Love doesnt live here anymore...

Last night, I was notified that my works along with several other creator's work that I have featured in my store are now being sold by some other vendor in SL. At first I did not understand what had happened. I remember seeing her buy many many items from me over the course of a few months. I had figured, oh she has her own store and she is reselling -- no problem there for me. Well the first assumption was correct, but the second was wrong. She is rebuilding all mod enabled builds as her own, texturing them half-assed different and selling them at a price that both undercuts my price and the original creator's price. And this is no small store btw. This store has been around for a while.

I can not divulge the name here but I can hint for the fun of it: First name is the first name of a famous Indy Film actress who was recently in Superman Returns. And it really does not matter who she is. I am sure she's not the only one doing this. So the identity of the perpetrator is insignificant to this thread.

Now I dont understand why someone would go to the trouble of copying a 28 prim couch, when they could have asked me if they can buy a mod/copy/trans enabled version from me for their purposes. I honestly would have helped this person get this business off the ground if they came up and asked me how to make couches like mine or how to create more items in the style I emulate.

Strangely enough, I am not enraged and foaming at the mouth upon this discovery. I honestly felt disconnected and just well for lack of a better word blah.

Has she done anything that's against the TOS, well not really. The items were mod enabled which meant she had access to sizes, locations, offsetc etc. So by setting my furniture mod enabled I allowed her access to this information. Was it against the TOS to create a whole new copy from scratch -- theoretically no. I do however think ethically what she did was wrong. And furthermore I would have liked better imitations. I spend hours getting my textures right. This person just kind of slapped on all the wrong textures. The items barely look like themselves.

So this brings us back to permissions. Here is my shopping list of requests for changes:
1-Separate Transfer from Resale to silence builders who think they should have exclusive right to selling their items. So once they've sold a transfer enabled/resale disabled object, the new owner can give it away but never resell it.

2-Sell For field should remember what the item was worth originally and not allow the new owner to sell it for more. This would please some, the creators, and piss off a lot more people, the potential owners. So I am not sure about this one.

3-Allow permission specific settings on an individual linked prim. I might want to sell a couch mod disabled but might want to allow a new owner to upholster it. So in this instance the entire object would be mod disabled but when you select the seat or the back of the couch and switch to Textures tab, you can change the texture.

4-Freebie Flag. I think it may be redundant but it might do a lot of good for the community to give creators the ability to flag an item permanently as a freebie. When this flag is checked by the creator, the object permanents get set for modify, copy, transfer and no resale.

What do you think?

Troy

PS. I amost forgot. My items are no longer mod enabled. If anyone wants a different texture on a couch or another poseball etc, please contact me directly and I will customize the item to meet you needs. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Same thing, same person, Troy...

I dont mind tho, must be aweful if you cant get one idea out of your head and have to rely on flying around to copy other people's stuff? Things like that just mark her/him as a 'dont take serious'.
My humble advice: DONT sell mod.

Good idea on the requests!

Some of your concepts I believe I am covering for my proposals at the SLCC, Troy. I am going a bit further though, since I think there are far more permission flags that are needed. Group rights, sell to individuals (like with land), splitting modify object sections (each tab should have its own rights, which would cover your re-texture example) and creation of object classes (of which Freebie could be one) are some of the ones I will be detailing through screen mock-ups and pseudo-code. Hopefully you'll get a chance to look at the online version of my magazine if you're not attending the conference and give me some feedback.

which actress? im horrible with actors and actresses names

Ohhhhh yes. This sounds great. Maybe these advanced flags could be tucked away and accessed only when the creator has to be real specific?

I would love to see this doc and the screen mock ups too. Thanks putting so much thought into this. The flags are essentially the beginning of SL law in a way as they help identifty the creator's intent for fair use of the item being built.

Troy

Good Ideas, Troy - I'd like to see the one quoted above most of all.

There are a lot of very talented folks out there that have the desire to create freebies for new residents, but don't because of the whole resale issue, and the PIA of no transfer. More flexibility in this regard could mean better quality free items for those just getting started.

I don't understand people who do this. I created a product on an alt once and later wanted to rebuild it on my main so it would show the correct creator. It was more hassle to rebuild it "by the numbers" than it was to create it in the first place. People who do this must have zero imagination, because it is a huge waste of time...and not overly ethical, as you pointed out.

I do very much agree that permissions, and content creation needs to be revisted very soon by LL.

Exactly Troy, since Linden Lab has been talking about "interface normalization" in many places, I'm designing everything from Wizards to dialogs as people are used to seeing when using their operating system.

Exactly like when you do "Properties" for a file in Windows Explorer, the basic flags would stay nearly as-is, with an "Advanced..." button there to bing up a separate dialog (like they are doing now with Group Rights in 1.12). Here everything from group rights (like media access) to individual "micro-perms" (disable "unlink" could be supported with very little extra data storage needed, and cascading rights (apply to sub-prims) could be properly controlled (no more boxing things to get around permissions).

Me too I am not good with actors/actresses lol



Well, it is to bad, seeing your work copied for sure. I wish SL find better ways.

i'm quite curious why this sort of thing isn't against the rules. it's pretty much content theft if you ask me.

Well, Nimil, as someone who attended a recent discussion about freebie reselling, hosted by someone who supports it carte blanche, I can only try to explain their rationale (which I of course am against).

Some people try to see Second Life as a direct parallel to First Life. If you buy a toaster you can sell it on eBay, the creator of the object has no "flags" to set.

Currently the only method to prevent re-selling completely is disabling transfer and modify. Given modify, a few simple changes and the object is now yours and you can specify the permissions. With transfer enabled you also get access to "resell" therefore by the "letter of the law" you are merely exercising your rights. Without both modify and transfer disabled you are at risk of control, but also limit some rights a buyer would want (modifying textures for example).

The people advocating resell believe that a "finder's fee" is warranted, or "I'm selling on my land therefore I'm recouping a cost to me" is a proper reasoning. They also argue that "newbies" benefit from the ability to resell by forcing new items to be created as old objects propogate. They also argue that people release free items as "loss leaders" to get you to shop at their stores. Whether any of this is true doesn't discount the fact that there will be some people who create for the sheer joy of creation, want to share, and share in a way that no one can be taken advantage of (i.e. someone not in the "know" buying what they could have gotten for free).

The basic problem behind all of the arguments I hear supporting reselling is trying to parallel the Real World to Second Life. Also, some of these people don't see Second Life as "software" and the creations of others inside of this software as software too, therefore deservibg the same protections. It's not like we have a limited inventory needed to be emptied by reselling (or deleting) to make room for more. A couch in SL isn't like a couch in RL. It doesn't necessarily take up physical space (when in inventory), it doesn't require a manufacturing industry to duplicate (and therefore employ these supposedly "in need" newbies).

A term thrown around is "creator fascist" as if you wanting to control your content was evil. Even such far-reaching statements as (paraphrasing) "Second Life will stagnate and die without a free economy to resell anything by anybody" get bandied about. I'm willing to state the opposite: Second Life will die if content cannot be properly controlled by its creators as content in other fixed worlds (like WoW, CoV, etc.) as they will have no incentive to create here.

It is content theft but it also falls into a gray area, the gray area created by our current permission system.

Also compounding the complexity of the issue is, most items built in SL have either RL counterparts or they borrow ideas from existing RL objects. It is because of these reasons I can not claim that the mission style couches I make are being stolen from me. I did not invent the couch, I certain did not invent the mission style so it is hard for me to argue that someone who steals my designs is TRULY stealing intellectual content from me. If anything, they're stealing the 4-5 hours I spend on building one of these SL replica of RL items.

Hence, gray area...

Troy

I often wondered what the logic was behind combinding these two options as one option. It would save alot of headaches if there were seperate.

Alot of players who buy my goods request a tranferable version as a gift - etc - and I hate doing that, but being a good business owner, i reluctantly do it for requests.

i think there is alot of amazing things here in sl, and i can definitely see how someone copying your work can be damaging to your business.. :/

I wish transfer and resale were separate - there's been lots of times when friends have needed something and had no cash, and I'd have liked to give them things I have but I can't because the creator was (understandably) protecting their work ...

Parker Posey

Don't people pay you to deliver direct to them? That's what I do if I want something new that's no trans, for a present.

for those who must have names and locations. Check my blog.

Troy

Mysteriously this thread dissappeared in the pile and went back to page 5. It had so much drama potential... awwww

Troy

Also disappeared is the culprit's store, apparently.

I went to the location you specified in your blog to see it for myself, and it's a big plot of vacant land for sale. That store name doesn't show up in Find, either.

Interesting.

hmm.. kate or Eva.. god knows