Your opinion needed: Maturity Ratings for avatar skins

[Deuce Halsey]

Deuces comments about renting parcels and the inability to have a family friendly area while allowing more adult activities in secluded private areas does illustrate the problem. We are kind of forced into an all or nothing situation. Of course, this really only is an issue if there are users under 18 involved, but I know that for some people that will be a major problem.

My problem is that my main product line is funny t-shirts and posters - with most of the designs being general and a few tending towards moderate. I would like to keep my world Moderate if I can do so since kids (whether or not they are using child avatars) would be likely customers for my products. I need to think about this for a while, but at the moment I'm seriously considering removing the condo/apartment building I recently began developing and just renting out parcels of land - and limiting my tenants to General/Moderate content.

I may not get many people interested in renting such property for residential purposes. But I might get some folks who are interested in installing their own commercial builds and can meet the General/Moderate requirements. In fact the light-hearted tongue-in-cheek theme of my world might appeal to some folks with humorous/whimsical business concepts.

[Ada Radius]

People keep comparing Kitely and Second Life. I think it's important to note the differences in the respective terms of service:

Second Life:

You must be at least 18 years old to use the service without supervision. "you may use any public area of the Service and, with respect to Second Life, in accordance with our Maturity Ratings." "In order to access Second Life regions or listings designated as “Moderate” or "Adult Only" Content (which Content may be explicitly sexual, intensely violent or otherwise designated as Adult under our Maturity Ratings ("Adult Only Content"), you affirm that you are at least eighteen (18) years of age, or the age of legal majority where you reside if that jurisdiction has an older age of majority. You further agree that as a condition to accessing Moderate and/or Adult Only Second Life, you will submit to account verification as required by Linden, and provide only true and accurate identification documentation to Linden or its third party service providers to verify your age. You further acknowledge that you will comply with our Maturity Ratings, and conduct any activities we have defined as Moderate and/or Adult only within regions designated as Moderate and/or Adult."

If you are between 13 and 18 years old your parent or legal guardian must "accept this Agreement, your use of the Service, participating in the Service, and providing any personal information in connection with the Service on your behalf". "you may access the General area of the Service in accordance with our Maturity Guidelines."

You can't go into Second Life if you're not at least 13 years old.

Kitely:

You may use Kitely "provided that you are either (i) of legal age to form a binding contract and are not a person barred from receiving Kitely Services under the laws of the United States, Israel and/or other applicable jurisdiction; or (ii) operating during your use of the Kitely Services under the supervision of a person of legal authority to form such a binding contract on your behalf, under the laws of the United States, Israel or other applicable jurisdiction." "Kitely is unable to authorize legal access to children under the age of 13, without parental or legal custodian supervision ("Adult Supervision"). If you are not yet 13 years old, and do not intend to use the Kitely Services subject to such Adult Supervision, you must wait until you turn 13 before you can create a Kitely Account."

Comparison:

In SL, users under 18 years old can only access General areas. Anyone accessing a General area should behave according to that maturity rating. SL doesn't enforce its own TOS in this regard which is one of the reasons why it has such a bad reputation in the media - there are no public places where kids and people at work are safe from encountering content/behavior that can get them (or the people responsible for them at the time) into trouble.

In Kitely, supervised users under 13 years old can access General worlds and unsupervised users 13 to 18 years old can access Moderate worlds as well. Moderate is a place where teens and adults at work aren't limited to kid stuff. There is a big difference between playing ball while wearing a one-piece swimsuit and making out while wearing a sexy bikini. The behaviors that are permitted in General and Moderate also differ. Young kids and teens/people-at-work each deserve to have their own public areas which they can access without being forced into one young-kids-safe category.

(Future) Enforcement:

This currently doesn't exist but in the future we may add a world-manager option to force visitor content to be maturity rating appropriate and only from the Kitely Market (where people see what other people are selling and can thus report mis-labeled content). Other visitor content won't be rezzed when that feature is enabled. So Adult HUDs and animations will not work when that setting is enabled. Skins that didn't arrive from Kitely Market will be auto-dressed server side so as not to appear naked.

The ability to allow/disallow hypergrid visitors will be a per-world setting. When they visit a General or Moderate world we may (once we have that capability and the world manager enables it) auto-dress HG-users skins and limit the content they bring inworld.

Recommendation:

Kitely has no mainland it has just user-managed worlds in which the users are responsible for enforcing maturity rating appropriate content and behaviors. Think of this as a type of hosting service, if you let certain things happen in your website then you may get into trouble with your web-host (you may lose a bit of money and be forced to move web hosts), with the people who visit your website (they can sue you and it may cost you dearly even if you win), or in extreme cases with the government (which can throw you in jail for many long years, confiscate your family's assets, etc.). If there is a section of your website which you deemed to be kids-safe but let people publish adult content in then (depending on the type of content) you may find yourself in trouble and no "but other websites don't monitor what their users do" claim will help you at that point unless you can prove you acted promptly to remove problems once they've been reported to you by your users. Even so, if the problem repeats too often the risk of you getting in trouble with one of the aforementioned parties grows.

This relates to public sandboxes as well, people can get their own worlds for close to nothing in Kitely, why take a risk with what content they're going to import into a world you're responsible for? In other words, I would personally avoid giving people I don't know and trust build rights on a world I manage.

The cost of getting your own worlds in Kitely is very low, especially if you go the Premium Account + Metered Worlds route. I suggest people take a step back and understand that this means that instead of trying to do all your activities in one world you can simply use different worlds for different activities, making each one accessible to the people who you'd like to share that activity with.

[Sherrie Melody]

I'm struggling with all of this, quite possibly without good reason. My activities are G-rated. At the most, my worlds would provide for Moderate-rated activities. Out of habit, I always set my worlds to Moderate.

if you let certain things happen in your website then you may get into trouble with your web-host

I suggest people take a step back and understand that this means that instead of trying to do all your activities in one world you can simply use different worlds for different activities

For me, I am not conflicted about wanting to do "all activities" in one world. I only want Moderate activities at most, and as far as I am able I will enforce that, including restating TOS on the world page, and in world too, banning TOS violators when I am made aware of them.

On the other hand, I hope that I am right in assuming that Kitely will be helping world owners in that fight too though. When other avatars violate the TOS in my world, Kitely should penalize that avatar, ban them, or whatever is necessary. I would hope that if I got hit by multiple griefers intentionally breaking TOS in my world that Kitely would be going after those griefers, not me.

[Sherrie Melody]

Hi Sherrie,

We're not out to get you, we're on your side and trying to provide you with tools to protect you from third parties.

Our TOS states the acceptable use of Kitely worlds by you, the world manager, and the people who visit your worlds. It is your responsibility to make sure that people respect our TOS while they are in your worlds. If someone acts inappropriately in your world then we expect you to take action to remedy the situation. If they do so repeatedly even after you warned them then we want to know about it so we can take action against them. If you are under a concentrated ongoing attack then we may advise you to make your world private to just the people you trust until the matter is resolved - that would enable you to continue using your world without breaking our TOS while the griefer(s) have yet to be dealt with. The point in time you, the world manager, will start having problems with us is when we find that you are complacent in allowing content and/or activities that are not allowed by our TOS to take part in your world(s).

I hope that clarifies things a bit

[Sherrie Melody]

It does very much. Thanks Ilan.

[Ada Radius]

I think the discussion has been very helpful - many points of view. Different projects have different needs. All of us should have our points of views recognized, and I think we have. That said, the rules will have to somehow comply with the law in as many countries as possible, however irrational. It's quite difficult and will end up having to be a top-down decision. And also has to be expressed in the TOS as clearly as possible, not something any TOS/tech writer is especially gifted at.

How will enforcement be handled? In SL, when Zindra opened a few years ago, I got shoved off M-rated mainland onto the "Adult" mainland* for having ordinary SL skins for sale, and the gross and skanky neighborhood pretty much drove sales to zero. Then I was appalled to see bustling M-rated estate sim malls with skins and posters far more explicit than mine - a good example of handling this poorly, and something all skin designers are sensitive about. Don't get me started on SL Marketplace enforcement. I actually do sympathize with LL's difficulties with this - who would want to hire someone to make decisions on what is or is not obscene? Porn sells, so we can't be surprised if sellers push on the rules as much as they can. Someone in this forum made the point that just because he wants an "adult" skin doesn't mean he wants to view every perversion for sale, and I agree. I don't know what a good solution is, either.

So. I've moved all of my human skins to "Adult" at Kitely Marketplace, it's just easier than trying to figure which category I fit into. When we have a clear set of rules, I'll decide what design changes to make, when I have time to work on it. No worries. Meanwhile there's a lot of custom work to do, which is happier and more productive for me anyway.

Ada

*(no complaints, LL reimbursed me for the old M land, and gave me the new Adult land cheap, which I eventually sold for a steep profit - there was a small bidding war on my parcel between the two neighboring brothels, lol)