Gigs Shrugged

What are “PG” Regions, groups, events, and classifieds?

There are some landowners and Residents who desire a Second Life experience distinct from the activity that occurs in Mature and Adult Regions.  Region owners who wish to host this sort of Second Life experience should designate their Regions as PG.  A Region may be designated PG so long as it does not advertise or make available any content that is suggestive of any (even mildly) sexual or violent themes, or references to social drug or alcohol usage.

For instance, institutions such as universities, conference organizers, and real world businesses whose users may not wish to view or interact closely with the broader Second Life experience may designate their Regions as PG to achieve this added level of protection and segregation.

Since Linden Lab will probably deny this policy ever existed in a couple months after they silently change it, I’m posting it here.

I’m off to have a beer now.  Oops, I guess that means this blog post is no longer PG.

The passage below is reminder of how far Linden Lab has gone from their original dream of being “bigger than the web”.  Self-limiting decisions such as this “adult ghetto”, banning people for “unacceptable fantasies”, and in general, moving further and further from the concept of a common carrier, and turning into something more and more like AOL in 1995…  a sandboxed playground for kids and people who can’t figure out how to use anything better.

Linden Lab wrote, in December 2006:

We could never write a set of rules that would work for all people all the time, nor could we enforce them across a population that is growing so rapidly. Instead, we believe that the best way to foster communication and expression is to put power into the hands of the people by giving you better tools for local control. And that’s what we’ve been doing for several months now. [...]
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In an unsurprising move, Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life, continued their slide toward Disney-like fasism, this time removing virtual skin vending machines that demonstrated child avatar skins, complete with baked-in underwear.  This is stuff no worse than anyone can see in real life at a public beach.

This is apparently a policy change, as it was enforced against two separate sellers of non-sexual child avatar skins, and was reviewed under appeal and upheld.  The policy cited was:

“Real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of
sexual or lewd acts involving or appearing to involve
children or minors are never allowed within Second Life.”

I do wonder about the Lindens involved, if they consider a skin texture vending machine a sexual act.  Maybe they should seek treatment for this fetish for virtual vending machines.