Pornography and virtual worlds

In the eleven months SLOz has been running, one of the most vexed questions about Second Life and virtual worlds in general in pornography. Our story on Linden Lab’s ban on ageplay is the most viewed story on SLOz and by an extremely large margin – its follow-up is also regularly read. The reason for the enormous number of views comes down to the venerable search engine.

Each day we get hundreds of views of the ageplay story, through people typing a bunch of terms into Google or other search engines. Some of the more common being used are:

– child porn
– virtual child porn
– preteen porn
– preteen panties
– beastiality
– virtual porn
– legal porn
– child panties

There are a bunch of other ones I won’t publish here, suffice it to say there are some sick people out there. What it illustrates is the universality of the issue across the internet. Linden Lab’s crackdown appears to have been effective in minimising overt ageplay. What it can’t do is minimise the significant demand for undesirable images nor the dilemma of defining what consitutes pornography or otherwise.

Where do you see this issue progressing in future?

New posting schedule

It’s coming up to a year since SLOz launched, and the growth in the site has astounded us no end. As anyone running a blog will tell you, keeping things fresh is a major challenge. Usually we publish 6-7 stories, but this will decrease to five per week from 1st October as we concentrate on more in-world activities and further work on building a community on the SLOz forums.

We’ll be working hard to keep increase the quality of our stories and as always we’re most interested in Australian events so don’t hesitate to contact us with any happenings you’re aware of. We’re also hoping to expand our number of writers – if you have an SL issue you’re passionate about, then within reason we’re happy to air those views. We’re not in a position to pay you but a full by-line is given with link to your website or in-world location. We also reserve the right to refuse publication.

As always, comments welcome!

The SLOz Reader Survey

Since SLOz launched in late 2006, we’ve run over 260 stories totalling 50-thousand plus words. The support from the Australian SL community has been astounding, but it’s time to get some feedback from the people that count: you. We’ve created a 10-question reader survey to find out a little about the people who read SLOz, what you like and don’t like and what you’d like to see improved. As we continue to grow, your feedback will ensure growth occurs in a way that satisfies the maximum number of readers. So please, if you can spare 2 minutes to complete the survey, we’d appreciate it!

Click Here to take survey

No identifying details are being collected and no questions are compulsory. So fire away!

Joys and Sorrows of Voice in Second Life

On the SLOz forums, Aussie SL’er Juko Tempel asked for a discussion on voice in SL. So we’ve made her moderator of the Voice in SL forum.

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Drop in and join the debate on voice-enabled SL and its joys and sorrows for you.

Free conference space available

If you’re an educational institution, non-government organisation or charity, we’re pleased to make available SLOz HQ for free. Think of it like the local CWA or Town Hall.

There are three main areas available for small conferences, meetings or social gatherings:

1. Main conference room: this will comfortably seat 40 people and another ten or so standing – which given that SLOz HQ is on a mainland sim is about the limit anyway. There’s a video screen and lectern as well.

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2. Meeting room / offices: there are two offices and a meeting room for smaller meetings.

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3.Social area: This is a regularly used area – lots of open space.

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There’s also an outdoor BBQ area if needed.

To use the facilities just IM Lowell Cremorne in-world or contact us. For-profit entities are also welcome to utilise the facilities at a cost of $2000L per full day.

SLOz HQ – tourist info centre and corner shop

Since the launch of our in-world presence we’ve been working away at expanding what we offer new SL members when they visit. The first two parts of that expansion are:

1. Aussie Landmark Gallery – we’ve added teleport points for some of the more popular Australian landmarks in SL. If you believe your landmark is worth adding to the gallery, let us know. Adding you to the gallery is free if you’re an educational institution, $10L for anyone else to cover image upload costs. We retain the right to not add locations due to space limitations.

2. A corner shop – it’s a fairly abstract looking shop with limited stock at present, but what we’re aiming for is a place for new users to get free clothes / textures etc as well as some cheaper items for sale to help fund SLOz HQ maintenance…

As always, comments are welcome..

SLOz archived by National Library of Australia

We don’t tend to blow our trumpet often, but were just a little bit excited to have been archived by the National Library of Australia.

Ego aside, it’s great to see the NLA being so proactive with New Media.

Opera House build and upcoming stories

Warda Kawabata is responsible for the Sydney Opera House build on Telstra’s BigPond islands launched a fortnight ago. She has described the build in her blog.

Coming up also in the next few days is an interview with Gary Hazlitt, who oversaw both the Telstra and ABC builds. We also have stories coming up on a couple of smaller Australian businesses as well as news about Australia’s first SL magazine….

SLOz HQ launch a success

Like any party, success is never a certainty and we’re the first admit we had pre-party nerves. That said, more than a hundred Australian SL users turned up for the launch party over the three-hour period. We actually managed to crash the Koala sim at one stage when more than forty people were partying.

What became apparent over the nearly four hours the party lasted was that there’s a definitive belief amongst Aussie SL users that they want community spaces to meet and interact. That’s part of our brief and we look forward to providing more opportunities in the future. And we’d also appreciate your input on what you’d like our in-world presence to provide you. A poll on that issue will appear in the near future. First – a pictorial sample of SLOz HQ:





The launch was also the first outing for the SLOz logo:

This site will change to reflect the new look in coming weeks.

SLOz HQ is now open to the public and can be found here

SLOz HQ – The Build is Complete

At SLOz we’ve been working for weeks on completing our in-world presence and it’s pretty much done. So to celebrate, we’re having a launch party on Wed 21st March 8pm to 11pm AEST (3am to 6am SL time on Wednesday 21st).

There’ll be beer, a BBQ, music (Aussie DJ’s or performers feel free to IM me if you’d like to showcase yourself) and maybe even a RL celebrity or two. More importantly, if you’ve got suggestions as to what you’d like our in-world presence to offer Australians in SL, please let us know.

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