Added you to my list of blogs about this: http://thewintermarket.blogspot.com/2007/08/buring-man-follow-up.html

Hehe, true, true ‘^_^. In addition, the MG should be 16/17+ :-P I mean, listen to the chat we have sometimes :-X. One thing I would like is to at least have an option to “duplicate” a region onto the other grid, and making it in charge by a person from that grid. So we could have DarkLife 2.0! (:-D.

Again it’s the stupidity of the system. If that had been a giant gun firing bullets in the air then no-one would care. But “oh my” show a pair of mildly erect nipples on a ‘carved’ sculpture and you get the police out. Stupid Little People…arrrghhh !!!!

It could be noted that Iriduim is trying to shut Gavin up using CS on him. Her comment on the log blog entry “SL Burning Life Blog”:

Iridium Linden wrote:
I’d also like to remind you that pasting chat without consent is a violation of the Community Standards.

*shakes his head* What has the metaverse com to if nipples on a statue are an issue ? Ridiculous …

I like that speak about community standards after being athe biggest asswhole of the metaverse.

Dandellion, remember the Cheri Horton Honey Wendt debacle? Back then, a Linden got ‘called back’ and was even made to apoligise, bacause she said Cheri Horton’s practice of placing IM and chat conversation on her blog was against CS. The Linden had to apoligize and Cheri Horton could continue placing - very personal - IM conversations on her blog. So as long as the copy pasting happens over blogs/mail/… and not in-world, it is not. (Or Lindens should have changed their mind. =)

Well.., I think the main issue for the Lindens here isnt about nipples being art or not.. its about income..
And some clues can be found in the electrisheep post about Coca Cola that was mentioned in Vints last “webresources” overview

http://blogs.electricsheepcompany.com/joel/?p=47

I guess SL never was ment or designed to be an electronic art platform.. it were only some of its users that guided it that way.
A vanguard.. people with a broad interest. In art, and yes, even kinky stuff, but also, and most important for Linden Labs, a hunger for new technology and a drive to help develop this new world called Second Life..

A lot of stuff was in the beginning maybe not approved, but at least tolerated.. (even if it was against TOS or considered broadly offensive..)
Because LL realized they needed this vanguard. A fan-base that can create buzz, let SL grow and gain momentum..
But they were never the final goal… the masses are. And the companies with big marketing budgets they attract..
Afterall, LL is a business too.. with shareholders who want return on investment..

And the masses are coming.. and with them the Cokes of this world, with their money..
citing some lines of the above mentioned article:

“..but by taking the brand value of coke and appropriately translating it into a virtual world,..”
“..So, they’re looking to be part of people’s lives,..”

What are this values? And do they want to be part of every aspect of your individual life? Even the “artistic” part?
No, not at all.. They want to be part of every life.. but not seen as an individual… as a consumer. The average consumer.
Which means that when you want to tie up with an event, this event shouldnt shock your mr Average. Because he is a possible consumer, but he wont be buying things that dont fit into his life..
Now, if you are directing your marketing campaign to a very specific community, be it geographical or ideological, you can adapt your campaign to the values of that environement..
But if a world brand like Coke starts operating in a world like SL, which is a gathering of different cultures and views of life.. they have to steer away from a lot of things in order not to step on someone’s toes..
They are to afraid to dammage their image and values.. A grey, dull, tasteless but innocent image is preferred..

So, being LL, what would you do? Listen to the whining of a minority that claims to stand up for freedom of expression?
Or to the rustling of dollar bills??

My fear is that, in the long run, we will only have 2 options.. leave, or withdraw in mature ghettos..

now I wonder… isnt the use of polar bears in advertising not to be considered as “broadly offensive” by the Furry community??

[…] totally agree with Vint, Laetizia and Dandelion in […]

But Veronique, as we’ve proven to be a bad platform for branding, then why not aim for the ‘virtual community’ use over business? There will be some place for businesses who do it the right way left, but I think every thriving virtual community needs art. (and nude nipples! ;))

And I think Coke is a bad example of a grey, dull, tasteless but innocent image. As far as I know, almost each of the ads has a very sexual/senseous undertone (coke man in the elevator and the lady secretaries, the fanta, straw and drup on that guy’s chest, …) and the ‘Coke feeling of life’ does leave place for art (be it limited, but for instance they do projects with artists on their cans, etc.) and experimenting. I just think you’ve really picked a bad example here, but the rest of your comment makes sense. ;)

Yes, maybe the Coke is a bad example but we got the point….

I will disagree that SL is proven as bad branding platform. It is just proven that most of the marketeers who came to SL have to learn a lot. Don’t blame the tool just because you don’t know how to use it.

If Lindens are to forbid free expression and art trying to get corporate money, they are just plain stupid. Those things are not to be done that way. In the scenario “let’s use artists and open-minded community to make a hype then throw them away and get masses, corporations and money” there is also the second act “artists go, hype vanishes (as any hype)… and place is not interesting anymore. Artists are somewhere else, and masses migrates there.” Yes, masses may be dull, but masses are attracted by content. And masses are attracted by nipples :p Otherwise there wouldn’t be so many half-naked bodies in advertizing.

Problem with Lindens is that they want to be perfectly safe and to please everybody, but they don’t know how to do that. It is sad to watch them not getting the point of the new media. Even TV has primetime and night programe to cover different standards of what is good to be shown. And SL is much bigger than daily TV programme. Pitty they cannot organize it, nor giving residents to organize it. Pitty they lack their spines.

@Veronique: this is why I did what I did - downgraded from premium to basic. The only way you can prove the point is the money - so be it. It should be obvious who does not have the blurred nipples that doing things like this is the first step to kill the “big businesses” interest as well.

@dandellion: lack of spines, lack of the clue, not sure. As much as I adore the techies at LL, my jaw falls out at the way they communicate. In general, be it customer support, security vulnerabilities, outages, etc. etc. Like I said - I could bear all that - I always tend to try to err on the good side of things - people are not evil, they are just ignorant at times. But this case is a case of actively pursued nonsense. And I am not willing to finance that. So however small my business case is, hopefully there are others who can vote with the wallets.

Banning the casinos instead of putting the proper regulation did slash the economy. Treating the art like it is sets up a nice baseline for extrapolation further on. I am not interested to watch what will be the next idea from the people with blurred nipples and minds.

[…] Then everybody joined the protest, Dalien, dandelion, Vint, Wrath, Nadine Nozaki and the own Burning life […]

I don’t undestand why the exposing of *anything* let alone nipples, would be an issue in a Mature sim. Lindens need to stop being the morality police, and right now. This is just plain bullshit.

Dalien: Indeed. Let’s hope some will follow. But I doubt it. :/ (btw. Is there a comment box to give a reason as to why you’re downgrading your account if you do so?)

Tobie: Most of the land at Burning Life is PG (!!!). It was a PG plot. Now they moved the statue - with some problems in the progress - to a mature parcel. Funny enough, it’s still visible from the PG parcels. =)

Oh wow, I had automatically assumed Burning Life was on Mature land…because…well…it’s SL’s Burning Man, after all! Some people roam around naked or half-naked at the rl Burning Man. They should be allowed that (at the very least) at Burning Life, sheesh…

Those ugly cencorship boxes were created and PLACED by Vicero Lambert. He’s running his own country over there on the Playa. And when he pisses people off to the point that there’s a riot he:
1.Blames Iridium. (Who usually cannot be found.)
2. Get’s out his ducky shoes, girlfriend and the dumbest dance he can find in his inventory.
3. Goes stone silent while Poid (said GF or Vics alt, I haven’t figured out which one) chews everyones ass for being immature.

I honestly don’t think it would have even OCCURED to a normal person to censor that statue. It was Vics decision as dictator and chief of the playa this year.

Iridium comes in, in good faith does some damage control, calms people down and everyone goes away hoping things will get better and it usually takes Vic less than 24 hours to completely screw it all up again. Vic appears to have some skills and I don’t guess I blame the Lindens for snatching the free labour, but they need someone in that can actually deal with people. That person in NOT Vic.

Vint: yes i ranted pretty nicely there. I think it might be connected to a “nonfunctional form” anyway… but hey, at least it accepts the keystrokes.
But if they send me a suggestion to resubmit the comment via alternative url that works, obviously i won’t do it, same as with the developer tools.

[…] after this post I did some thinking: I do really want to go Burning Life. But how to do that when I can not walk […]

In fact, I have the perfect piece of art work to use next time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_Justice

:)

ROFL. Go Nipplegate SL protest! GOOOO! ‘^_^. I could understand Linden Lab when talking about this on the TG, but MG? I mean, everyone there are 18 years old and up! >.>

Veyron, LMAO! Are these the same guys ‘ruling’ our grid? :=d

On May 7, 2007, National Journal’’s “Inside Washington” column reported that it was Monica Goodling who ordered drapes to be placed over the partially nude Spirit of Justice statues during Ashcroft’s tenure as Attorney General. At the time, the department spent $8,000 on blue drapes to hide the two aluminum statues, according to spokesman Shane Hix.

Vint, can you help me cut my nipples too ?

*makes a pleading look of a cat from Shrek* :)

Do with the info as you please (and decide if it’s relevant yourself).

Apparently Vicero Lamber has been violating the ToS himself for the past two years, being under age 18 and on the main grid.

So Iridium points to community guidelines and ToS about copy pasting chatlogs, yet they knew and did nothing about teens on our main grid? No wonder that we aren’t allowed to show nipple! =d

and @Dalien: No, I won’t cut them. I like them to much! Besides, they still need to pose for Pandora. ;)

Jesus Christ, that’s just lovely…

@Vint: Hmm, they’re half-right once you bring that into the talk… Registering to the MG is even easier than to There.com (and their’s has only “Avatar Name”, “Gender”, “Basic Hair”, “Basic Eye Color”, “Password”, and “Email”! O.O) :-/. To tell you the truth, I used to register about 5 a long time ago to test LibSL stuff that required alts, and registering to the TG requires identification using a credit card ‘^_^. (I luckily registering to TSL exactly 1 week before LL started the verification thingy for the TG)

P.S.: I let Blue Linden know of my dummy accounts so I won’t get banned from TSL, so he could erase ‘em and write on protocol I used them to test bots (was half-obvious when one had a first name called “Bot” ‘^_^).

It sounds quite nice and fair practice to name a bot something with “bot” in the name.

Hehe ‘^_^ I remember some, “Lyney Lyne”, “Bot Box” and a few more…

This has certainly discouraged me from proposing to BL. Applause to the people who danced in protest. I can’t imagine real Burners putting up with this on the playa.

The incident has also made me think I should mark my mature sim land as restricted with Adult Content Flag. Heaven forbid someone should see the avatars in the hot tubs wearing mature skins with nipples on them. *sigh*

Rosmairta, tell me that you are kidding.

Rosmairta, marking you land as adult, will only prove the lindens right. Help there move on adult, mature far over to any normal persons acceptable. making the extreme right wing Christians looks like they have a normal view on nudity and sex.

For gods sake nudity is PG, even in humans in movies, even in the US that have quite hard strict rules on nudity (and quite open view on violence) in contrast to the rest of the western world.

[…] about this. We all know the broadly offensive rules are hugely broadly offensive themselves: no nipples on PG areas - be it male or female, no excessive sex or violence - not even on mature areas - and what was the […]