Have you been to the Blog lately?

hmm. Why not keep porn out of this, as it has nothing to do with the topic. It's so easy to blame porn for everything, when porn actually seldom is to blame. People are to blame. You don't blame matches for a fire that ends with dead people - no, you blame the one(s) who used the matches. Don't blame porn for pedophelia. And by the way, there is no such thing as child porn - cuz it isn't porn, it's abuse.

Quite definitely. Would be nice if SL wasn't one of them. And usually as soon as a biz can, it goes "legit" and hides the skeletons.

I've been playing violent video games and watching violent media since I was a child, yet I am a pacifist. I am not the exception to the rule. When you start restricting people's freedoms based on the potential for bad things to happen as a result, where do you stop? The way societies determine what's acceptable and what isn't has absolutely nothing to do with the actual harm they cause. For example, compare how many people die as the result of terrorism every year in the world to how many die of the flu, yet we see terrorism as the greatest threat to mankind and the flu as something we barely consider or worry about despite the fact that it results in far more death. It's not
rational.

Chip, you are mixing up a subjective experience (yours) with an objective one (brain scans, brainwashing research); as well you are using two different scales to measure: personal and societal. The way societies decide these things has a lot do to with who is in power, their vision of where society should go and how many people they can get to support that. On a personal level, I believe in the pursuit of happiness myself. Apples and oranges here.


That must be why Lolita is considered one of the great classics of 20th century literature, because the author covered up for a lack of story with sex? Shall we make laws based on such ridiculous generalizations? And yes, I am saying that individual rights where no harm is being done to others should always outweigh societal taboos. The United States has the highest percentage of it's population in prison of any country on Earth, and that has everything to do with our drug laws. Those laws are based not on rational statistical assessments of risk but on religious notions of vice and fear mongering for political gain. Marijuana is a more benign substance than aspirin. It's impossible to die as a direct result of pot. Aspirins kills hundreds of people every year. We have thousands of people in prison, their lives ruined, their families torn apart, as a direct result of those laws. If you compare the harm done by the laws to the activities they prohibit, the laws are by far more harmful. Again this is the direct result of reactionary thinking, not rational assessment.

Interestingly enough the conference I mentioned was attended by the rep from the Compassion Club so on that we are on the same page there absolutely (and its a daily fight against some powerful opposition with some dire results but we are making headway).

As far as Lolita goes, Fight Club was a great movie, Pulp Fiction, Little Big Man...the use of sex and violence to cover up lack of story or to be exploitive is what I meant. Thanks for letting me clear that up. Its a misuse of those human attributes to make them mean something else.

A certain percentage of the populace will always be incapable of self-regulating their behavior. So it has always been. So it will ever be - no matter what laws and prohibitions are enacted. Is the loss of freedom to everyone else ultimately worth it when those behaviors will continue unabated regardless? I don't believe so, and I say that as someone with absolutely zero interest in ageplay. It's a matter of principle. What two consenting adults do with each other is no one's business but their own unless it directly harms a third party, not just offends a third party.

Whether ageplay is legal or not is irrelevant.
Whether ageplay is right or wrong is irrelevant.

Perception is what matters, not facts. With the exception of a few countries where governments look the other way, sexual activity involving children invokes the same horror and outrage that incest does. It is a biological trigger that is built into most normal humans.

If SL becomes known internationally and in the US as a place where pedophiles can come to act out their fantasies, it is dead. It took years for SL to earn acceptance among the mainstream population. If SL becomes tagged - rightly or wrongly - as Pervert Life, then back underground we go and it is goodbye to all the corporate money. It is also goodbye to growth, goodbye to telling your friends and family you are an SL resident and goodbye to any hope of SL ever fulfilling its promise.

Philip's libertarian leanings have been hard to take in some areas, but this is the one area where there can be no compromise. Ageplay must be banned for the good of SL. Age verification will not solve the public relations problem of SL being associated with child sex because the visceral reaction is so strong. LL can crow "but they are verified over 18, it's perfectly legal" all they want and it will NOT change media or public perception.

Okay - youd like Porn removed from Second Life - Got it

Well that solves the Age verification part of this thread.



But -
If SL takes the Adult parts out of Second Life - there will be a lot less people here - theyd be HANDING over much of their customer base to whatever competition comes along.

Including the creative ones who enjoy SL Sex. And related Materials.

Evidently you hit one of her sore spots.

Pornography isnt the root of all sexual topic related evil.

And yes it did effect the growth of the Internet, and not for the worse.

People dont like how much Porn is on the Internet, thats true - but to think it would be as big as it is now without the money from the porn portion is a bit naive.

Porn didnt corrupt the internet either - I have read recently that Porn Sites in relation to the size of the internet are down. SO as a percentage the non Adult parts of the internet are becoeming less "tarnished"


The Reason Pornography is part of every media type is a lot simpler - Sex is a part of life. And sex sells. And Pornography is the adult edge of that.

if you have "fantasies" over having sex with children and we arnt talking grown men in nappies here we are talking the av depiction of a child then you have SERIOUS problems becasue wether you admit it or not you get sexual kicks from the thought of having sex with children and that IS by definition a PAEDOPHILE.

What makes you think everyone wants SL to be mainstream, full of corporate money and growth so bad the grid chokes up on it?

If bad press like this forces SL back into an entertainment niche then I personally couldn't be happier. I'm on second life to relax, have fun, meet people and not to live the dream of a 3D net which is doomed to fail miserably.

I'll suffer the stigma of being in "Pervert Life" if it means the grid contracts back to the way it was before the open sign-ups. The current mess is a direct result of SL becoming mainstream and LL becoming increasingly less involved, expect more of the same the wider known it gets.

No Brenda, that is not what I want. I want porn to not occupy central place in a discussion on human freedom or how SL is seen.

And Age Verification is a direct result of porn occupying that position.

And creative people can still create here and enjoy porn all they want however they want to get it.

Yes, you are talking about the personal level here and I agree. But on the larger social level, should those people dominate the social agenda (even if they are in power?) No.

I guess I see porn as less about sex then greedy people exploiting isolation and a normal human appetite.

Another possibility: SL becomes known more for its creativity and resulting products, art and new ideas then the activities of a minority of people who treat it like a form of porn. The porn addicts find another source and SL rises from the ashes as a creative platform.

Wow, this leaves me speechless. How brainwashed are you? Talk about a generalization.

Moral laws evolve, not all people in a country think the same way. Not all European countries think the same way, not all Arab countries think the same way. Jeesz!

I agree, but the reason they do has very little to do with the people who engage in those activities and everything to do with the press and the politicians that sensationalize them for financial and political gain. They're far more responsible for how SL is seen by the general public than the people whose activities are being sensationalized. Reading the articles on this story and the statements by those going after these people would lead one to believe that this kind of activity is mainstream in SL when clearly that's not the case, but portraying it objectively and in context with the bigger picture doesn't sell as many papers or score as many points with conservative voters.

It was a little over a year ago that LL took part in bringing the Suicide Girls (a pornographic website) into SL. LL helped them with setting up their land, their group, provided with their own last name, and even gave assistance in cross-marketing between Second Life and the Suicide Girls.

What is your back up for this? The original web was developed for moving info between military and then universities. The military is probably the number one source of innovation with the research being next. There have always been people willing to exploit other people to make money. Porn usually degrades every venue it touches: the web, painting, TV, magazines, video games...the values drop like a stone. Just like porn isn't about sex, porn isn't about the medium either.

Something I've just realized is that if Second Life were ever to become big in Arab countries, their insane moral laws would kill SL.

My statement my be a generalization, and indeed Syria and Lebanon are somewhat more moderate.

Therefore I will modify my statement. If SL were to become big in Saudi Arabia, that would kill it.

Moral laws do evolve, but very slowly. I do not see Wahabi'ism fading away in Saudi Arabia any time soon. Do you?

Strictly speaking, you're confusing the World Wide Web and the Internet. The Internet, born as the ARPAnet, was indeed about networking computers over distances, for which the movement of information quickly became the primary use. The WWW was invented years later, generally attributed to Tim Berners-Lee. This changed the entire paradigm for accessing data, facilitated the growth in multimedia, and gave birth to Internet Commerce.

But the goings were real rough for the commerce companies, particularly those doing infrastructure instead of retailing. People were reluctant to give out their credit card numbers, PayPal provided a variant, and the companies trying to build the commerce infrastructure struggled. MasterCard and Visa weren't about to invest in a system that no one was using, and without their support, trust in the system never be adequate for common folks.

Now I don't have any numbers, so I can't prove it one way or another. It's clear that there had to be some consumers using credit cards on the net in order for the infrastructure to evolve. And it's certainly plausible that for a long time, the percentage of those consumers accessing adult sites was far greater than their percentage in the general economy.

Funny, I wouldn't consider Suicide Girls pornographic. I think of them as pretty thought provoking. Did you do that to make money and why them and not something else?

Uhm..I think you meant that for Colette......

Now I have to tell you apart...geez...I'm exhausted as it is and can't see straight!

I had nothing to do with it. I'm simply pointing out that Linden Lab does have a history of assisting and bringing pornographic site(s) into Second Life. This runs contrary to your desire that SL be a reflection of the resident population's creative energies as not only is the engineer (Linden Lab) asleep at the switch but they seem to have only one hand on their keyboard.