The Alphaville Herald

Putting the Pr0n in Second Life

by Alphaville Herald on 15/04/05 at 11:34 pm

by Walker Spaight

As the lights went down, a hush fell over the crowd…

Complete with obligatory poolside scene, RaAusar Powers’s Apollo Theater in Grizedale brought Second Life its first taste of streaming pornography this evening, with a screening of Sophie II: Anal Action before an audience of fifteen eager avatars.

WARNING: Adult content follows. (Though it’s pretty soft focus, don’t worry.)

Those in attendance spent the first act of the 17-minute movie muttering wisecracks, but were soon silenced by the stunning performances on the wide-format screen. The Herald will refrain from describing the movie’s plot here so as not to give away the end.

As far as RaAusar knew and as far as could be determined by the Herald’s pr0n research team (whose initials begin with the letter N and end with the letter S), Sophie II was the first film of its kind to be shown in public anywhere on the Grid.

“Make sure you get my good side.”

RaAusar is also proprietor of SL Video Bank, the Grid’s first video sales and rental shop, where Sophie II is available, and says he has had “a ton of requests” for pr0n since opening for business with the advent of 1.6. The Video Bank currently has a selection of ten less orgasmically-oriented movies for sale or rent, with a batch of ten more in the works. RaAusar’s RL attorney has advised him that because Linden dollars are not considered legal tender, showing of the films is covered under Fair Use statutes.

Sophie’s bf — or is it her co-worker?

Considering that Sophie II was the first pr0n to be shown in the Apollo, it is perhaps no surprise that there were few if any complaints of sticky floors or seats during the movie. RaAusar was too busy in the projection booth during the movie to answer questions from your correspondent. After the film’s denouement, however, he expressed his pleasure at the larger-than-usual crowd.

Other have not been as pleased at the prospect of pr0n in Second Life, and questions remain as to how much drahma such screenings will generate, or even whether they will be allowed to continue by Linden Lab. Clause 5.1 (iv) of LL’s Terms of Service states that residents may not “take any action or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content as determined by Linden at its sole discretion that is harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, causes tort, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another’s privacy, hateful, racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable.” (Emphasis added.) Whether the Lindens find Sophie obscene or consider her as tasteful as RaAusar’s audience did remains to be seen.

Putting the pieces together

The Herald apologizes for the lag-induced quality of the screenshots accompanying this story. According to RaAusar, streaming longer movies in SL is made difficult because of buffering problems, but he is confident there will be growing interest in pr0n films showing at the Apollo, where he is in the process of uploading more such pictures and plans to show up to five short features back-to-back on future evenings.

Look for a spike in sales of high-powered graphics cards in the morning’s finance pages.