Age verification and store rental

A lot of SL stores are rented and are part of large malls or shopping complexes. I'm wondering about how adult themed stores will operate in this siutation.

As a store keeper with adult products, I would be expected to flag the land as being adult. I can't do this however if I'm only renting the vendor space. Even if I could pursuade the owner of the mall to set the adult flag for me on the land, we would then have the situation that we would have adult and non adult stores opening up onto common walkways - from which non-verified players could look into the open fronted stores. Also, shopping malls are often on multiple levels and setting land as adult would require all the stores vertically above each other to all be adult. In practice this wouldn't be practical, as owners of the malls would need to fragment their land into small pieces to allow it to be set to adult or non adult in this way.

The answer for the mall owner would probably be to either: move all the stores containing adult products into one part of the mall and to make sure people outside couldn't see in; not allow stores with adult products at all; make the whole mall adult to avoid any problems with them being responsible for their store keeper's products.

The first two solutions may then end up with store keeprs with adult products having to move to new parts of a mall or to a completly new location. This may not thought too be much of a worry, because of the short term nature of the contract between the owner and the person renting. However, store keepers rely on having stores in the same locations, as their customers will often teleport directly to a landmark that they hold. Store keepers getting larger stores often keep their old stores as well because of this.

If owners of malls mark the whole mall as being adult, then store keepers with non-adult products will need to be age verfied themselves to access their own store - and they will only be able to sell to age verified customers.

It sounds like their could be many knock-on problems of age verification that have not been that well considered yet.

Allex.

That is vary much a problem. I’m in the same boat as you just in a different seat. I sell 100% non adult collars in just about every furry mall I’ve managed to find. Perfectly harmless items in and of themselves. But in every single one of those malls you will also find adult objects. It is leaving me with the conclusion that I will end up having to be verified (an idea I despise more then anything due to the SSN and the use of a 3rd no one has ever heard of) or risk not getting to any of my rented stalls. Great prospect for a "voluntary" program.

I expect it is the case where a mall that allows adult content to be sold there will have to be flagged as adult. It's not great. In my store I have a PG floor and an adult floor, now if I want to allow access to the PG stuff I'll have to move my store onto two different plots of land, which isn't very nice for a tower building =(

I guess I'll have to try and get a 512 sq m plot (I think I have that left in my land allowance) and have a teleporter system of some description, but it's not exactly ideal.

The way I read what Robin wrote on the blog, that won't work. If one parcel in a Mature region is flagged adult, then the whole region is closed to anyone not verified as an adult by that third party.



In other words, I own land in a Mature region. If one person in that region flags their land as Adult, then I can no longer enter my own land. If the mall owner allows one shop to be flagged Adult, then the whole region would be for verified residents only. The region, not just some parts of it. That's what Robin is saying here.

There are going to be a lot of people who are going to be banned from their own land by this. They bought and paid for their land, but will not be able to access it if they do not want to be verified.

We are, by all intents, screwed. This is going to get ugly. If LL thinks the Forum is hot now, wait until thousands of folks can't get onto their land because a neighbor flagged their land Adult one day.

Only way to get back into your land will be to buy out the a**-hat that puts up the flag, cuz you know Lindens are going to say "each lot owners discretion"...Ima starting to save my Lindens now...deciding later if i use them to put up Adult flags or buy them out! THIS is what happens when you let software designers run with the bit in their teeth, building a system without any quality feedback from the clients (and NOT like we havent tried to be heard!)!!

That better be a bloody typo and he meant "parcel" or this is just going to become an even bigger disaster. All they have to do is block entry to adult-flagged parcels (just like being banned) and tell the simulator not to stream any of the content if the user in question is not age-verified. It isn't difficult to code AT ALL and can't be circumvented by a custom client since there's no data being received that you can break into. Besides that, it's possible to see into regions from outside, what stops someone going to an adjacent sim and looking in anyway?

I wonder how adult flagged parcels of land will appear if you aren't verified. I guess they could be surrounded by 'no entry' lines in the way that parcels of land are when people block access to everyone except themselves or a group.

You would even get this if someone with a skybox flagged their land as adult.

I have a feeling this would look rather untidy.

Flying around would be pretty much impossible, I guess - which is a shame because I like flying around sometimes.

Allex.

I used to enjoy flying around sometimes too (once went for an 8km flight because the sim I wanted to TP to was down so I flew there to give it time to come back), and the ideal solution would be to have something like:

1. User hits ban-line
   
2. Server halts user at edge of ban-lines
   
3. Client continues moving the user through the parcel (ignoring obstructions) until:
   1. User attempts to change direction, client is placed back to where the server left them
      
   2. User reaches other side of parcel, server updates their position to this point
      

Having this apply for all ban/access restricted plots you can't otherwise get onto (ban especially) would be AWESOME, the content of these plots wouldn't stream to your client, and if you hit them you'd just go straight through as though they weren't there (because to you they simply aren't). Ban-lines wouldn't even need to appear, maybe a more subtle marker so you know there is stuff there and you just can't see it, or an "AUTOPILOT" alert indicating that you are being moved automatically through the plot.

But people have been asking for such things for a LONG time to no avail, even though they don't see that hard to do, and would greatly improve flying for people.

Yeah, and I think I'm going to go over to my mainland house and pick up a couple of items that I really like a lot, before I'm banned from my own land.

Crap, what a screwball idea this whole thing is. Someone must have put LSD in the koolaid at LL one day.

Haravikk Mistral, I hear what you are saying, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. Great idea, perhaps, but I doubt LL will do the work.

It ought not to be necessary to flag any store as "adult" unless you are actually selling pornography there. Are minors to be protected from seeing prim genitals? They have much more realistic genitals themselves in RL - do they have to be forced to wear blindfolds whenever they take a shower?

My guess is that a lot of mall owners will flag the whole place as adult, to avoid being responsible for what individual store keepers sell - or any arguments over what is or isn't an adult product.

The following quote is from the initial announcement about age verification. I believe this to be worrying for anyone owning land and renting it out to others:



It should be possible for owners of malls (who don't flag their land as adult) to make regular tours of their property to make sure no one is selling any adult items. I can foresee lots of arguments between property owners and people renting vendor space about what is or isn't an adult item though.

I wonder what happens if you rent out apartments in a large apartments block. Do you have to make sure that none of the people renting your apartments have any sexually explicit items or pictures in their apartments - or make sure they don't exhibit any sexually explicit behaviour? The answer to this, must be NO - residential apartments are private spaces, and the person renting surely has a right to their privacy.

The cautious apartment block owner might decide to flag the whole block as adult just to cover their own back.

Allex

Surely it has to be the whole sim flagged? If you flag a parcel then what's to stop someone standing next door in an un-flagged parcel and using the camera to look in? lol

If we need to flag complete sims, what I agree would be the only sensible way to achieve what LL have in mind, then all adult content needs to be banned from the mainland. On the mainland, even if you flag a complete sim, people can still cam in from adjoining sims and view about 1/4 of the content.

Since LL will only require single parcels to be flagged, the whole idea makes no sense at all.

This is quite impossible and absurd. How is it even imaginable that a landowner can prevent improper behavior on their land taking place in their absence, other than by banning everyone? It just shows how little this has been thought through.

I predict that all Mature sims will effectively be forced to be rated Adult, and that anyone who refuses to verify had better plan on moving to PG sims.

LL will also need to seriously consider re-zoning the mainland so all the PG sims are in one continent, seperated by at least three sims of open water from anything else, while the rest of the mainland is rated as Mature/adult. Otherwise, all the PG sims that are adjacent to Mature sims will instantly be in violation, because someone can stand on the PG side of the line and view/buy porn from there...

Make a "Family Friendly" continent, or better yet an entirely seperate G-rated grid, for those who won't verify, or who are admittedly under age.

That wouldn't be necessary IF "adult" content was defined unambiguously, which currently it is not. I can see that a lot of people are running scared and thinking they'll have to flag as adult things that anyone can see in the RL high street. The "adult" flag is meant to indicate pornography, not clothing vendors.

These threads are started in good faith, by people with good intentions, and with good ideas.

Out of this comes alot of good discussion, which is the core of any vital community, whether it be real or virtual.

Ironically, one person using epithets such as "absurd" to characterize others' point of view does nothing to contribute to the value of the conversation or to their own strength in debate, actually quite the opposite. If the goal is to devalue the interaction, that is acheived.

Unfortunately, the unrecognized tragic side-effect is that moderators lock the thread once it becomes obvious that trolling is poisoning the original intent, then the conversation is stopped, and any remote chance of any Linden ever having the time to read a good, fruitful conversation is completely squashed by the Locked-for-Trolling tag.

Sad, isn't it? A week of fruitful conversation being killed by a few people preferring to attack the messengers as opposed to taking the time to intellectually engage the issue(s) being discussed...very sad!

well i would have 2 point of view on this honnestly.

1) the user view :

well it is annoying when you are going into mature content wihtyour partener to have a kid come and start to mess with you with his immature playing forcing you to leave so age verification woudl have the great deal to stop all those player to mess your SL

2) the buisness girl view :

well i am doing slave clothing and slave animations as well as colalr and jewellry. there is no sex content in it. just well i kneel in a way i stand in another that is all.
yet it is not something i would put in the game for kids and it is still not an adult content somehow. hwo do i set my shops?
i am renting stalls in different areas with sometimes adult content ( BDSM, Gorean sims ...)
what if the owner decide to set the land on adult flag?
i woudl loose the income fo all the customers who would maybe buy just a silks and are non adult registred. not really cool when you just started to put your stuff out after a break of one or 2 monthes due to different issues.


as far as i saw the adult flag seems to be on vonlunteer setting. i doubt a mall owner woudl set his mall on adult flag as he woudl know he will probably loose some rental and there fore some incomes.... land owner woudl probably set adult flags only on the RP sims or sex club.
and as far as i undestood it is a parcel setting the owner can select in about land
"set adult flag" to block access to non verified account.

I think she clarified this yesterday: the Adult flag is per-parcel. One adult parcel on a sim will not make the whole sim adult.

Meade,

Do you have a link to that clarification?

Thanks!

From http://forums.secondcitizen.com/showthread.php?t=12788&page=2


edit: She did defer to Daniel on the private island issue, though. At her office last week, Daniel wouldn't say more than that he hadn't tested the adult per-parcel settings on islands. I think he was pushed a bit on this but would only say that it wasn't tested yet. From talking to other Lindens, I've gotten the impression that they want it to work like mainland - dunno if Daniel wasn't understanding the question or if he was avoiding commiting until he knew it would work.

edit edit: transcript from last weeks gathering at Robin's office

In Sidebar, it just seems like Linden corporate cannot fall over itself fast enough to find new venues in which to step on themselves in painful ways...

Such a simple concept from a corporate management standpoint...DO NOT PUBLICLY DISCUSS POLICY CHANGES WITH THE CLIENT BASE OR THE SHAREHOLDERS UNTIL YOU KNOW WHAT THE POLICY WILL BE, AND HOW IT WILL BE IMPLEMENTED!

Is there anyone out there listening? Every bit of the PR damage taken is the result of lack of policy, lack of implementation and lack of cohesiveness...what will it take before the Linden power-base begins to understand that their first responsibility to themselves is to stop REacting, withdraw back behind the bulwarks, stop these half-hearted suicide charges, always directed at the wrong target, on the wrong battlefield and wrong day, and start doing some corporate policy ENacting?

As a private estate lease-holder, I am very very very concerned now, where I was only morally and ethically concerned about principles, and very concerned about land access before...