If anyone believes this whole nonsense about Second Life adult ratings is about all those corporations and businesses who turned down coming to Second Life, you are believing a spin-doctored half-truth.

How soon we forget the CNet disaster with Anshe Chung.

The problem there was not that there were adult strip clubs dotting the mainland, or Hard Alleys on private sims, although some of these certainly had other issues. Most serious adult businesses made the effort to leave the mainland years ago. When I first came to Second Life in 2006, I had interest, like many do, in the erotic potential of the platform. We are humans after all, and most humans find sex pleasurable in certain circumstances. When I went looking for those products for purchase – I invariably went to those sims which specialised in it. I never found the good products on the mainland.

I found them first in Eros – Stroker Serpentine’s sim, and I found them in Eventide – the home of Xcite, Javier Puff’s sim. And countless other private sims. They had been, for many years now, doing the right thing and self separating themselves out. Not out of any silly idea of protecting the children – but out of the very real need to have more control over the areas in which they sell merchandise. Same reason most merchants end up buying private sims, or renting on one.

Private rental estates generally have rules to keep the sex out of public view. Caledon for instance makes it clear in the covenant that obvious public activity be along PG ratings and in theme, while making no restriction to renters to do in privacy in their homes what they would like on their land. As a bonus, above the 512 meter level – the theme is relaxed, even security orbs are allowed over 512 meters. They were, like the sellers of sex animations and scripted items, doing due diligence to keep sexual conduct discreet.

None of them needed the Lab’s assistence for any of this. And they rightfully see the Lab’s current policy as destructive to their business. Oddly enough, that also means it’s destructive to the Lab’s business, but I digress.

No, what the real problem for the corporate users who turned down Second Life was that anyone could come to their sim, and rez a tubgirl shooting scat, or wear a hud shooting pictures of penises, in any event and nobody could do anything about it *before* the fact. The corporations had no control over your inventory. There are no ratings of inventory, no filtering of inventory BEFORE entering a sim.

The problem remains that anyone can rez anything they like in any area of Second Life. So this great experiment is nothing more than More Mainland Land Sales, with a happy helping of coercion to buy it on the side, aimed directly at their CURRENT customers. It’s not a solution to those potentials who turned Second Life down. I predict they will continue to turn Second Life down, until some fundamental problems are addressed. Which I shall illustrate further, now.

The corporations had another problem, dating from the days of Wells Fargo. (link is dead – check the wayback machine here)Years ago, they wanted to set up shop in Second Life. They wanted to keep their data in, and they did not necessarily trust keeping sensitive information on LL’s servers. This has nothing to do with the adult content question and everything to do with security, just like the adult shopkeepers who moved to private sims. They didn’t have it. Linden Lab turned them down back then. And Wells Fargo voted with their feet. They didn’t stay, and who could blame them?

The real answer for these security-conscious corporations was making a standalone Second Life. Well, LL is doing that *now*. But it should have been thinking about it when Wells Fargo asked for it.

There is another problem, and answer I can supply. The problem is the question of content. Corporations are also attracted to Second Life because there is an abundance of content to purchase for small fees. These stand-alone Second Lifes don’t have access to that vast wealth of content or to a competitive market of content creators. And this is a problem.

There is an obvious solution, and I have been advocating for variations of this solution for quite a long time now. I will articulate it here.

Create an inventory system that can be ported across grids. That is, a Second Life member can still be attached to their Second Life inventory while in a stand alone Second Life sim.

ALLOW content creators to make PG, Mature and Adult rated content that can be rezzed across grids, while preserving the permissions system.

Allow standalones and private sim owners to decide which of this content can be rezzed in their systems.

Make this system OPT IN. Content creators need to *submit* their merchandise for ratings. I will be happy to pay a small fee for this. There is no doubt the Teen grid would love to buy PG rated content from the Main grid too. I am certain many content creators would be FINE with a controlled content system that is cross grid portable, as long as they have the choice whether to participate in it or not.

UNSCREENED content should be allowed as usual, in Second Life proper (the Linden Lab main grid), in Mature sims and up, and also in private sims on the discretion of the sim owners. NOT on standalone grids.

Problem solved.

HAI LL, I HAZ IDEA 2 MONETIZED CONTENT 4 U. Don’t forget to thank me if you use the idea

I would be DELIGHTED if the Lab used it!