Linden to put adult content on own continent
As reported by many sites, Linden Lab is going to move all adult content to its own continent.
Snarky folks may wonder what will be left on the main continent, but that’s really unfair. There’s a ton of stellar content in SL that isn’t sex related.
Access to the new continent will be gated by real world age verification — credit card, ID, that sort of thing. The challenge, of course, is rating the content. Apparently community feedback will be gathered on establishing guidelines. Edit: more details here.
This is an area where SL’s embrace of the tyranny of geography has made things a bit more complicated for the Lindens, of course. Let’s say that there’s something borderline on the main continent. It goes along fine there, until enough people protest the rating. Then it gets moved. Then it gets appealed, and moved back… possibly not to the same place, since the old location may have been taken… It doesn’t take walking through usecases for very long to find ways in which the ties of spatial contiguity complicate matters.
The flip side, of course, is that the discoverability of walking from one sim to another (or overflying, or whatever) can lead to serendipitous discoveries that are often the neatest moments in SL.
We’re in the midst of implementing our own handling of mature content in Metaplace, so I’ll be following this with some interest!
32 Responses to “Linden to put adult content on own continent”
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Wow – that might actually compel me to give SL another visit. Good move, I say.
Oh great…your last line in your post totally deflates me from writing any of the jokes I had in my head regarding Metaplace and adult content.
YES and YES and YES.
I don’t care what issues it brings up, move all the leather-loving-oil-collection-having-sex-toy-shop butts OFF the mainland.
I have been in SL for 5 years. I can honestly tell you that the mature stuff just being randomly sprinkled in with the “pg” stuff has always stopped me from taking the game for more than just a playground worth a few minutes of my time each week.
There is beautiful art in SL, incredible buildings…people actually trying to DO something with the game instead of tacking up cheesy posters of half naked (or naked) women.
This will remove the cheese factor from the game. Thank God. Maybe the game could be taken seriously, now.
Beau
I have been a longtime follower of SL, and have enjoyed it most of the time. This particular move is interesting, if not predictable.
As long as this mandatory move is confined to main continents and not private estates, I see no problem on the surface. Again, as you point out Raph, it comes down to definition.
Really in a situation like this you have to identify a balanced rule-set which accomplishes certain mandatory goals, and provides as much movement as possible by residents.
The problem with any kind of governance on this level is the strong stance Linden Labs has taken not to interfere, which I have always thought was a bad move overall.
I will be watching this closely as well. I would also like to see a writeup on what MP has planned in this regard. š
Raph –
Are you going to handle liability for age verification in Metaplace? I’ve long had the concern that an age verification service where the age verifier doesn’t handle whatever liability they have associated with “verifying age” makes the process meaningless (except as a revenue source).
Of course for kids you have COPPA which does give you a legal safe harbor for the under-13 set.
“I’ve just Met a place I can’t forget the time or place where we…”
Ok, bad Beatles.
It becomes an ever widening problem for media and social services. I went to see The Watchmen last week with the wife and were we ever surprised. The ads were doctored to cover up the pornographic bits. When we asked, we were told everyone assumes anyone going has read the mag. I felt sorry for the parents who had blown the monthly entertainment budget to take the family only to be hustling them out the door pronto.
I’m not agin skin; just misleading ads designed to bulk up the opening box. So is non-indemnified age verification a big a problem legally? What kinds and types of penalties can be assessed if they don’t?
And… it was a bad movie. Simply bad acting on top of a bad script, IMO.
Hm, I’ll be curious to see how this developers – it has been quite a while since I last visited SL, but I do try to keep up with it. I wonder how this will go over, as it is an interesting step.
len: blowing the family budget on an R-rated movie? I mean pornography or not, what ever you want to call it, the rating alone should have been a hint that the content would not be appropriate for the family.
You’re ranting about either a blue penis or a few gratuitous sex scenes, but seem to otherwise have no problem with the violence, gore and language… yeah, what did this have to do with Second Life?
I agree it wasn’t a great movie.
I think this is a good idea for the most part as well. Although I do have to admit, sometimes walking into a new location, getting a shock from the unexpected content was worth a good giggle.
A whole continent? How about just a Red Light District and an adult-content licensing system to force the adult-content traffic/population down?
I’ve been one of the people feeling snarky about this. I’ve never spent any significant time in SL, but I’ll take your word for it. I still suspect that while Amsterdam may have many fine museums, that’s not why anybody decides to GO there, you know?
Maybe it’s one of those salience things, like “everybody on forums is a jerk.” When you walk past ten tshirt stores and one flying dildo emporium, one of those is more likely to make an impression.
Mike
mikedarga.blogspot.com
@Morgan,
Well, if you can’t access any of the content in a proposed right light district, it’s better if it’s visually separated, and the only decent way to do that (as SL is currntly set up) is to move it to another land mass.
And if you can access that content just by walking to it, they end up with some messy legal issues (which they don’t want or they wouldn’t be requiring ID checks) and it interacts poorly with trying to attract a broader audience if they accidentally stumble into these things. It’s not that they’re trying to control an overabundance of the stuff, as much as they’re trying to make sure it doesn’t intersect with the other uses of the game. I greatly suspect Linden wants the level of adult content to remain where it is, honestly. I’m sure they make a decent amount of money even just skimming the top on Linden transactions for adult content.
I personally think that if they can work out the kinks in terms of content ratings that this is a good move.
I can’t see how they can figure out what’s adult content in a user-created content environment.
SL has for years been divided into Mature and PG regions. The uptight and repressed can bury themselves deep in the Disneyland portion of the world and never sully their virgin eyes with evidence of human sexuality.
The laws of supply and demand have resulted in a scant handful of PG sims, wherein land has a significantly lower value than Mature sims. While only 5% of the population may be engaged in the hardcore skin trade, the majority want the OPTION to express themselves as they choose without censorship.
In addition, individual landowners have the ability to eject or ban individuals according to their own policies. Don’t agree with the policies? Then go away. You also have the choice to filter out adult hits from search results. And sim owners can block users that aren’t “age verified”… even though Second Life requrires residents to be over 18. The tools are all in place to control what happens on your land. Sadly, some wanted more control over what happens on other people’s land.
Given the existing division of Mature and PG content, why is this step being taken?
I predicted this some time ago. This is a first step towards integration of the Teen grid and stepped-up marketing to corporate fat cats, which will only increase pressure to bulldoze the adult slum altogether. I imagine many marginalized communities will end up forcibly expelled from their virtual homes and deported to the OpenSim wastelands.
(And Watchmen is a compentent adaptation of a superb graphic novel, with a very visible ‘R’ rating).
@john: The violence is bad and disturbing in the movie. Sadly they can sit at home and watch hours of that on network TV much less cable. And no, skin doesn’t bother me a bit. What bothers me is that movie maker went out of their way to doctor the ads and sales to ensure opening week box was high and the families didn’t know what they were getting into. For myself, it was just a waste of time but that’s ok. Entertainment can be hit and miss that way.
The game and movie industry hybrid is moving into the cultural cross-hairs and arrogantly believes this won’t have an effect on it’s bottom line. Caveat vendor.
I doubt Linden Labs is trying to be proactively socially responsible. Otherwise, the policies wouldn’t have been what they were. They are trying to satisfy the companies who have endorsed them and done very public deals with them who are now realizing that the adult content in Second Life threatens those deals. Palimpsano and his class of business management cannot justify to their boards what thier people have invested in Second Life if its reputation as a haven for pornographic content continues to spread. The press will rip them a new one.
IOW, they need a solution and this is not a Change The Culture, Fix Our Social Ills By Making Our Worldview Acceptable campaign. Going down that path at this time for Linden Labs would be business suicide.
It’s time for the game and world industry to grow up or get out. You do not understand the zeitgeist brewing out there. The elections, the anger with the economy, the insanity of the trials coming will look for places to focus. This is what happened in the 60s, the real 60s not the feel-good version too many of the were-not-there think happened. Once the high state of emotional engagement started, it cascaded movement by movement and became irrational in the extreme. It’s endorphin addiction at scale and it gets out of control until exhausted. The exhaustion cycle is what we say from 1975 until Reagan was elected. It was followed by the most intense era of conservatism coupled to greed we had ever seen.
I could say, be smart, but an industry that at this time reacts to the patent trolls the way I’m seeing on these lists has yet to grow up enough to realize that the solution to these problems does not lie in “fixing society”. That’s so dumb it beggars belief. The industry made a very costly mistake by ignoring realities other web industries addressed a decade ago. You’re going to have to step up to it.
I don’t like that they’re forcing users to pay to access the adult content. Either they have to have subscribed at one time, and paid LL, or they have to pay for an age verification system.
Second Life is for adults. If someone lies about their age and goes in, it should be their responsibility, not the people providing adult services. All of this age verification stuff is unfair.
I’m certainly interested in how Metaplace will handle “Adult” content, though I’m also curious where you will draw the line. Some people think gory violence is adult. Some people think any violence at all is adult. Some people think it only becomes adult when folks start making babies.
From a relativistic top-down perspective, Linden Lab, as a laissez-faire adherent of the aphorism popularized by Thoreau, is acting socially responsible when powers of government are placed on the shoulders of their users. That said, I really don’t pay close attention to Second Life. The point is that what’s socially responsible isn’t limited to a single flavor.
Second Life is not truly a “second life” — the virtual-world service is subject to the rules of the jurisdiction from which the service operates. In this case, San Francisco.
@len – i don’t know what it’s like where you live, but here in Toronto, restricted movies have a bigass red octagonal “R” icon on them, listing the offensive content (punching, bewbz. etc). There could be an adorable cuddly bunny on the poster for all i care (see: Happy Tree Friends) – if the movie is restricted, that’s a clear enough indicator that my three year old shouldn’t join me at the theatre.
And following the nasty turn that comic book movies have taken since the stomach-turning Sin City, the “R” is probably a good indicator that I’M not going to enjoy the movie either.
Yukon, that’s not how I remember things certainly… last I played I remember being able to walk into a sim without knowing the rating if it was on the main continent. The geography is contiguous. I don’t really even remember any ratings pop ups, and you can see across sims, so even if you’re not actually in the M rated sim, you can still see it from across the street.
Sure, you don’t accidentially teleport into a zone without knowing what the rating is, but you can certainly walk into one, or look over into one. And this isn’t going to touch private islands, just the main one, which is the only place this would be a problem.
When I said
I wasn’t just commenting on Second Life’s new policies but also the legal precedent that puts retailers and service providers at fault when minors lie about their age.
Simply put, it’s not fair.
PS when i first read the headline, i interpreted it as “Linden to put adult content on (Linden’s) own continent”. Kinda funny.
Since I’m not an attorney, I’ll quote from one of my old business law textbooks:
There are good reasons for defending the minor’s right to disaffirm. As one author says, “Historically, minors are afforded this special right to protect them from naively squandering their wealth through improvident contracts with unscrupulous adults.”
In a perfect world, that would be true. But then there’d be no liars, no cheats…
Morgan,
I think you’re fisking on this. I just attended a conference where this was hashed out by lawyers at length. The minor cannot contract — period. Please name these states where you believe this is possible, and cite actual cases. Your old business law textbook sounds…old.
Please find a case and cite it in full where a minor who lied about their age *on this issue* of MMORPs/virtual worlds/social media was then somehow prosecuted as an adult.
Raph,
Here’s the thing about the Mainland. It is like a marble cake. Not only are PG and M sims woven together, which is counterintuitive — no one can understand the rhyme or reason or formula for this — within one M sim the content can range from G to X. For example, I have my adult hotel which is rather a subdued thing to begin with next to a land preserve which is totally G, and next to rentals and stores which are PG on neighbouring sims. So they make up a contiguous whole. I have malls with one store that will fit under the new policy, and the rest are PG or even G. So obviously I wouldn’t move the entire mall over to the adult grid which is likely to be a raunchy and XXX sort of place for all the SLuts to go to, and which would not make most of my customers comfortable. Most people want sex in its place even in SL, in one store, in one room, etc. but they don’t like it permeating every aspect of the experience.
So either you have to lose business or disrupt everything to pick up stakes. Builds that were commissioned have to be moved and fall apart upon being delinked, or you can’t find the builder, or you can’t get it put out the same way, etc. etc. There are all kinds of edge cases and they add up.
Naturally, people want to know why the Lindens didn’t make a PG or G grid and segregate that, rather than visa versa. However, they want to make it seem as if they are getting the smut under control.
Not too old. West’s Business Law, 2004. The 2007 edition is somewhere around here.
Morgan,
Law is one thing; cases are another; cases *in this field* are yet another.
I wouldn’t argue against better buffering between PG and Mature regions. More Linden-owned “green space” to separate the two would be welcome, or a new continent exclusively for the PG zones (which are much fewer in number than Mature regions and thus easier to relocate).
I also have no problem with age verification, provided that it is required of all residents at registration (and is provided at no additional charge). This might also provide some control over the rampant bot infestation. At any rate, since you must be over 18 to utilize Second Life, there should be no issue with enforcing that provision.
I’ll take it a step further; some mature regions should be declared residential zones, where no businesses of any sort (sex-themed or not) should be allowed to operate. Mainland tends to be an actively hostile place for small landowners who just want to own a house, and the harassment of homesteaders is a rampant problem. Ideally lots in these regions would be buffered by streets and green space so that they look more like neighborhoods and less like war zones.
But beyond that… if there is to be a new zone, the people who are unhappy with Mature as it stands should be the ones who pack up and move. Give them a PG continent, and make sure it’s distributed in a way that doesn’t profit landbots and speculators.
My wife made the comparison with UO’s Trammel and Feluccia, and I reminded her that when Trammel was introduced, it was the carebears who had to pack up and move, not the gankers — the people who wanted the rules changed were the ones to shoulder the burden. And as it turned out, for many of us it was a fantastic opportunity to consolidate our scattered holdings into viable and vibrant communities.
If the Lindens retrench and rethink, they could help revitalize Second Life with new, more affordable options for post-secondary institutions and small businesses that can’t swing the exorbitant rates for private islands. But it’s going to require a little more vision and effort from them than just trying to lock away the naughty bits.
@ryan: I don’t think in the States they are making it as obvious even when the rating is there. From what I can tell, the TV ads have been doctored.
I don’t want to pound on the movie. For my tastes it is a terrible movie with or without the sax and violins. Bad acting, bad directing, heavy CGI, so yes, it’s a comic book. But mainly, it seems they’ve done some sleazy things to keep it in the media when it should have sank like a rock instead of amping the opening box. It’s another discussion: media concentration in the time of global sociopathy.
Now it has become The Thing To See and that says something maybe not so good about the values. That is what couples it to Second Life. They are trying to do something proactive and they need contracts for something more serious than “gee, what a nice pair of rezzed tits”. It’s just my opinion, but virtual worlds will become like American Idol: it don’t mean nothing.
In Times like these….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk3Iqgv56Hk
I’m not aware of any requirement for case law to be specific to any field. I’m not saying that there isn’t any case law, but there doesn’t even need to be case law for courts to make judgments.
The courts are empowered to enforce quasi contracts, contracts implied in law, which usually have no explicit foundation in case law. They are fictional contracts that are designed to prevent unjust enrichment.
As both 2004 and 2007 editions of this book make clear, there are few exceptions to the minor’s right to disaffirm: misrepresentation of age (in many jurisdictions), contracts for necessaries, and insurance and loans (in some jurisdictions.)
Actually, they are explicitly defined in the caselaw. Any statutory provisions regarding them simply codify the caselaw.
Er, that’s not what I meant to write. The point I was trying to make was that the courts can and do make judgments without referencing case law, particularly when there is no case law specific to a case and when there is sufficient need to prevent unjust enrichment. But, again, not a lawyer.