Adult Content Blog Discussion

Don't think it will be changing. Cyn said at the last BB meeting for definitions

http://www.slapt.me/wiki/index.php/Second_Adult_Definitions_meeting



They really don't seem to care about it

Aristotle is the Industry leader in this sort of thing, I don't think IDV will ever come out of Beta either. If LL really wanted it to work, it would have by now.

I don't think LL give a crap whether or not verified adults are actually over 18 or whatever. There's no fool proof method and this gets you pretty close so it's good enough.

Since the reason I come to SL is to build parks, gardens, beaches, and invite people onto them, and all my land is PG, I suppose this marks the beginning of the end of my Second Life.

I used to have quite a lot of Mature land, but I wasn't using it for a year and finally abandoned it. I am still involved in a whole sim that is PG though, which is parks and art galleries and such. I suppose we'll have to close that down now.

Uh, how does this affect your ability to build parks and invite people onto them?

According to information earlier in this thread, those things will no longer be allowed on PG land. They can be on Mature land, since I am not promoting "adult activities or content", but not on PG.

Actually there is one fun thing I used to do at Halloween: put out an "UnLucky Chair", which gives prizes that are related to the (primology, scripting, etc.) free classes we teach on the sim. Since the chair cuts your head off or electrocutes you when you sit on it, in addition to giving you a prize, that joke would make it banned "adult content" now. So much for "scary" Halloween jokes in SL.

I also am unable to control whether people might make references to sex or alcohol while visiting the park, or whether I might make some other statement that a child might hear and get upset. Not clear to me what the extent of the censorship is on PG regarding that sort of thing.



I've been here since fall of 2006, and it appears that I'll be forced out by fall of 2009 to make way for all-new customers, who from all appearances will be young children or something. Not being into SL sex or whatever, I have no interest in moving to Ursula or whatever it's called now. I am not age verified. (PIOF/U doesn't work; I was banlined from a parcel the other day.) Certainly no interest in uprooting and buying all new land. I was just here to teach classes, make nice things, go to live music venues, sightsee and chat. Apparently even those activities are outside the new scope of PG.

No information earlier in this thread indicates that parks are not allowed on PG land. References to sex and alcohol and drugs are banned but if /people/ make references to those things then those /people/ are responsible not the owner of some arbitrary parcel they are standing on.

Your mutilating chair would not be allowed on PG land in much the same way it wouldn't be allowed in a G film. The PG rating in SL is slightly more restrictive than the G rating for films so think of it like that.

I am not following you, as I provided a direct quote from the policy statement explaining that such things are allowed only on Mature land (but if they also include any Adult content, they must naturally be on an Adult continent).

How old are the new customers, anyway, three? They can't be allowed to show an avatar being cartoon-electrocuted? Maybe it's just my US bias, but children's television where I live is infinitely more violent than what is allowed on Second Life. I must say I find tthese new rules to be absolutely bizarre. I have no idea what is threatening about a garden or an art exhibit, either.

They support a mature rating. It doesn't say they can't support a PG rating. I don't know why this is so hard for everyone to understand.

As for this.. it's total nonsense. There can be no such thing as extreme violence or even mild violence when the violent and the, uh, violentee are both indestructible cartoon characters. I can (barely, but not really, we are all 18+ after all) see making some rule about gore i.e. gross pictures of real mutilated people and so on but violence against avatars is nothing short of funny and anyway voluntary.

Because right after that, it talks about PG and gives no indication that such activities are allowed on PG land. Logically, if those activities are PG, then the Lindens would have said they were PG. Because you can have PG things on Mature land, but not vice versa. Moreover, those are all things you would reasonably expect to find on PG land, and the Lindens are going out of their way to specifically indicate that those are non-intuitively to be considered Mature content.

The distinctions and qualifications they make are that parks and whatnot in some cases will not be Mature, but rather Adult. If those things were allowed on PG, they would not be used as examples of Mature; that wouldn't make sense.

???

I can't explain to people who don't want to understand.

Try to differentiate between the rule and helpful examples and clarifications for the rule. The sum of what is allowed on PG land is defined here "A Region may be designated PG if it does not advertise or make available content or activity that's sexually explicit, violent or depicts nudity." I don't think it warrants any further discussion, except to say that the rule itself is straight up retarded.

It "may" be PG, and it may not be PG -- they clarify the difference by giving examples of content that is considered Mature. (Otherwise, why give those exhaustive examples? And are there any other examples of Mature content?)

The "may" means YOU may designate it if you want to.

Let's be clear here: "we" are not designating anything. The land we purchased is pre-designated by Linden Lab, and we cannot change it. It is Linden Lab who is designating how content is to be rated - that's what these specifications from them are. Users who have purchased certain kinds of land can designate that the content is Adult, but I think that's only Mature land, isn't it? If you have PG land, Linden Lab is now specifying what kind of content is henceforth acceptable there. (And my complaint is that it their specifications seem utterly bizarre.)

Well, I started off in this thread insisting that this policy was very clear and that no-one who could read could possibly fail to understand it. I guess I was mistaken since it is very clear that one of us misunderstands absolutely fundamentally what entire paragraphs of the policy mean.

I think I'm left with the conclusion that no policy defined using human language can be fully "clear". The only solution is to resort to mathematics.

I'm not the person in this thread who cited the Linden's paragraph of specifications and examples for Mature versus PG content. I merely learned of it from other contributors to this conversation, and I have expressed my alarm and sadness over it. It is very clear that more than one of us understands the words to mean this; you are the lone voice repeating that it doesn't mean that. Although it seems outrageous, the most straightforward and logical interpretation is that it does mean what we're all hearing it say. In any event, it's certainly another example of Linden Lab's terrifically poor communications.

I'm sure they want to leave themselves enough wiggle room to be able to interpret anything they say in an arbitrary fashion later on. This is partly for legal reasons, I guess. You can see that in their assertion that nothing has in fact changed or is changing about the content ratings in SL, and in the next breath (no matter which paragraph you like to cite) they make what we all consider to be vast sweeping changes. (For example, never being naked in your house, let alone have a bed with a poseball on it. I don't know how the hell you're supposed to change clothes...well, very carefully I guess!)

Oops I said "hell". Probably get banned now.

LL mathematics: 1 + 1= 3

No, no, no, you've got it all wrong. LL mathematics work like this: One corporate customer with an island who decides something is good for the mainland which will never effect his corporation in the slightest, equals the residents want this change.

Oh, and by the way, your chocolate ration is increasing from 20 grams to 25 grams next week.

Hey, I already did the chocolate ration thing. Your punishment is being thrown in a room with a cage on your head full of rats.

I didn't know he has a head full of rats. Ty for the info.

Why do you think we're putting a cage on it? Gotta keep those rats inside the head.

Not as bad as a head full of ferrets though, naming no names.

LOL

I read it, and like others, found it either missed some very pertinent questions altogether, or gave way to more questions from the answers given.

There is some very clear information in there, but nothing like as much as needed for such a major (and idiotic) policy change.

It reminds me very much of the way F1 is currently run. Anyone who follows the sport will know the regs are so full of grey areas, it's almost as though the governing body encourage the lack of clarity...

I've seen Wiley Coyote and Sylvester Pussycat electrocuted in G-rated cartoons. I've seen Foghorn Leghorn chopped in two and riddled with bullets. I don't recall seeing them impaled, but I suspect Tom and Jerry have gone that far.