lindens latest blog: dob a neighbour

Well said!

In time there will be. I think that if LL were to institute morality laws there will be one sooner than later because there will suddenly be a customer base in need of a product. That being the 90% of former SL users looking for a new place to play and not be persecuted.

But I think this is one of the key things that LL is trying to deal with.

The perception that SL would die on its feet if all the sex were removed is a highly negative one, and would probably ruin things for corporations. If I ran a large company and I learned that SL has a lot of traffic, I might think it would be a good idea to advertise there; but if I find out that that large amount of traffic is only due to sex, then I probably wouldn't want to any more.

You know... the thought has occured to me that since there was resistance to the age verification recently proposed that this could be just a tactic to present something else soooo grossly unacceptable that the afore mentioned age verification becomes much more acceptable by the masses. Kind of like when people bitch about gas prices being $2 a gallon (US measures) as outrageous.... so they up it to $3.50/gallon to make people "happy" when it's back to $2.50.

Certainly, their pockets are deep, just like in RL, the same laws don't apply.

This is interesting.

But its a chicken and egg paradox.

Basically any reductions in sex will hurt traffic .. Any reduction in traffic hurts corporate advertizing ..but the visibility of sex hurts corporate advertizing.

1. If they ban sex, traffic will go down considerably .. thus removing the traffic .. thus removing the incentive for corporations to advertize in SL.

2. If they dont ban traffic .. then SL will stay very much sexual themed .. thus removing the incentive for corporations to advertize in SL.

3. If they ban the Traffic METRIC .. SL sex , while still out there would be less visible, due to the fact that "popular" places would no longer exist... however the campers and those who make money from high traffic numbers would be on less. Thus a hit to incentive for advertizing .. but not as bad as #1

4. If they make a new classified section for ADULT advertizing, and refuse to accept any sexual themed advertizing on the regular classifieds, this would also reduce the visiblity of Sex in SL .. downsides would be that it would be a pain to police the classifieds. I suppose threatening bans to people who intentionally misadvertize would help.

Actually, corporations looking for an audience are less concerned with what draws the audience together than they are with what the audience spends, what it spends on, and how influential it is among its peers. The kinky might be overrepresented here, but so are the intelligent, the college-educated, the computer-literate and in particular IT professionals, and also the business-minded enterprising types - and as a result people who are relatively affluent or likely to become so and to some extent are trendsetters. I wouldn't shortchange this audience SL is building up. On the other hand, I don't think this is an audience that is going to stick around long if it finds itself in a plain-vanilla, nanny-state Disneyland environment either. Middle America and your Aunt Tillie it isn't. LL better watch it with the Legion of Decency act.

You are probably right and that is the quandry LL finds itself in. LL needs to figure out what it really wants to do. It's always said that it was about freedome of expression, "our world, our imagination". Well, that cuaruntee of such freedom has created the world we have now in Second Life. So... having said that, if they decide to quash the very thing that made it successful because it wants to fill it's pockets with corporate money they've just become confirmed hypocrites. If they stand by what they set SL up on, they'll accept what "mainstream" corporations will due based on SL's content. If they are hypocrites then they will bend over for the all mighty promise of riches becoming exactly what they claimed to detest and destroy the concept of metaverse. The choice is theirs.

That's perfectly true - but the problem is, are they going to be paying attention to anything the corporation builds?

As an example: Dell are advertising in SL. This is a good idea, because there are many experienced and potentially influential IT people here. However, if someone is looking for sex, they aren't going to visit Dell Island for it; and there is no way in a thousand million years Dell are going to be seen advertising in sex-related builds.

For marketing it doesn't just matter that the audience are present, they have to be paying attention too..

That might be part of the viewpoint, but let's look at it from another point of view.

Why is sex so popular on SL? My own theory, and it is just a theory, is that it's because sex is the lowest common denominator of role-playing that both parties will consent to. In a world with complete and instant freedom, you can't create the dynamic where someone will role-play being a peasant right now, so that they can be king or queen in 20 levels time - there are no levels, and thus no peasants, and thus ten thousand queens with no subjects, who because of that do not feel that they are anything like queens and quit. Occasionally someone will come along who is a brilliant content creator, and people will play a peasant to their queen in exchange for access to their content - but then the queen realises that they're having to spend all their time working on content creation, and not getting to enjoy playing a queen at all, and they either decide to become a pure content creator or quit.

Sex doesn't have that problem, because it's mutually beneficial. And especially, BDSM solves the problem nicely because the dom can be "better" than the sub, but the sub is still enjoying themselves. During my time on SL I have actually seen several people who arrived with the intention to play non-sexual roles that depended on being "better" than others (such as queens or magicians or seers)... and after finding out that they couldn't do that, they became online BDSM dominants in order to get to play the roles they wanted to, or at least the nearest they could get while still getting other people involved.

The problem is that, if we believe that sex is the main appeal of SL (and I'm not sure that it is - and if it isn't, removing it isn't a problem) then LL are effectively becoming responsible for selling a pornography distribution platform, and they may well no longer be comfortable with doing that. Especially since it isn't that effective (WoW and MySpace have no sex - at least it is certainly not the primary appeal in either - and both are doing better than SL). So they're saying - well, if role-play + creative freedom = sex.. then let's remove the role-play. Let's replace it with real-life social networking. Voice is an example of this and I expect we'll see more quite soon.

But to do that, they have to get rid of the sex first, because who's going to be open about their real-life self in a world that's full of sex? Going to real-life social networking means that SL has to become socialised in real life, something that's mentioned in chats people have on the bus. In that case it doesn't matter about the reality of what's inside Second Life - if a broadsheet newspaper has just run a story that Second Life is full of pornography then are you going to tell your friends or potential employers that you play it?

I rarely post, but this issue's big enough to get me trawling the forums. I'll speak my peace and go:

Dear Lindens,

Stay out of my second life.

What I do with other consenting adults in a virtual setting is quite simply not your concern. Unless I'm trading child porn - the only actual crime listed in your now-infamous blog post - no American laws are being violated. I don't seek out and corrupt newbies for my evil purposes, I have friends for that.

When I rape, assault, murder, and cannibalize people, you need to understand that nobody actually suffers. There aren't really little people inside your screen perishing for my entertainment. There are, however, really big people outside other users' screens, and those people don't seem to mind what I do with their imaginary little people. Most of them apparently enjoy it.

If I start abusing someone who isn't into it, all they have to do is tell me to shove off and I will. Or they can go home at the press of three keys. Or they can go literally anywhere in-world with just a few mouse clicks, and they can mute me in the meanwhile. If I refuse to stop, or follow them, or orbit them when they ignore me, that's called "griefing." Griefing is already against the TOS, if you've somehow forgotten. We the users don't need extra rules based on what you the management thinks -might- lead to griefing for some slim minority sometime in the future.

Thanks for reading. Now go away until I need you or actually slight someone.

Wow .. I dont know about all this.




Sex isnt about role play. Sex is about sex. Sex is a basic human drive, Role Play is a concept. People might be including sex in their roleplay, but to classify sex as "just a form of roleplay" is missing a lot of the point.

Why do you consider sex as a lowest common denominator? Becuase its "dirty"? Id argue its a "basic" drive. Its not "lower" than anything.

Sex, Hunger, Thirst, Security. These are basic drives - any interest in errotica including cyber sex is part of the sex drive.

Even Real Life Kings and Queens had interests in sex.



MySpace has plenty of sex, thats part of why it gets in trouble. Wow is a game.

Again Role-play is not what sex is about - people role-playing might have sex but I think you are confusing cuases and effects for many people.

The removal of role-play will not remove sex. People have been cybering since chat rooms started, and those were "real life" social networking. Back then everyobody in a chat room was FAR too much RL involved with other people.




Again this is ignoring the entire history of chatting on the internet and almost sounds like you are pretending its new.

The reason people are not open about their Real lives isnt solely becuase of sex, its becuase of a lot of things.

Id love for you to explain to me how you are going to get adults socializing and remove ALL the sex out of it. .

Many of the socializing people will pair off, pairing off leads to sex, its been that way since time immemorial.

"Lowest common denominator"? According to who? You? Based on your moral standards?



I'm assuming (though you haven't communicated it well) that you are likening SL to something like WoW or another combat MMORPG. That's not what SL is. It can be, if you go to a location in which that content has been provided like "Darklife". This isn't WoW though. If that's what you are looking for, you are in the wrong place. Since you don't apparently know much about BDSM or D/s then I'll explain to you that they are lifestyles not an MMORPG. Based on trust, not how many skills you can "grind" out.



Sex is not the main appeal to SL but it is part of SL. LL doesnt sell anything except the right to play in a sand box that they own with the tools they provide. The tools are the ability to make our own things in world. Everything (content) made in world is the creation of the people who (have to date) freely created them with those tools. To say SL/LL sells pornography would be the same as saying the same of Microsoft when someone types out an erotic novel on Microsoft Word.

Another point you are missing is people in SL have bought and paid for their own servers (private islands). Islands marked "Mature". It's like a town selling a lot to a citizen. That citizen builds a red house and then after the construction of that house the city passes a law that says "no red houses allowed" you have x days to tear your house down. If SL wanted to turn all "Governor Linden" land into PG sims, fine, they own it, but they sold servers to people as "private property" when they had the expectation that the content they put on it would be something they would be solely responsible for.



Then Second Life is no longer Second Life but First Life then isn't it. Regardless, the current status-quo allows people to go where they want and know what they are getting into. You must be 18 or older to be on the main grid. Even beyond that those adults can choose if they want to go to sexually explicit areas or not via the "Mature" rating system. Second Life is like a large city. There are "PG" areas and there are "Mature" areas. If I go to Cleveland, OH and come across a strip club, I don't go around to all of the world and say Cleveland, OH is nothing but a city of strip clubs, do I? Same with SL, it's a big virtual city. If some news article is mis-informing the public then that news company needs to be corrected.

Well it's the fanitical religion types that are the worst the ones that convenently think that they religions rules don't count killing people of other religious denominations, regardless of even if the DEITY is the same even.

My grandmother was German but my German is petty bad. But age is affecting my typing and spelling, I'm not aware of any ways to fix it.
I appologise for refering to you as a Nazi, it is a result of English upbringing I guess, I will try and find a word to porttray my stong feelings at being picked at for spelling/typing errors without being that extreme in the future. As I really do realise a lot of the German people were real nice people who were just on another side of a war.

Religion keeps getting mentioned. Regardless of the fact that religion had nada to do with the blog post.

Those who continue to bash Christians...do Christians murders gays? Do Christians murder underage mothers? Do Christians do more than make asses of themselves (not real Christians to my mind) like Phelps?

I've lived in Germany, and I have many great and lovely friends there. It was still the Germans who tried to exterminate my ancestors. You cannot erase history.

This had NOTHING to do with what LL is doing.

RL is not SL.

Maybe not, but any society, be it real or virtual, requires order, rules and guidelines for it to grow and flourish successfully - otherwise you get anarchy.

There is nothing else we can use to even remotely start from as a baseline - except for real life USA, which is where Linden Lab are based.

Where else would you suggest they started from? Clearly "nothing" or "no restrictions" is not an acceptable answer, because otherwise it would be anarchy, and nothing would ever be achieved here.

Regardless of what some might think, humans need order, structure and routine in their lives. We need to sleep, eat and pee several times a day, and the majority of people stick to certain things at certain times. Life is designed around the clock, and time. Unless you can remove the human element from Second Life, then SL will only ever be based on the real world at a fundamental level, although we can of course change our shape, form and environment at the click of a mouse.

Broccoli

O.o?

Do Catholics murder Protistants & Vice Versa?

I though Buhdists rocked till saw a monk with an AK47 on TV recently holding hostages.

This is a particularly NOT well thought through idea - to invite everybody to spy on everybody, and report whatever they don't approve of as "broadly offensive".

It is manifestly absurd for Linden Labs or anyone to equate real life images with avatar portrayals of anything.

If avatar portrayals were equivalent to real life images, Wile E. Coyote would be PETA's worst nightmare.

Just as the most glaring example, child pornography is quite rightly illegal, but Nabokov's Lolita is only banned in the most primitive of societies. There's a big difference: child pornography involves actual children who are harmed. A real life victim of child abuse should be deeply offended by the trivializing of their trauma by equating it with mere animations.

Moreover, if there exists a government somewhere that in fact has *laws* equating animations with images of real life events, then that society is far too primitive to contribute anything of value to a virtual world; their imposed absence would be of negligible significance to SecondLife. Any enlightened individuals in such a society would have the moral responsibility to either overthrow their government or seek refugee status in a civilized state.

I think that Broccoli must be confusing SL with some other place. In this other place, there are no rules and guidelines.
SL already has sensible Community Standards that we all signed up to. There is no question of choosing a starting position.


I think that Broccoli must be confusing Planet Earth with some other planet. In this other planet, there is a "real life USA", which is the motherspring of all that is decent and right - a sort of burning bush in the desert?
SL has a set of Community Standards that can be summarised as 'Respect Others'. This standard was recognised in societies the world around long before real life USA came into being.
As far as I am aware, the only specific body of law that has had an major impact on SL has been German law.


I think that Broccoli must be confusing this forum with some other forum. In this other forum, it would appear that people are advocating that there should be no rules and guidelines. There must be some reason for his lecturing us here about the need for a society to have such.

And what gives you the right to decide what everyone else thinks? Seems to me like you're clearly doing exactly the same thing you are accusing Linden Lab of - deciding what is right for others. The only difference is that they run the world and can set up whatever rules they wish, and you can't.



Congratulations on insulting Germany and quite a few other places actually.



The world as you envisage it would be a complete anarchy. The freedoms that you have that allow you to speak out as you do are the very things that you are seeking to destroy. "I'm claiming refugee status because my goverment won't let me pretend to have sex with children on a computer" doesn't really hold a lot of water.

Broccoli

He's a she, actually. People keep making that mistake.

Broccoli

I am german, and I didn't feel insulted. There's this thing with the "community" or "majority" again.