confiscation or forced sale of SL land?

I am worried that if I choose NOT to go for age verification under the current plan, the house and land I own on adult territory will be confiscated from me (or I shall be barred access to it high comes to the same thing), and hence forced to sell in market conditions where they would be a slump in prices because other people would have to do the same. Actually even selling might be difficult if I cant get access. Can we have reasurance that we will go on being allowed access to our own egally-bought property?

Why would you opt out of age verification, then flag your own land "adult?"

cHEX I think Hal is like me - he refuses to go through this age verification ordeal. Some of us value our privacy and regard releasing such documentation as very dangerous. Some countries even frown upon offering privat ecoompanies this type of nformation. Hal wants an adult house but does not want to be verfifed. He is a private "citizen" of sl and does not own a nightclub or other commercial place which may attract kids.

Hal, your partners would like clarification on what you mean?

Is that you worry that a region might be rated as Mature, on which you have property, and you, without age verification, won 't be able to access it?

Please get word to your partners.

If I understood right you could live in and own a mature region yet not go through age verfication but you couldn't go to areas marked adult or have adult themed land.
This is manatory if you want to run a house of prostution or go to one, I don't think its manatory yet. Or at least I hope not. I won't share my social security number or even part of one until I am convinced I have to do so and my information truly will be anonymous.
Personally myself I am a Adult, I have no interested in rated X theme lands or materials yet I own 1/4 of sim in Mature zone, and for privacy reasons I have no interest in giving any more information then I have already provided. Nor do I have clue even how they implement this for those of us who don't want to participate in those adult related places i.e escort. sexual or other adult related business or residences.

FD Spark, I'm talking about owning private home, PRIVATE, which have art in them which might be considered Adult! Not running any kind of business!

/shrug

It it were me, I would simply not verify my age, but I also would not flag my parcel of land "adult." The kinds of activities you describe seem appropriate for land in a mature sim that is flagged "mature" rather than "adult."

As long as you do not flag it as "Adult" you'll be ok.

Sunspot Pixie, I don't know if private residents will have a choice. See this quote from the Linden blog:- " What if Adult Content is not Flagged
We require that adult content be flagged. If Residents and businesses attempt to violate this rule, we expect that such behavior will be reported by the community. Although we want to limit age-verification processes to adult content and Teen Second Life, in the event we encounter abuses of self-regulation, Second Life may have to require age-verification throughout the world. We hope that does not happen."

Question has to be, "Does this apply to Private Citizens on their own Private Property?" Perhaps there should be age verification for visitors to private property but not owners. Owners be allowed to make exceptions for unverified visitors at their own risk!

thanks Chex and Sunspot! I shall bear all that in mind.

I guess that's open for interpretation, and we're going to need more clarification on just what exactly constitutes "Adult". However, I am not ready to imagine LL alienating 50% or more of its consumer base by going all Gestapo on this. I think the real goal here is to for LL to minimise their culpabilty when someone decides to sue, and they will. Whether or not that is an adequate firewall for them remains to be seen.

In other words, I highly doubt you'll get in trouble if you have some sex pose balls around the place, but if you're selling adult products or services, or having orgies, that will be a different story.

I take it to mean content, period. If you own a parcel of land, and choose to place "Adult" content, or engage in "Adult" behavior on that land, you are required to flag your parcel as "Mature". I don't think there will be any consideration given to private citizens on private property. As cHex and others have mentioned, on your parcel you have a "Mature" flag that you can simply leave un-checked. As long as your parcel is not flagged "Mature", you won't need to worry about accessing it without being verified. The Mature setting on the region your parcel is located in isn't what matters. It's the Mature flag on the parcel itself which determines access. You access this setting by right clicking somewhere on your land (terrain), choosing "about land", and going to the Options tab. There will be a check box for "Mature Content".

Zaphod,

As I understand it, the Adult category IS NOT the same as Mature. It is a third category for explicit sexual material and extreme violence.

So, an individual can be unverified and live on a Mature parcel as long as that parcel is not additionally flagged as Adult.

But the issue of content is really quite confusing. Remember that there really isn't very much privacy in SL due to cam controls and the easy way that residents can enter other properties, regardless of whether or not they are a business.

Which does make me wonder if two residents engage in cyber sex, even in a skybox on their property, will LL expect that land to be marked Adult? From everything I've read, the implication is that yes, you will have to flag adult content of any type. And if you're renting, your landlord will be held responsible for your actions as well.

This is probably true. Based on the use of "Adult" and the description of Explict sex and excessive violence.

-however-

They use the Word "Adult" But they also dont differentiate it from the word "Mature" anywhere.

The flag in your land setting is "Mature" - and they never once mention a new flag. So unless there is clarification - Zaphod could be right.

Its just as possible with availble information.

Robin Linden does, but it's a bit buried in the blog comments:

Here is what I get from all this...

1. There will be a third option called "adult" which you can set your land to, currently only two options exist, "PG" and "Mature"... and those will continue to work as they always have with no rule changes.

2. The only reason to set your land to "adult" will be if you run a PUBLIC sex or extreme violence area. I can't imagine that anybody can make you set to "adult" if you decide to walk around nude and have sex inside your own house or have pornagraphic images in your house. Think people! You can do whatever you want in the privacy of your own home, but if it's a public thing, then yes, it becomes requied that you set to "adult". It will be the same as in RL (in RL america that is). And if you don't set to "adult", that's fine... you can probably get away with it until some prudish citizen AR's you.

Seems to me that people are reading WAY TO MUCH into this topic and just making up their own crazy and unreasonable assumptions and worries.

read it again where does she actually mention that the adult flag is different than the mature flag?

At least in the US Mature and Adult are often used interchangably to describe this sort of material ..


I presume also there will be a third catagory - however that is NOT the only way to read what was said in the Blog. If the flags were different then why not Bring that up?

Some of this could be coming from when they screwed up mature in search.
As it stands now, you can have a mature sim, with a PG (non mature) parcel on it, which may or may not be next to harcore porn. Flagging the harder stuff will make no difference without drastic changes in the whole game (cameras for starters).

They should just go back to having PG parcels in PG land, and mature parcels in mature land. That will eliminate the chances of someone accidently wondering onto mature land while following what is flagged as PG in search. The mature setting is now back to sticking with your preference in search, so mature businesses shouldn't lose any money from it.

It should be obvious that "adult" will be different from "mature". Since a large portion of the land is currently labeled "mature" and has absolutely no x-rated content. They can't suddenly expect for everyone that happened to buy "mature" land instead of "pg" to become x-rated. That just makes no sense.

Read the quote that Walker posted again..

"the rule applies to parcels flagged as containing adult content. These parcels are in mature regions (no adult content can be present in PG regions)."

Notice "These parcels are IN mature regions"... it doesn't say "These parcels are THE mature regions".

Yes but you also have to take in the acoount there is a MATURE flag already availble to you in Mature regions.

A Checkbox - remarkably similiar in function to what they describe.

It can be enabled or disabled.

So no, not "obvious"

I think you're right. There's a bit of interchanging the words "Mature" and "Adult". I think they mean the same thing. I default to the position I took in the infamous "clarification" thread - that the choice of words on Linden Lab's part is poor at best. If this is an adult only grid, then using the word "adult" or "mature" or "PG" to describe content sortof muddies the waters. I think a better word to use is "Explicit". That gets more to the heart of content which is of a sexual or violent nature. Replace "PG" with "General".

It's what RIAA uses to describe material not suitable for children.

I think it would be wise to add additional choices which would require age verification. "Gaming" for instance, should all that ever be sorted out. Replace the checkbox with a combo box holding all the available choices.

Directly from the blog...
"#16 As a parcel/estate owner, how do I flag content as ‘adult’?
Land-owners will find a check box in their land management tools that they will be able to check if they have adult content on their land.
#17 What is defined as “Adult Content”
We trust that common sense will prevail. As a general rule, “Adult Content” is any content that is explicitly sexual or excessively violent in nature."

#16 says it will be a different (hence new) checkbox.
#17 says "adult" means explicit sex or excessive violence.

Seems "obvious" to me.

EDIT: Reading the latest blog entry about this, it seems I am right.

Since Im lazy im going to copy and paste something I wrote last night -


This is one interpretation of what is said - It assumes that "ADULT" is different than "mature"
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On the other hand ...

In the blog post they mention an Adult flag and Mature land they never use Adult and Mature to describe the flag(s). This is common when describing things to use two synonyms to avoid confusion due to illiteration.

Thus she could very well have meant the Mature flag but used the word adult to clear up confusion with the Mature Land catagory.

Daniel of course was the first to use the wording this way Robin is just following what he did. Since hes also the one who said the poorly chosen,

I have to wonder if the Adult flag and Mature flag are simply the same flag we already have.

At no point do they say we will be getting a new flag. Which would be an obvious thing to mention.