Some days ago Cyn Linden published in a post in the new Second Life Blogs some information about the projects of Linden Lab® regarding “adult content” in Second Life.

Is better you take a look at it, but is a bit confusing… anyway it seems is more a declaration than a project. For what i understood Lindens want to restrict the “adult content” in Mainland to an specific continent. Also they want to improve the tool for Estate owners to limit the access or provide a good information to the visitors about what kind of content they can find there.

For me there are now two big questions: First, what is “Adult Content” exactly?

I think this is a hard one. The residents we all come from different countries, with different concepts of what is “Adult content”. Of course a “common core” exist, but there are some grey areas, specially about nudity, or partial nudity, or even about violence. As an example, for me a gun is much more “adult content” than a nipple, but i’m sure some people have not the same point of view. Also nudity is used in some skin vendors, how this will affect them? Linden Lab is now trying to open a discussion about what is adult content in the Forums. I think this will be possibly the most conflicting point.

The other big question is: Age Verification?

Cyn mentioned in the post something about being “Age verified” to access the “Adult” continent of Mainland, the same to access the Private Islands with “Adult content”. Possibly this will be another big issue. I am “Age verified” and have a form of payment registered with Linden Lab®, but some people have doubts about that, and about the privacy of this information. I think it would be a great idea to find a way to be “age verified” out of this; some people don’t have Credit Cards (because they can’t or because they don’t want) and some other people doesn’t like the idea of giving personal information to a “third party” company, like the one Linden Lab® is using right now.

Although all this considerations, all the doubts, the rage in some blogs or in the Forums, will this work? About this i think is very interesting a blogpost by dandelion Kimban. I understand, in a 3D space like Second Life®, some kind of access level based in content may be good for everybody, even for the ones looking for this kind of “restricted content”, but how someone can control the content? The content will be actually controlled by the residents, so it exists a possibility that finally everything remains the same. Well, not the same exactly, some residents will speculate with the value of land in the new “adult” continent, as happened in some themed areas in Mainland, like Nautilus or Bay City.

There is still a way to walk regarding this issue, and is not starting good, in the Forums some people is using big words, comparing the creation of an adult area in Mainland with the creation of a Nazi concentration camp. I think that comparison is excessive, unfair and insulting, constructive comments should work better than starting calling things to people and opening a question like this one to public discussion is really positive. Anyway, let’s see how all this ends… as dandelion says maybe it will be only one of those projects that even they are meant to change everything they don’t change actually nothing… or at least nothing too important.