lindens latest blog: dob a neighbour

Find a single rape in SL that meets the legal definition. You cant, because by the very nature of the platform its all consensual.

fair enough cracking down on the sexual content involving minors or age play. Fair enough I’m all for getting that out of sl the abuse of kids is NOT ok.

the rest is totally and utterly insane… were all adults.... its very hard to see where the line is. is it ok for a light spanking but not if your whipping someone?... or ok to whip someone if your not pretending to draw blood or cause marks... if you can't even lightly spank dose that mean even a little chew of the ear lob isn't acceptable?... it all gets too insain too fast. too many people will grief people with this.

Heck if you don't like that kind of stuff just TP home or mute the person heck don't go to those Sims just stay in PG Sims. yeah I don't like some of the stuff my friend who is a cybog has on her body(isn't my thing and gives me a bit of a creaps).. Has lots of pits of wires and things sticking out in her but I wouldn't want her banned for it.
Its her SL fantasy, I just choose not to see it or go around near some parts I know she might be in her half human/half robot av. In my opinion RPing rape should only be done in Sims which are for that *or somewhere people can’t see it if they don’t want to like in a skybox* and with consent of all Av’s around and involving in it. It should be kept away from people who don't want to see it. A bit of fetish fantasy happens in RL people buy furry handcuffs and some take it to more extreme. Though there is a limit though to what’s a bit of fun and what’s going into another realm. I’m very worried about the whole 'broadly' what’s ok for some isn't for others... SL is international. There’s a lot of cultural differences... in some cultures its ok to run around half naked or naked... where as others to show an even an ankle is considered offensive. So you can't stick a 'broadly' label on it. If you do that you make this game for Americans only. I for one *being British... YES were not all prude...* wouldn't like to see that... since I couldn't be myself and express my own culture while finding out about other peoples cultures...which is one of the things SL is great at.. Getting to understand other people including there dirty fantasies even if you don't like them.
SL Seaming to be at a risk of backing down at everything it gets pushed at. First the Casino’s get the plug pulled now this. What’s next… lets take away music streaming incase someone forgets to get the right license and people get angry about loyalty for some person streaming in there 512 to 2 people?
Or may be the whole of SL sex will go and swearing too…. Any form of nudity. Everyone will have underwear on all the time unable to take them off.

Were all adults we shouldn’t need SL to mother us just because some people can’t even follow the rules of there own county. What’s legal in one sometimes isn’t in another and visa versa.

real life images? dose that mean SL is mothering us even more now? we can't even see something people could just turn off safe search on google for. or is this RL images only including aspects of voilence. fair enought RL images of rape being banned... but how much is a lot.. if someones just got a image of a man or a woman with a coller on is that illegal? it gets so insain so fast.

Anyone else feel like a IN game protest about this?.
who said it was the 'majority' anyway? i didn't see any SL wide vote on this did you? not in game anyhow! so how can it be a majority if they didn't even ask? as far as i could see they just said this is it. end of.

All we can hope is that The Lindens know exactly what they mean, even if they can't communicate it to us, and frivilous AR's will be ignored. In any case the social fabric of SL will be changed for sure, and possibly not in a good way.

What makes you think We want it any more than you? Every Counnrty has it's whacked out Fundamentalist Busybodies who try to force their agenda on everyone else. The statement that the "Community " has somehow risen up to rail against these things is a load of crap. Other than the Ageplay/Kid porn situation, I haven't seen any great groundswell of Moral indignity by residents over any one particular behavior. I should say the "Real" community hasn't. It's obvious LL is catering to a totally different community now.

I quoted the original post for your benefit.

Do you people who are comlaining about this know what "broadly offensive" behavior is? I'm guessing NOT by the responses I've been reading.

I'm beginning to think most of you are college kids living in dorms thinking that the world is one big Utopian society.

Don't any of you live in communities that have community watches to help aid police when something looks amiss?

"broadly offensive" is a naked avatar walking down main street pushing themselves up against women with their pathetic 2 prim "bit"
"broadly offensive" is a 2 foot tall avatar with a baby skin trying to hop on a pose ball set at Abranimations while a girl is "trying" to see what the animation looks like" ( she was by herself and wanted to see how it looked...the baby avatar was following her around and trying to cop a cheap thrill)

I could go down the list, but I'll guarantee you that two people in their own house having sex is NOT "broadly offensive"

So get off your high horses and pull your heads out of the clouds.

Go find something else to whine about!!!

LL is trying to do the best they can to police these cretins and they're asking us to help. Take that fro what it is and stop reaidng into it.

If they know, then they can communicate it with us. Period.

Bottom line, they don't know and don't want to imply that behavior X is acceptable by not explicitly stating it, nor do they want to appear any more inept than they are right now by having to issue a weekly list of banned activities.

Its going to come down to number of abuse reports and the moral compass of the Linden carrying the can at that moment.

That's not entirely the point. There are many things in real life that technically aren't illegal, but are still broadly offensive.

In any case, in Second Life, there is a constraint that the "free expression" camp is arguing on the outside of, rendering their arguments pretty well ineffective - We enjoy broad freedom to create, and do pretty much whatever floats our boat, but we enjoy no RIGHT, expressed or implied, to do any particular thing, or create any particular thing. "Consent" between two or more parties to engage in a behavior does not create the RIGHT to engage in it. So to argue on the premise that this right exists is to argue in vain.

The only thing that strikes me as completely questionable about this latest blog post is the ambiguity of "other broadly offensive content" and the possibility of mob rule within SL in reporting such.

Whilst my personal morals find acts of paedophilia, rape, abuse, slavery and bestiality completely reprehensible I don't find it acceptible for the accountability of reporting such things to be at the hands of SL residents themselves.

This could lead to a swathe of "moral crusaders" with evangelistical attitudes towards things, which in modern society, we are beginning to learn are intrinsically natural behaviours and are acceptable both morally, in general, and ethically in "human-rights" law.

The problem is where the "line" is going to be drawn in determining behaviours that are "broadly offensive". Do I find age-play offensive? No, not between consenting adults despite my inability to understand the attraction of such an activity. Where does the line get crossed with that? Well, having one adult depicted physically in-world as a child - that, to me at least, crosses that line on it being acceptable and swings it more into the line of paedophilia. It's the visual depiction that crosses that line and not the activity itself which is between two consenting adults.

So where does this go from here? What if a group of SL residents find gay or lesbian sex to be "broadly offensive" and file abuse reports? How about a group of residents finding French people "broadly offensive" and file silmultaneous abuse reports? The list could go on... it is that ambiguity that is disconcerting to me.

Who is going to monitor, or police, the abuse reports and decide if they are genuine or if they are a reactionary breach of peoples basic human rights? Who is responsible for providing an avenue of accountability so that appeals can be made against such rulings and abuse reports?

These are delicate and dangerous times in SL. We have already seen people with avatars shorter than 7ft tall being reported as "depicting" children in direct reaction to the previous events and LL's response. How long before a couple of female av's walking and holding hands are found to be "broadly offensive" and reported? It wasn't that long ago that gay people were found intollerable to society and punished for being gay, it wasn't that long ago that black people were herded together, beaten and sold as slaves. It also wasn't that long ago that long hair spinsters where dunked in pools until the drowned because they were accused of being witches.

I don't think that LL has thought this through conclusively. Of course there needs to be a line drawn between what is ethically right and just, and what is morally reprehensible. At the same time there also needs to be a method of accountability and a means of appeal against such reporting and punishment. Without this we enter a world where anyone for any reason could be seen by a group as being "broadly offensive" without any recourse and that to me, being a non-prejudicial, open-minded person who believes strongly in justice, is completely unacceptable.

</end rant>

ok, read this, and read it again before I quote the next line.

Thats exactly the point. There are certain things that many people find broadly offensive that are NOT illegal and for very good reason.

Oh I guarantee you that there will be more than a few who will find that "Broadly Offensive". Especially if that behavior is different in anyway from what THEY consider "Normal".
And I guarantee you that there will be some who will find an Avatar that doesn't meet their standards of "Normal" will be hitting that AR button, not to mention the person you may piss of in your daily goings on. I'm all for cleaning up the Public areas, but as usual LL is stepping away from any real responsibility for it. People say they can't Police the grid 24/7. Well, considering they are taking in all the rewards from thir couting of the big boys, perhaps they should.
Cleaning up SL, I'm all for. Not Sterilizing it.

Just a bit of information from a thread in another forum - apparently LL suspended one guy's account on the basis of one unsubstantiated, false report that he was underage. No consultation, no notification, just >bang< suspended.

If that's the standard of LL's ideas about policing, then here come the days of the AR as the mega-griefing weapon. Why waste time orbitting someone when you can engineer their complete suspension?

This is terrible news.

It can't be stressed enough: SL != RL

Role play is essentially a collaborative work of fiction, nothing more! If I say "/me slaps you", I've no more comitted physical assault than someone getting on a posable animal has partaken in bestiality or someone on a sex poseball with another adult using a child-like avatar is a paedophile.

But really, who didn't see this coming? "Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children!?" The cry of protecting children from paedophiles is a well-established method of infringing on rights and privacy. Governments use this reasoning to snoop on web traffic - once it's established for paedophilia it's a short step to 'any other crime', then another short step to 'anything morally questionable'.

Such rules and laws are always enacted using paedophilia as the rallying-cry because nobody can object to it, lest they seem to be supporting paedophiles. Once the rule is in place, it's then quietly expanded to cover anything else that may be morally or legally questionable, and it's too late to do anything about it.

I've always been very optimistic about SL, but this is a dire situation. The way is now clearly paved for self-appointed "moral police" lynch mobs to persecute any group that does not fit their moral dogma: gays, furries, pagens, atheists, anyone who has (VR) sex before marriage. Perhaps anyone that doesn't follow Islamic law? If you are one of the holier-than-thou minority that supported this: don't be surprised when they come for you.

--- Zebra


P.S. I wish they wouldn't close the blog after 100 comments.

People never think things through, especially when Dollar Signs are waved in front of them. From my brief time here, LL has NEVER fully thought about any announcement or policy decision before posting it. I truly believe that this may not destry SL, but it will be a vastly different place.

Given Robin's recent statements that "The community" will determine what is "broadly offensive", and if I recall correctly, she specficially mentioned the avenue of the AR system, perhaps they are in the preliminary stages of breathing new life into the Community Standards. In such a large, growing, and diverse society, there's certainly no easy way to take the pulse of the community. AR is pretty much the only mechanism we have that extends to each individual resident. I'm not so worried about the frivolous and personally motivated ARs - I trust that those on the receiving end are capable of discerning what is trivial from what is meaningful.

How do you know this? Do you sit in on all the meetings?

This is just a huge mistake.

If LL are urging residents to AR other residents over avatar depictions those residents find 'broadly offensive' then they are going to make a lot of work for themselves.

It's lingustically very, very stupid.

It also appeals entirely to peoples' own subjective measures of offense (where that line is drawn, person by person), which simply cannot work.

It looks like they are trying to squash BDSM now, which, it is true had grown into a very large element of SL's subcultures (but - I think - mainly for non-sexual reasons).

But IF two peoples' avatars cannot play around with sexual invention on their own land without someone being able to AR them on the basis of poking their camera through the window then... oh dear, it is not good.

I have never been a naysayer about LL, and I understood why they wanted to get rid of ageplay as a business, but this does stray over into very inadvisable territory.

And what is so WRONG with rude things in the first place?

Hang around SL and LL long enough, "make it up as we go along" is, and always has been the order of the day.

I understand your point, but you're ignoring the only one that counts. In the real world, "broadly offensive, but not illegal" implies a right to engage. In Second Life, no such right exists. Argue outside of that constraint, and you won't advance your position.

I'm not sure why this should come as a complete surprise. You can't oppose one thing and then be stunned when the exact same arguments are used by others to ban something closely related.

If a potential child molestor can become an actual one by merely engaging in RP, then a potential rapist can become an actual one by merely playing it out. There is really no difference between the two.

If a resident places content on the grid that is unacceptable to one category of people, LL is the one who gets blamed because unlike the web, they're singly responsible for running, hosting and operating Second Like, there are no third parties.

"Kinky" will not survive broad mainstreamining. Any number of people will appear in front of a camera and go on about how rapeplay in SL is immoral, but how many will get in front of a camera and declare there is nothing wrong with enacting rape?

As far as what you do with a partner behind close doors in RL, you're not producing "content" then. In order for someone to see what you're doing, they'd have to invade your house and/or your privacy. The snooping party is the one who breaks the law.
You can not have sex on SL without producing content that's being broadcasted, and our avies do not have privacy that can be invaded, nor is being on someone's land trespassing, so whether you do it on your own land, or in a club, is not much of a difference at all in SL.

Most of all, I'd think the blog post signals that we shouldn't expect parcels that are marked adult to be invisible to unverifieds. It seems LL would rather waste money on pretty skies than it would on implementing selective content streaming when it can just "outlaw" certain activites and solve the problem with a blog post.

True, but honestly, what other choice do they have? This is something that's never been done before. It would be impossible to plan in advance every detail, or to predict and define contingencies for every possible scenario that might arise. Yes, they are making it up as they go along. You can't fault them for that, there's no other way to do this thing. My objection is to the assertion that they don't think things through. That is at best a personal observation, and it lacks the full set of facts required to lend it much credibility.

OK, so if this system is now in place... what exactly is the need for the Age Verification system or the Adult parcel flags? If they turn us all into narcs, there will be nothing left for minors to be exposed to that isn't PG, right? What's next - all builds, clothing designs, scripts, and animations have to be reviewed and approved by a submission board prior to being allowed? If I wanted that I would've stayed in There or TSO!

It seems we are definitely gliding down a slippery slope. The ideal of "Your World, Your Imagination" seems to have been replaced by "Heil Cashout!" Remember folks, the Flower Generation who went to Woodstock grew up to be the WASPs of the 80s.

I'm guessing Lindens are positioning themselves for a buyout, and the big nameless buyer wants the world cleaned up before they attach their name to it.

Just my opinion based on how they announce things. If you have evidence to the contrary I'd be glad to see it.The same can be said of your point of view, that it is based on personal observation.

Zaphod, you are the SL optimist, you have a clearer vision of what SL can be than the Lindens themselves I think. In most of these threads you seem to center the arguments, either byquestioning opposing views intelligently, or stating the other side in a clear enough manner that those who oppose can answer intelligently. For that I thank you. And you do show flashes of wit that I also appreciate.

It's probably impossible to plan for every contingency, so it makes sense to me that LL largely makes things up as they go along. However they do sometimes make errors in judgment.

I believe that LL truly believes in free speech and is okay with consensual sex--even on SL. I don't think they foresaw the wave of controversy arise over age play and other "kinky" sexual practices. Now they're scrambling to find some guidelines the majority can live with.

The problem is that people will always find something to be offended by. Ageplay between adults may be one of the more unsavory practices done on SL (not to mention illegal in Germany). But even if that's erased from SL, there will always be something else popping up that people find offensive.

An entirely PG-rated Second Life would be a place sapped of its vitality and its popularity would ultimately be eclipsed by a metaverse that was not as restrictive.

I find morally bankrupt hipocrites *and* moral crusaders to be broadly offensive. So much so that I'm tempted to pass out the pitchforks and torches every time I encounter one such being while at the same time giving them a rectal probe of biblical proportions 'for great justice'

Did you ever think that there is a sadist in LL who posts these just to watch the forums go nuts?