Should LL ban Escorts?

Which was, in fact, essentially what got banned.

RL, yes there is. Slavery was illegal last I check. (Note: Nothing agsint Gorean in that statement, only RL slavery.)



RL, yes there is. Pediphile is agsinst the law. Playing a child is NOT ageplay.



kk, that one is true, but I don't think there's any call at all for a law or a SL ban *grins*



33% odds? Man, you bet the long shot horse ^.~

~Jessy

Sex is pretty much the only mass appeal SL ever had. Geeks joined to have a look at the possible future of the internet - and to have sex. Artists joined to express their creativity in SL, and to have sex. Roleplayers left UO, SWG and EQ, glad about a virtual world without glued-on underwear. People came from IRC, yahoo, Sociolotron and other online environments heavily used for cybersex, in order to combine sex with 3D graphics.

If sex takes a hit, SL takes a hit. Quite a big one. The online gaming industry has finally realized the need for adult MMOGs, and a variety of new adult games is being developed or already released (Red Light Center, Heavenly Bodies, 3 Feel, Pangaea, Underworld MMO, Naughty America and Sociolotron 2, to name a few). If SL gets too restrictive, there will be enough alternatives for the mainstream SL user without creative ambitions (i.e., the majority).

It should be clear by now that SL isn't the next big thing or the coming 3D internet. The internet breeds diversity, lots of online communities for a certain purpose instead of only one virtual environment. Look at SL's user numbers and compare them to the next best run off the mill online world. Currently online in SL: 36,000. Currently in Gaia Online (): 66,500. Tells you all you need to know about SL's appeal as a global platform.

Corporations build up an internet presence in every place with sufficient users. Millions of Us is expanding from SL to Gaia Online, and IBM builds up a presence in There and Entropia Universe (according to the LA Times, . The 3D internet is wherever large amounts of people hang out, and SL was never on place 1. The adult entertainment section is the only edge of SL. It's all that draws noteworthy amounts of users. No sex = no users = no corporate investors.

may as well give up - there seems to be a percentage of the population that will *never* understand that distinction.

The form of slavery we have in RL is perfectly legal in RL: a consensual D/s partnership where one person submits to the other out of free will and has fun being treated as a slave. There's no law against BDSM or D/s relationships in the USA or Western Europe.



Wikipedia says: "Ageplay is a form of regressive roleplay in which a physical adult takes on the role of a child."

When an adult person wears diapers and pretends to be an infant, or wears a schoolgirl costume to excite her hubby, that's ageplay. It's perfectly legal in RL too. The ageplay that happens in SL is nothing else: adults pretending to be children or teenagers. Only sexual agelay was banned by LL, while it's not against any RL law (since adults usually don't look child-like in RL, even in diapers).



Gothic Lolita clothing can't be advertised anymore. It's banned from both classified ads and parcel descriptions, because it has the bad word Lolita in it.

Actually, it came very close to being illegal (under the "pandering provision" - encouraging someone to suspend disbelief that a sexual image features a child) but that's the part of the law that was defeated in court by Congress.

However, the problem is that in SL, as well as dressing up in a costume that would traditionally be associated with a child, an avatar can adopt a childlike body as well, which potentially creates child pornography. (And if I remember it right, the law says it affects images that "appear to be children", so it doesn't matter if the person actually _is_ an adult or not - if they look enough like a child it's still illegal. Presumably this was to catch the pictures of childlike Japanese adults that, because of the cultural differences in height/appearance, can be used as child surrogates by US paedophiles..)



This is a brilliant observation.. unfortunately, in selling SL to corporations, LL forgot that (for example) Microsoft could probably create a build in WoW if they wanted. They have the millions to pay and they have professionals capable of using unrefined development tools. The free creation of SL isn't a bonus feature to them.



I'm not sure about that. The thing is, sex based text-only games have been around for a while. The most infamous one is probably Shangrila (no, I won't post a link.. you don't want to know about some of the things happening there.. eugh), but it's all over talkers. But on talkers, people just meet up and use /me to describe whatever scene they wish.. and on Shangrila they apparantly do the same, even though that has a huge detailed described environment for them to move about in. They do the same on SL too, of course. Assuming that's representative, the cybersex market doesn't lack creativity, but it wants what SL can't deliver, namely, INSTANT creativity. I've seen people from these games come to SL and they're baffled that say, if they're dancing for someone, they can't just do a move they've only just thought of without having to teleport away from the stage to visit an animation store.

That's true. The criminal offense is creating and publishing 3D images of a child involved in a sexual act. I just wanted to point out that RL ageplay is legal and simply cosplay, not related to pedophilia like Jessica suggested.



If they pay enough, Blizzard will implement their ads for them. Blizzard and NCSoft have already run online polls to find out how the player base feels about ingame advertisements.



True, when it comes to roleplay scenarios people are very creative I've seen that in UO and SWG, where cybersex wasn't supported by the game engine, but the users nonetheless managed to play out their fantasies. I meant that the artistic creativity that SL allows, like building and scripting their own content, doesn't appeal to the sex-interested mainstream SL user and won't keep them from leaving SL for the next best adult MMORPG.

Exactly. In fact I think it'll go further - it'll keep _any_ adult MMORPG from growing very big.

I would point out I used the term "ageplay" in accordance with the LL use of it in their policy. I assumed anyone reading would be able to make the correlation since that was what the disccusion was about.

"Ageplay" as defined by the ban policy is that wich involves avatars representing children in sexual instances.

Playing a child, while technically "ageplay" is not within this context.

~Jessy

*reads the first post* Why does everyone want everything f*cking banned that they don't agree with? If you don't like it don't look at it. Simple as that.

hhmm if your meaning my post I never said I wanted it banned just that I think they will ban it

To be honest, I do not care either way. I have never been able to understand how a cartoon on the screen gets somebody off anyway but to each their own!

In the uk we live with a socialist nanny state government who during their reign have looked to ban many things they consider bad for the masses,they have hit advertising,smoking and as far out as fox hunting the list goes on with many other potential bans going through parliament now including bdsm and related sexual practices.
So i come to SL as a newcommer and instead of the freedom i expected i see LL banning certain online activities and talk of others that may be hit in the future,in my opinion if my SL is going to have similar restrictions to my RL i'd just as well stay in reality,besides i can bet legally online in the uk...at the moment anyway

LL gave a definition of it in their policy? Behave, since when have they given a proper definition and you used an RL example in your definition so neener neener to you

off-topic
*locks*

Naming Names (of a group, not an official group but a group none the less).