Innula Zenovka

I'm a bit puzzled about the new rules concerning skins for child avatars, I have to admit. If a child avatar, fully clothed, is wearing alpha layers under their clothes (or has parts of their mesh bodies alphaed out by their HUD), then how is anyone going to know what their skin is like? I'm not sure how Governance will react to people who go around de-rendering other people's clothes to check on what they're wearing (or not) underneath -- I'd certainly regard that as pretty creepy, stalkerish and harassing behaviour that it might be unwise to advertise -- and, in any case, if someone's wearing an alpha layer, how do you know what's underneath it?

Is it "pretty iffy" though? I mean, maybe it's just me, but when I'm visiting friends in their homes on Bellisseria or wherever, if they want use their sex bed they don't normally invite me to stick around and watch. Participate, maybe (which would be against ToS if I were a child avatar) but not just to stick around.

I assume it's primarily aimed at "family friendly" nude beaches and the like. The FAQ say

I find it difficult to believe that "could be seen as under 18" is the test here, assuming there's no other indication of the avatar's supposed age.

"What LL deems a child avatar"? From the FAQ

People using SL to create scenes of virtual child sexual abuse is clearly a large reputational risk to Linden Lab, so it seems to me only prudent of the Lab to ensure it's able to say "We've taken all reasonable steps to prevent this kind of thing, while still enabling people to role-play as children if that's what they want to do." Banning child avs from Adult land is clearly a step in that direction. It also helps people who run adult venues, because in the past they've had to worry about taking steps to prevent avatars who clearly represent children from using their sex furniture (this is one reason why people use annoying scripted nonsenses to exclude avatars based on height). That's not now such a concern, because avatars representing children will be risking a permaban by being on the same region as the club, let alone standing too close to the furniture. Furthermore I would imagine LL have also considered the likely effect on retention of having new users who've decided to try SL because they've heard it's a place to have virtual sex going to an Adult region looking for fun and running into child avatars when they get there.

This is what I would like to clarify at the forthcoming Governance office hours. My reading of the KB is rather different from yours -- I take it to mean I can sell beds containing adult animations from my store on M rated land so long as I don't use Adult search terms in my store listings and don't encourage people to hold orgies there, but I would like to ask Governance to confirm this.

It would be good to clarify this at one of the forthcoming Governance office hours, but it's my understanding that there's no particularly requirement for a store that sells "adult stuff" to be on an adult region, though they may want to be on one in order to use particular search terms. From the Knowledge Base

Until now, unless the adult and child avatars are shown engaging in sexual activities, your "prints and photos of women dressed like children, with avatars that resemble children and old people going to get this service" have disclosed no infraction of any SL rules, since both the adult and the child avatars have been allowed on Adult regions. Now, however, that has changed, so your screenshots will disclose an infraction, assuming they're taken on an adult region.

Anyone who has been involved with running an Adult venue will all too often have heard things like "Look at my profile! It clearly says that I rp a young-looking, troubled, nineteen-year-old!" or "I know I may look like a child but actually I'm 573 years old in anime/fay/neko years". If this proposal were to be followed, we'd presumably also hear "You can't throw me out! You may think I look as if I'm 14 at most, but my Immutable Age Demographic says different!"

People who make bodies for child avatars will presumably have to relocate their stores to M land if they want to attract customers, and other stores and RP regions that cater to both adult and child avatars may also want to reconsider their locations. There's no obvious reason why a motorcycle store needs to be on Adult land, after all, unless it has an Adult club attached. Or that subset of people who both RP as child avatars and also regularly use these motorcycle stores/participate in Star Wars RP/go on Drivers of SL expeditions to Adult regions will need to accustom themselves to changing their content preferences when they change into their Adult avatars and to changing them back when they return to their child avatars. I'm wondering how large those subsets are, in fact. I suspect it's a matter of tens rather than hundreds of people.

My discussion with Coffee began when she expressed her concern that child avatars using RLV HUDs to allow their parents to control them might inadvertently find themselves force teleported to an Adult region by an absent-minded (or possibly malicious) parent. As you suggest, I think they would rarely need to change their settings. Your examples, if I properly understand them, seem to involve someone who regularly switches avatars on the same account, and spends most of their time in an adult avatar.

It's the "constantly" that bothers me. How often, in the normal course of events, is someone who customarily RPs as a child avatar going to need to switch their preferences in order to visit an adult region? (And I think you only get teleported to an Adult infohub if your preferences are GMA).

I'm sorry but I don't see the problem. If someone is wearing a child avatar, they shouldn't be in an adult region, and it should be no hardship for them to keep their settings on GM. If they want to go shopping in an adult region, then wear an adult avatar and change the setting to GMA, and change back to GM when they're finished. What's the difficulty?

Does an RLV forced teleport override the Maturity Ratings settings in the teleportee's preferences?

Try it again and see what happens. I've just switched mine to GM to take those screenshots and back to GMA with no difficulty.

No, it's nothing to do with your RL age (you've already confirmed you're an adult in First Life when you opened your account). All setting the maturity rating in preferences does is what it says: "I want to access content rated ...". It tells SL what you want to see in search and what kind of regions you want to visit (It's set to G and M by default, when you open a new account).

It does already -- set your preferences thus: and when you try to go to an Adult area you see this

Though any doubt about whether or not babyfurs, furry cubs or anime avatars are child avatars or not is only going to be an issue in very particular circumstances. If people avoid Adult regions while wearing particular avatars, and avoid a particular range of activities on any regions (or at least avoid these activities in public) then they don't need to worry.

To pursue my analogy with UK prosecution policy, I can't imagine any prosecutor would think an indecent image of a model who looked like either of those women could be the subject of a successful prosecution, even though the younger woman might have difficulty buying a drink without her ID

Are their looks at all typical for Japanese or Korean women of that age, though, or are they unusually youthful looking? (Having been an estate manager on Adult regions in the past, I'm really not sure I'd have accepted "I'm role-playing someone who looks a lot younger than my age" as a reason not to ask someone to leave).

As to what constitutes a child avatar, perhaps I may contribute an insight about prosecutions involving indecent images of children under 18 in the UK, something of which I have some professional experience from another life. The point about parliament fixing the age as 18, even though our age of consent is 16, is that, unless the prosecution can prove the identity and birth date of the subject of the photograph, it's up to the jury whether they can be sure or not that the subject wasn't 18 at the time the photograph was taken. Since a juror can't be sure that the image isn't of a young-looking 18-year-old rather than of mature-looking 16 or 17 year old, there won't normally be a prosecution when that doubt exists. It's only when the police and prosecutors feel confident that jurors will take one look at the photograph and say "no way is s/he 18" that there's chance of a prosecution. I would hope LL will take a similar common-sense attitude to enforcement.

From the blog post What, if any, grounds do you have for going behind that by saying things haven't "been adequately addressed"?

From the KB article on Maturity Ratings

Maturity ratings are set at the region level.