it is sent to everyone else in the sim - and you know that this happens. That means that by taking any action in SL, you're also producing and distributing media and are potentially liable for that.

And the law in the real world has to make tradeoffs in the way you describe, but it doesn't make them the same way you do. The real world argument would go that if you have an image that appears non-consensual, but in fact you have no idea whether it was consensual or not, then you can either a) ban it, in which case if it was actually non-consensual you have saved someone from being raped; or b) don't ban it, in which case if it was actually consensual you have avoided reducing someone's freedom of expression. Saving someone from being raped is clearly much better than avoiding a relatively small reduction in freedom of expression so the real world picks option a).

If this sounds too much, consider that the UK Criminal Justice Bill - which has not yet been passed due to the controversy it has caused, but which is still very much on the table - basically bans any image showing someone exhibiting signs of pain or severe discomfort during a sexual act, on the same grounds as above: unless the consensuality is actually shown in the image, the doubt means the image is banned. This would go right down to requiring BDSM couples to destroy photographs of themselves. (The reason why I mention this is that the section from the Linden guidelines about "violent and extreme material" could be taken verbatim from the draft Criminal Justice Bill, as could the complaint that this was vague and undefined and the response that if absolute guidelines were laid down then people would go right up to them).

Should the concept of "consent" even be a consideration? There is no such thing as non-consentual rape in Second Life. Nobody can remove your clothes, and nobody can animate your avatar without your consent. At best, a situation where some joker slaps on a newbie penis and does the pixel grind against your leg is really just harrassment. That is already reportable abuse.

So it boils down to "role playing of a rape scene". I will be perfectly candid here - if the broader community of Residents do not find that patently offensive, I have to question whether this is a community I really want to be a part of. Same can be said for depictions of beastiality, and a host of other "hard core" sexual situations, descriptions of which aren't appropriate for this forum.

What I'm struggling with, and what I think most others are, is the simple fact that prior to Daniel's blog, these types of "broadly offensive" activities were to be contained in enclosed spaces, on land marked as Mature. Post blog, these activities are not allowed in Second Life. I don't have a stake in that, if that is truly the direction they are going, so it's not a huge blow to me personally. I would rather, however, that we spend our efforts strengthening the community standards, and developing workable content segregation on the grid so that it accomodates those who desire to engage in it, as well as those of us who do not desire to see it. I really thought that was the direction we were taking here.

See the post after yours and before this one:



Even with the "images of supposed rape" how, in SL, is someone (not involved) able to prove to someone else "hey, this guy was raping her!" and that it's just not an image of consentual sex?

If there is nothing in the image that suggests that a rape is taking place, then it *is* an image of consensual sex. But that doesn't seem to be what was being talked about here. If there was no media being emitted anywhere - no chat, no sound, no visual data, no anything - that suggested that the act was rape, then how could they have been role-playing it?

What I'm referring to is the *depiction* of an act of rape, not the act itself. It's in a similar vein as the adult/child avatar sex scenario - it isn't the act itself, which does not involve a real child or adult, but a simulation of it, where the intent is clearly and unambiguously to display a depiction of the act.

And I have to question whether I wish to be a part of a community which regulates the imaginations and thought life of others, even if their imaginations take them to places I do not ever want to go. Roleplay is a form of story-telling, a play, an art. Some stories are unpleasant. Watching Jodie Foster in "The Accused" is not pleasant, but we participate in that story for the sake of the imagination, for the sake of understanding something we do not yet understand. It sure LOOKED non-consensual. She sure LOOKED to be in pain and struggling. There was no subtitle to remind us this was a story, a reenactment, a play. There was no subtitle reminding us these were actors. And less lofty art forms also highlight the curiosity and desire to understand, to feel, to imagine, such a situation, such as the romance novels you can pick up in most grocery stores. Most SL RP seems about like these novels, but some of it rises to another level. Yes, small audience. Maybe two people, maybe a few others, but it's still a kind of art, impromptu acting, impromptu fiction-writing, and the challenge is to be in that character at that moment, feeling and acting as he or she would feel and act.

No, these things shouldn't be on "pg" land, and LL would do well to enforce that part so that people who do not wish to be exposed to it don't have to be. But on private mature land, we're talking about consenting adults telling stories. And if it is illegal in your local jurisdiction to view even virtual depictions of such things, don't visit these sims. Rather than barring (is it barred or isn't it? we don't know!) certain activites altogether, LL should emphasize the need to get this stuff off pg land, if it's actually still there.

That would be any picture depicting sex. There is NO WAY to identify rape/rp-rape/pseudo-rape from non-rape. Not like you can with child-porn. It's a child or someone who looks like a child, there's NO question about that fact, it's there.

There is no similar feature to rape.

Let me try and be as clear as mud here.

I do not advocate regulating the imaginations and thought life of others. People are free to imagine and think whatever they wish.

However

I have every right to be offended by the sight of the woman who pranced around my PG furniture store, on a PG sim, buck naked, very detailed breasts and vaginal attachments on prominent display. I have every right to be offended by a publicly available profile displaying depictions of people parking their excretory orifices atop another's awaiting mouth and depositing bowel or bladder contents in said mouth. I have every right to be offended by a publicly available profile displaying depictions of horses and dogs engaging in sexual acts with humans. This is not story telling, or a play, or in the Miller sense, even art. It's just patently obscene.

And you may fancy the depiction of a rape scene as a form of story telling, a work of art, or a play, but any way you slice it, it is offensive to most reasonable persons. If the broader Second Life community did not agree that these things are offensive and obscene, I would be extremely surprised, and equally disappointed.

I am not the thought police. With very few exceptions, I don't give a rat's behind what floats others' boats. On the other hand, given the choices of Second Life either having the reputation of being a cesspool of pornography, scat, bestiality and rape, or it having the reputation of being disneyworld, I'll reluctantly choose the latter. No, it isn't ideal, but it's the lesser of the two evils. Maybe then, the friends I have tried to get into Second Life who've said "No thanks, I can get better porn elsewhere" will reconsider. I would still advocate for a happy medium, if one could be struck.

If it's a depiction of rape, and the "rape" component is not ambiguous, consent is irrelevant. It is a depiction of rape, period.

"I have every right to be offended by the sight of the woman who pranced around my PG furniture store, on a PG sim, buck naked, very detailed breasts and vaginal attachments on prominent display. I have every right to be offended by a publicly available profile displaying depictions of people parking their excretory orifices atop another's awaiting mouth and depositing bowel or bladder contents in said mouth. I have every right to be offended by a publicly available profile displaying depictions of horses and dogs engaging in sexual acts with humans. This is not story telling, or a play, or in the Miller sense, even art. It's just patently obscene. "

I agree with everything you've said there. Freedom of expression shouldn't mean forcing others to view things they do not want to view. The PG/Mature distinction needs to be enforced.

As for the rest, I guess we'll just disagree.

It's on PG land, it's AR-able.



You're missing my point.

ANY PICTURE OF SEX COULD BE A PICTURE OF RAPE. There's no way to tell. If you can separate pictures of sex from picture of rape on any visual basis, please tell, as then we can actually ban virtual rape instead of all sex--which residents won't stand for.