Parasitic capitalism and you, the content creator

I've always disabled transfer on my freebies. I know that doesn't fit with every type of freebie others make but it's been suitable for me.

Content creators so afflicted should file DMCA takedown requests with Linden Lab, faxing or E-Mailing a screenshot of the item properties window including a creation date and original creator tag. I'd be interested in seeing the results.

Me too.

I make mine No-Mod/Copy/Transfer and I put *FREE* right in the object name. It won't stop the problem but it at least gives the prospective mark a red flag to look for.

Some items are intended to be educational -- a base on which to innovate. Unfortunately, putting limits on that defeats their purpose. How do we distribute an item with full permissions, but prevent the item from being resold, unmodified (or worse, with crippled permissions)?

(I know there's no answer to that... it was a rhetorical question. )

I depend on donated freebies at the Shelter. Typically, when someone makes a freebie donation, they have two options:

-Give a copy their 'freebie box' to me to place out (simplest)
-Add the donator to an autoreturn group, and have the donator place the freebie themselves. (more hassle)

When the creator must make their items No Transfer, (unless they want to trust me to tick the checkbox for them), option two is the only option.

I'm really supportive of the idea of having an object option of 'no resale', because it makes the need for option two above less neccesary.

Not complaining of course - these are after all, gracious donations

I'm working on a Christmas ornament that's about done that I intend to give as Mod/Copy/No Transfer, or Mod/No Copy/Transfer. Definitely want it to be mod so people can pick it apart and study the different shapes (It's an angel made of twisted pieces of rings/torii). Still haven't decided if I'm better off just making it no transfer, or putting say 6 in a box and giving them as No-Copy so people can share them...

When we had the phantom av 'feature' in its original form, I wrote the necessary few line script and gave them away free as a nice lil belt attachment with a phantom toggle button, mod and copy, but the script no mod.

Same day I saw someone selling it for L$400. With my name on it.

Ok, I couldn't stop that, admittedly, so same day I released a second 'enhanced' version for free, excepting that this version checked it's own name and description and reset the name to "Phantomizer - FREE ITEM - NOT FOR RESALE" and informed the new owner "If you just bought this FREE item, please Abuse Report the seller, report them to Kris Ritter and consider neg rating them! Thanks."

I've done that with free products since then. Suits me well.

If it would work for yours, perhaps consider something like that? It does depend on your not wanting the script moddable, of course. So if it's open source it ain't gonna help ya. But if you want to stop parasites selling your scripted freebies, it might.

Personally, I feel that the permissions of content created in game should have more than just "transfer" . It should be more along the lines of "give away" and "resell". If a creator had those options I'm sure it would help alot with the problems going on with IP/Copyright issues.

If you mark it give away they cant resell it


Really ,people who sell freebies for high marked up prices just to earn some L$ are sad . And those that do want to rip noobs off need to be shot ;/


my 2 cents

After having this happen time and time when I was making stuff for the GNU store, I started making everything No Transfer. It simply wasn't worth the hassle of the near-constant messages from people warning me about others selling my items, or angry people demanding refunds for things I never charged them for in the first place. It's easier just to pass someone a house or a landmark than it is to deal with the parasites who want to make a quick buck off someone else's good nature, and ruin that good will in the process.

There have been head-nods by Linden Lab for at least the last two years saying that they know permissions need to be overhauled; to date there has been no action.

The current version of the LL Terms of Service pretty much says that you have no rights to your stuff on LL servers once on LL servers (one person's interpretation) so DMCA takedown requests for items that were created in SL are meaningless.

Their world, your imagination, a wave of carpetbagging sleezeballs coming in because dear Philip beat the "play SL make money" drum a little too often.

Nice idea with the ”put in a box”.. can I use it?))

And tks al for sharing how to set the copy/mod and more.. As a designer in SL as well as IRL.

The mentioned place with freebies.. can every one of ”us” in SL put things at that place - are allowed to do that?? I can add one or two things if so...

****

I have knowledge IRL of how designs are stolen... You spend hours, weeks, months on a project and then a day.. you see a bad done copy in a shop.. and as a small designer you have terrible problems to protect your designs.. as seen in SL as well..

I have showed designed bags for a huge Swedish company... and a plan how to use it... . ”we will think of it and thanks for sharing”... some months later.. it was used.. under another designers name... got a great price to...

***

I hate al that steal designs.. but i know the hard way - there are people without own capacity, own ideeas and parasites.. bad bad bad...

Great idea Kris. I think I will do something much like it except instead of IMing, I will use something like this:

if llGetObjectName() == objectName;
RETURN TRUE
else llDie();

Seeing as only a few people are slimey enough to do such a disgusting thing, I think we can enforce a "do it & get shot" policy! where offenders get executed IRL for doing it

I think making an option of transfer/no resell would be great.

I have Moopf's free snow sim survival kit and was sad to see a few of the things no transfer, since I wanted to give copies to a few friends (for free of course). Instead I gave them copies of his LM and told them to go get their own. Now I understand why he marked those items as no transfer.

I just stopped.

Did the trick for me - as for stuff I made for free already that folks are reselling left right and center (even on SL exchange) - well I sorta got tired of hitting the brick wall with LL and others so I just gave up.

Sure - apathetic of me I know - but I came to the conclusion that it just wasn't worth wasting my time or energy anymore. So now I just don't make freebies for educational purposes anymore... My answer now is 'RTFM' just like I did.

I wanted to make it easier for folks to learn - but eh, it seems to me that most just wanna learn how to turn a quick buck - so basically, fuck em.

Siggy.

From my perspective, the downside to making freebies no trans is it seriously disrupts the ... Im thinking the word I want is viral ... distribution. Everyone has to get theirs from one or more "authorized" (if you will) sources.

And losing that saddens me. I made a cat ... little one prim kitty, based on a photo I took of one of the feral cats in my neighborhood. I cant tell you how pleased I am to see that kitty crop up in the most unexpected places ...

Anyway, sad as it is, I suspect that until LL gives us a proper permission set, including control over "2nd generation" permissions (what the person after the "next owner" can do) it may be the only way to stem the abuse by those whose greed outstrips their morals and ethics.

Yeah Siggy, this is the sad reality of it.

I for one used your hot-tub script a 100 times as a reference for something I was scripting.

It was a great piece of work and its taught me ALOT about LSL.

Fucking parasite resellers have stolen not only objects, but took the teaching tools away from new residents who are eager to learn.

Everything I've created is no-copy, no-trans, and costs money.

But, if I was to release something to the community and wanted to be militant about it being free, I'd include a license agreement, to pop-up on_rez if the owner was changed from it's original owner (me, or someone else if given away/sold). Dialogue pops up. Agree/Disagree. Death upon disagreement.

Case A: Object is given away for free to the community. Breach of license would occur if user sells object for commercial profit. DMCA Takedown Notice sent upon discovery of object sale. Legal action taken if I feel like being really mean.

Case B: Object is given away for free to the community. Breach of license would occur if user does not purchase a copyright resale license, and is discovered selling the object. Object sales are allowed if said license is purchased, however. DMCA Takedown Notice sent upon discovery of non-licensed seller.

Case RIAA: Same as case B, but copyright resale license costs US$1,000,000. Infringing sellers are then sued for full damages, but settle out of court for US$250,000.

If an item is supposed to be a base on which to innovate, then you have to allow for people to make use of their innovations, which includes selling them. If their innovations are negligable, they're competing against the freebie at a significant disadvantage.

Here's some possibilities:

What you could do: release two versions of the freebie in the box. One that's got all the features but is no-mod/no-copy/no-trans, and one that's a minimalist version, in plywood, maybe missing some of the frills in the scripts (eg: no signal lights) with full rights.

What LL could do: make sure the newbies have a chance to see your stuff first. I really think the Lindens should be providing a user-supported freebies spot that's really obvious from the welcome area, maybe with some way for greeters to boot bogus freebies. that would pretty much kill the resold freebies market.

I do not believe that it would be technically possible to prevent someone from taking the money in one hand before giving the item for free with the other... and on the other hand, what would happen to Yadni's Junkyard and the other dollar boxes?

Either way there should be a change in the permissions. I'm sure if there were those two options added you could possibly check both if you wanted to. I would much rather see a change in permissions to stop people from ripping other people off .

Maybe a 3rd option? Like transfer/resell/free and all the L$1 boxes could be filled up with the free items

Like if it were free you keep it foryourself but not trade it or sell it to anyone else.
transfer you can give it away w/o pricing the item
and resell you can set the resell price and what not but not transfer to someone else etc...

if there were more options than what there are now it would help about .

I was thinking about this this morning.

My idea was that you could apply a "wrapper" to an object, then set new permissions on it. The wrapper would have a set of conditional flags that determined when the wrapper would be removed (of course it could always be removed by the owner of the wrapper).

Transfer Ownership

Rez in World

Sell for L$[......]

etc...

If the wrapper had a conditional flag on it, that operation could always be performed... so you could set an object "no trans" but put a sale price on it... and the object could be sold (with the twist that it would be the owner of the wrapper, not the owner of the object, getting the price set on the wrapper).

So this would let you set "second owner" rights, including making the wrapped object no-copy and the unwrapped object copy/no-trans (for gifts), or the wrapped object copy/trans and the unwrapped one no-copy or no-trans.

The sale price could be used as a flag (sell for L$1) to let you know it's been sold, or a commission (sell for 10% less than your vendor price, so every customer becomes an agent).

Also:

Expiration: [...] days [...] hours

This would be the equivalent of calling llDie() after that time, but it would be maintained by the asset server from the time the wrapper was exposed. This would let you rent objects, or create objects that can be temporarily given to people or rezzed in the world.