Voodoo Buwan: Time in Secondlife can be charted on a scale of landmark changes that rock the grid. From the ban on gambling to age verification to the clampdown on in-world banking, these are the things that send shockwaves through our virtual world, and if the hysteria is to be believed, threaten to almost end Secondlife. The latest of these spawns from an announcement by Phillip Rosedale that there is a dedicated plan within Linden Labs to do away with the Second Life Teen Grid, and cast the doors of main Secondlife open for our teenage brethren to come and join us. Trin and I have decided that this is a suitably dangerous topic that we should cast our knowledgeable eyes over this, and consider what the impact of this imminent change could well be.

Trinity Dechou: Well of course this is a concept that many people have mused over for a while, and has been mentioned in passing by M Linden himself. The interview with Philip on Metanomics did of course send a rather large ripple of fear through the residents of Second Life and many issues, observations and foreseeable problems have been sited. I think firstly this would be the affect of having minors in a world dominated by mature adult content.

Voodoo Buwan: Well, exactly. I've recently been having a look around the grid to find film related sims, and if you've ever tried to do a classified search for "movies" then you will know that there is a great deal that is not suitable for minors in this world of ours. And for those that think that filtering out mature content will save you from finding listings for voice escorts popping up in front of you, then you would find that you are quite mistaken.

Trinity Dechou: Well I think this whole issue raises a couple of important questions, the first of course being what is exactly mature? In a world where LL allow a massive amount of free reign no one will step up and define what is PG and what is Mature. I'm sure many of us remember such issues as the 'nipplegate' fiasco at Burning Life 2007 for example.

Voodoo Buwan: That was the situation where at one of SL's biggest annual art events, one sculptors’ piece was in threat of being removed from the festival, as it featured a topless lady, and the feeling from the Lindens was that a female statue with nipples was too racy to be placed on a PG sim?

Trinity Dechou: Yes and of course, in its usual nature art raises such an interesting and fraught topic. As an art gallery owner what is acceptable for me to show in a PG sim and what isn't. It's very much down to personal preference in relation to art. We all have differing views and as art gallery owners (for example) there is a minefield of a topic. What about other residents and business owners?

Voodoo Buwan: Well, I think one larger point on that whole scandal, and I think it's a big point when it comes to the proposed merge, is that actually the main reason people were so shocked by LL's decision to enforce rules about what is and isn't acceptable in a PG sim, is that only ever do seem to enforce these rules at such high profile events, such as Burning Life or the SL Birthday Celebrations.

Trinity Dechou: LL enforce exceptionally strict background checks on adults merging into TeenSL as it stands, I wonder what has changed within Linden Lab to drop those floodgates and bring teens into Second Life, when as you've said they seem blatantly uninterested in policing everyday life for us all.

Voodoo Buwan: Well, the initial principle, as it was put across seems sound. Phil was talking about the fact that there are so many great educational opportunities in SecondLife, but as the system currently stands, a teacher and their students would not be able to be on the same grid, enjoying it. Now, I'm a great believer in "thou shalt not think that every single man over 30 who talks to a kid is a pedophile, some people are just nice" (to quote Scroobius Pip), but for some years now the main grid has been an adults only zone, and as with almost any adult's only social space on the net, people have used this, not exclusively, but definitely to a great extent, to explore and experiment with their sexuality, and basically bonk their virtual little bums off. Just because Phil has a love of the educational uses of SL, and delights in exploring these personally, does not mean that the whore houses, strip clubs and porno theatres disappear.

Trinity Dechou: Exactly, but it comes across that sometimes Lindens don't appear to realise what is in our world. For example one of the most highly controversial RP setups within SL is age play and mixing an age play environment with adults playing children and children coming across as adults is quite frankly, an exceptionally worrying thought. As things stand in the SL we all know and love, there are some things that no minor (and many adults) should not see but can be found as a neighbour to the sweetest, educationally friendly establishment you will find.
Voodoo Buwan: I suppose one of the biggest worries seems to be that Linden Labs will just shut down the Teen Grid, open the gates, and say come on in to the kids. And as you say, even if precautions are taken to make sure that, for example, a teen can only step onto a PG sim, the way that the grids have been organised means that some PG sims on the mainland are surrounded by Mature sims, so that as soon as the SL teen learns how to cam into the sim next door, they may well get entirely the wrong kind of education.
On top of this, we can step back to our point about the fact that even on PG sims, there might well be things that are not suitable. I recently, while again researching a story, ended up on the sim for US television company Cinemax. They were promoting a new show, which is shown as part of their after dark lineup, and you can view the first episode on a big screen in the middle of the town square. About 3 minutes into this episode, there is a soft-core scene of a couple making love on a piano, where the woman is visibly naked. I then spotted that this was in fact a PG sim.

Trinity Dechou: Which brings in another very interesting thought I looked into while doing a bit of research into this discussion. The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) is in place to rate many of the games we, and our children play. Similar to television shows, games can also have ratings, will we in the future see Linden Lab apply for a rating under this scheme and if so what will it be given? Under ERSB there are a few ratings including Teen, Mature and Adults Only. Games like Doom fall into Mature and of course controversially many Grand Theft Auto games fell into Adult Only. The guidelines in place give ideas for how ratings are applied. Themes such as animated blood, violence, simulated alcohol, smoking, crude humor, sexual content, gambling and language (which are apparent in the vast majority of sims in Second Life) all contribute to a high age rating for a game. If Second Life as it stands right now cannot be granted a Teen rating and it is something that Linden Lab still want to pursue then realistically we're brought back to the ineptitude to police our world. As sim owners we are not here to police ourselves and our sims, we are not here to decide what is mature and what isn't, right down to things like having voice enabled and even streams playing potentially risqué music. We are also not in place to be parents for the teens invited into Second Life because of a tunnel vision goal to educate whilst ignoring the rest of the world that would need restrained and/ or policed.

Voodoo Buwan: I think one thing that has become painfully evident, and my recent article about inworld gambling highlighted this, is that Linden Labs is, let's face facts, a software company. The Lindens are pretty much without exception, either programmers, developers, or Public Relations or Customer Services representatives. They are neither lawyers or policemen, and therefore do not have the manpower, skill sets or possibly even inclination to patrol such a vast space that the Secondlife grid has become, investigating what someone may or may not have put on their land, or what they are saying, doing or watching inworld. Which again leads us back to how they are going to deal with the integration of underage residents into what has become a largely adult orientated society.

Trinity Dechou: We've all been made aware of age verification and of course this is a subject I have also covered in a previous Rez article. Age verification was the hip new thing that would clean our world up, it however seems to have died a death and hasn't been implemented to the extent that Linden Lab made us believe it would. Will now be the time for LL to panic and hit the big red 'verify' button in a hope that it cures these woes. Of course verification is certainly far from a perfect strong defense for these issues.

Voodoo Buwan: Well, this is the thing. Age verification was introduced as something that land owners could turn on to restrict access of users, and keep unverified people out of sexually explicit areas. The reason it hasn't taken off is that most of these sexually explicit areas, for example places like webcam island, are in actuality businesses, and it doesn't really make massive sense for businesses to actively try to cut down the amount of people entering, especially when so many people didn't want to age verify for logical reasons such as US companies having such a lousy track record for keeping personal information securely. And, as we've discussed, even if now Linden Labs said that if your area is sex related, you MUST make the land age verified, we still end up with the issues of (a) what would be deemed as explicit and therefore age verification necessary, and (b) would anyone even notice if somewhere that was specifically designed as a sex area wasn't using the system, since no one appears to be patrolling the grid to enforce these rules?

Trinity Dechou: With this proposal being such an obvious minefield with the points we have already discussed, why do we actually think Linden Lab decided this would be a good move in the first place?

Voodoo Buwan: Well, the educational justification alone doesn't hold enough water to balance out this, and Linden Labs simply cannot have been naive enough to not have seen at least some of the potential issues above. Some people have been suggesting that with the current global economic crisis, that the grid merger would have two advantages for LL. One being that the cost of maintaining two grids is simply not cost effective, and that this would allow them to lower their costs, protecting LL as a company in this time of recession. The other is that the influx of teens to the main grid would be an added source of revenue to the main grid economy, meaning that any downturn in inworld spending in the main grid, caused by residents having to tighten their belts, could be cushioned by kids with plenty of disposable income to fritter away.

Trinity Dechou: It is suggested by many that many children have more disposable 'incomes' than adults in fact and that this can, as Voodoo suggests, boost the economy. Many TSL residents are known in TSL as excellent content creators and can also therefore boost the ranges of products/ services on offer in our Main Grid. Another potential reason for Linden Labs decision could be related to the RL news media networks we all love to hate when it comes to SL. According to many in these networks SL is filled with lunatics and pedophiles. Perhaps this move on Linden Labs behalf is, at least in part, an act to 'clean up their image' in the face of RL adversity. However if this is the case, then as above we've shown it could catastrophically backfire on them. One main reaction which has been apparent is many adults saying that teens are already in the main grid and that in fact many teens are actually more adult than many adults here. I must say that saying 'they're already here' is a frankly weak arguement. Because these children have broken the rules already it does is not acceptable to lay down and say, "oh fine then". It is not acceptable as an arguement to say that children in many cases are more mature than many adults here. There will remain at risk children and these are the children that should be protected, however who will be responsible to protect them? I am not a parent in RL and I certainly don't want to become one in SL.

Voodoo Buwan: I suppose the point with that is that, since the kids are here, at least if we make it official, then it can be more regulated. But then, that assumes that someone will be regulating, and apart from age verification, how will you really be able to discriminate between the teens who say they are teens, and those who still choose to be seen as adults. It's a fairly unique problem to sl really, as the other games you mentioned earlier with their ratings have the regulation all at point of sale. If a 14 year old gets onto Call of Duty on XBox Live, it's because a retailer sold it for them when they shouldn't have, or because an adult bought it for them when they shouldn't. Microsoft and Activision don't have to regulate this, because the regulation is done at the store level. Since SL is free to enter via online registration, it has left itself open to these kinds of headaches.

Trinity Dechou: As we have seen from the past, Linden Lab make a stance, take an angle and follow it through. This merge WILL come to Second Life, we do not know exactly when, but we know it is no longer an 'if' situation. The changes that should be adhered to for this to be effective would completely change our Second Life; Your World Your Imagination would become Your World, Our Governance.

Voodoo Buwan: Or alternatively, if Linden Labs mismanage this and don't regulate the merger properly, they potentially put us all on a road that could mean that simply by being second life users we could be branded as corrupters of the innocent, or worse, and Second life would end either by a government stepping in to force it's closure, or due to the fact that residents would leave in droves, fearing that they could end up on a register.


This has been a highly controversial decision by Linden Lab, Voodoo & I have outlined our fears for this change to Second Life. We would invite you, if you feel so inclined, to leave comments with your worries and observations, and if you feel strongly enough, please remember to voice your concerns to a Linden Labs representative. At this point, it can’t hurt.