Everyone in Second Life will already have heard this, but a little snippet for those of you who are interested but not avid followers.
Linden Lab yesterday announced a change in policy towards adult content: in a nutshell, all areas with adult content are being moved away from the mainland into a separate geographical region and anyone who wants to see them will have to be age verified. It’s not clear yet whether this paves the way for a merging of the Teen Grid with the main SL (currently no under 18s are allowed in SL – they have their own Teen Grid)
Early reaction seems to be extremely mixed, ranging from “free speech!” to “great for education” to “it’s totally unworkable” and I’m sure it will be a while before the dust settles and we see what, if any, impact this has on us and the world in general. I have yet to properly formulate my personal or Nature-branded thoughts on this, but will write more when it becomes clearer what it will mean for us. Does anyone else have any views on this? Would it make you more likely to go into Second Life?
This from an interview with Stephen Fry that was on Radio 4 this week. Seems relevant to this issue:
“This is an early thing I said about the internet at the time things like AOL were still huge. I said it’s Milton Keynes, that’s the problem with it. It’s got all these nice, safe cycle paths and child-friendly parks and all the rest of it.
But the internet is a city and, like any great city, it has monumental libraries and theatres and museums and places in which you can learn and pick up information and there are facilities for you that are astounding – specialised museums, not just general ones.
But there are also slums and there are red light districts and there are really sleazy areas where you wouldn’t want your children wandering alone.
And you say, “But how do I know which shops are selling good gear in the city and how do I know which are bad? How do I know which streets are safe and how do I know which aren’t?” Well you find out.
What you don’t need is a huge authority or a series of identity cards and police escorts to take you round the city because you can’t be trusted to do it yourself or for your children to do it.
And I think people must understand that about the internet – it is a new city, it’s a virtual city and there will be parts of it of course that they dislike, but you don’t pull down London because it’s got a red light district".
Ian (and Stephen), I absolutely agree. Do you destroy everything that’s good because you might occasionally experience something that isn’t? In which case let’s never make a friend, take a job, get engaged with a TV show that might not end
with Ben grinning evilly and stroking a white cat as Jack and Kate die slowly and painfully, preferably offscreenthe way you want.I have been in Second Life for coming up to three years now and have almost never stumbled upon anything I didn’t want to. On rare occasions I did, I simply teleported away and forgot about it. It certainly doesn’t even nearly match the good things that I’ve found there.