Permissions made Easy! Sellers take note!

Edit -- I removed the info, as a Linden posted (below) that this is a bug in the system, hence what I posted would be abuse.

Bos

Flame away, but doing this strikes me as abuse unless you somehow make it VERY clear to the buyer that once they've bought this from you, they are stuck with it forever.

I've bought several things that, once I owned them a while, I no longer wanted for some reason or another. So, if someone else wanted them, I either gave them away or sold them - just like I would in FL.

There is a thread somewhere where the Lindens say that the ability to sell objects you own will always be in SL. Having bought something, it is YOURS to do with as you like. Hey, I'm sure that Patti Smith would rather I went and bought her CD's new, but when I came across them at a charity sale for the library this weekend, I snapped 'em up! Same with SL.... if I no longer want the copy of a record I bought at the store in Jessie, why shouldn't I be able to sell it to someone who does? Not multiple copies, but the one single object I bought myself.

I think artists in particular need to be careful about this. If you don't make rare but resellable work, the "economy of art" can't click in and drive up the value of your works. Bear this mind!

Bhodi

Ahh yeah I think you might be right. Maybe a Linden will comment. If so, then this work-around will need to be addressed and fixed in the code.

I, however, would disagree with not letting the creator of an object from setting the permissions however he/she sees fit. After all it's their creation and their decision on how it gets distributed.

If you buy something, sure you own it, but that (to me) doesn't grant one with universal rights to the object. You can't buy a hamburger at McPuko's and sell it out of your house as *your* hamburger. Even though it is "your's", it isn't your's to sell, legally. It's your's to stare at, throw away, eat, etc. True enough you can give it away -- but in SL you can't differenciate between *give* and *sell*. Perhaps that needs some work. It definitely irks me that the permission to give and sell are the same permission ("transfer"). These really ought to be seperate. Perhaps even a "next owner can sell for [<max_amount>]" .. allowing the next person to sell it but set a cap on the price. Giving away is great, if it was a seperate permissions. As it is now it's stupid, because it lacks any form of "protection" that these permissions ought to bring.

Anywho, good point you brought up and worth keeping in mind.

Boso

The sell or give away option isn't a bad one.....all it allows them to do is sell or give away the one copy they have....they can't start up a business using the one item they bought...I personally don't see it as being a problem.....(just my opinion)

I would be very unlikely to buy something restricted like that. It smacks too much of the RIAA/MPAA and their lovely little DRM schemes. Being able to resell a physical object, but not copy it, is a legally recognized ability in real life, and I think it should be here as well. With the creator of an item explicted spelled out on the object it's even hard to pass it off as yours than it is in RL.

Also think, if someone is selling your $5 flower pots for say $25, then each one they sell will be $5 in your pocket. Perhaps this opens the door for middle men with a network of manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. Oh the horror!

I don't think the current system should be changed. This is the type of security people asked for and this is what we are getting. The only loss is to the unwary buyer, which is the only situation in which somthing like this should be fixed. The buyer should absolutely know all permissions on anything purchased. That would be the only thing I see wrong with this situation.

Actually, you couldn't buy a bunch of McPuko Burgers and sell them out of your house, representing your house as a restaurant. But you could, perfectly legally, buy a McPuko burger, take it back to your cubicle, regain the willpower to stick to your diet, and say to a co-worker... "Hey, I bought this now I"m not gonna eat it... give me a buck and it's yours."

And I think that's simply a LOT more representative of most resale scenarios in SL than is the idea of someone buying up large quantities of an item and marking them up for sale in their own shop.

The transfer/copy relationship is meant to balance reward for original creations with fair use rights of owners.

This particular 'security' example is a bug in the current code which will be addressed soon.

I am very happy about the feature of deciding whether something i make can be resold. I think giving sellers control over their product is going to make them more willing to make more cool stuff available. Many folks hesitated over putting things in "the wild" concerned that they would lose control over it once it was on the market. Controls like this alleviate that anxiety, and make people who really worked hard to make something unique, more likely to sell it on open market.

[insert "this is not the real world" arguments here]

Ok I wana know, what in this world is so expensive, that it has triggered the need to re-sell it. You (non-specific 'you') purchased a product. You enjoyed it. Your done with it.

Most people do not price things with re-sale in mind. They are selling the USE of the product to YOU. If somone else wants the product they can find the creator's shop and purchase one for themself. Unless the object in question is very high priced this should not be that much of an issue.

I'm willing to bet if somone realy wants something but can't afford it that most dealers will cut a deal with the person in question.

But if your just trying to sell the item because you don't want it any more and you want your money back. Frankly your cheating the creator out of money and that just isn't fair to them.

Real world example: I am given a driver's license. I shouldnt be able to sell or give it away..
Ack nevermind my brother gave me his old driver's license back when I wasn't old enough to buy beer.

You could go to the store and buy 100 flower pots in real life, take them back to your house and sell them for twice as much. The original creator still makes the same money as if they had sold them.

There is a case where we (Alek and myself) have desired the ability to set an object to no copy and no transfer. It is game related (who woulda guessed? ) and a rare situation. We are working on other means for now though.

The problem here is that we are not buying and selling real objects. We are buying creative idea's. It's more a question of copyright not physical ownership. As long as they can't claim that the object they are selling is their own I really don't have a problem if they resell their single copy.

Good enough for me, I won't use this method. I have already turned off all my items from sales, not primarily because I was using a work-around, but because permissions, to me, are not enough.

Much of what I sell can be lost by the buyer (vehicles). So I want a secure method to sell the customer a product that they can re-rez when needed, but not sell.

This is impossible to do. I cannot give the customer the ability to make copies while protecting my work from re-sale.

Therefore I just won't sell diddly beans. I have grown tired of custom scripting by request items that I could otherwise sell automatically. In the past I had to sell no-copy items, and even hardcoded player Keys into scripts for protection. This is tedious and impractical, but the only method that I find safe for my products. Unfortunately the buy must find me for replacements, and I have to keep records of purchases and objects for backups.

I had hoped 1.1 would allow me to automate sales, allow my customers to create their own backups (copies), yet allow me full protection on my invested time created the products.

To sum it up, it would be TOTALLY SOLVED by making "Next Owner can Resale" and "Next Owner can Give Away" Seperate options. Resale is what I don't want. Yes, I want the money for the products I literally spend days scripting. If the customer wants to *give it (the original) away free* that's fine, they can always buy another if they want one again.

Give-Away(original) should be on by default.
Resell should be an option.

Anywho, my shop's closed. I'm tired of trying to protect my investment. Plus I believe this system is buggy. Example:
I just made an item for sale, the object is COPY, the script in it is TRANSFER. The item is given, with other items, to the buyer by a box the buyer rez's -- so they can make multiple self-use only backups. The buyer rez's the stuff, and promptly marks the COPY (No-Resale/No-Mod) object for sale at $1000 (I sold for $200), thankfully customer was my friend testing for problems with permissions.

wtf, the NO-RESALE object IS saleable! I promptly turned off all my sales after that. And I'm thinking they'll remain off indefinitely :p

Unhappy,
Boso

I thought if you set an object to Copy, No-Mod, No transfer then they could make all the copies they want but they can't give em away or sell em or mod the original. Is that not the case?

Yes that's true, but I have items I don't want copied, modified, nor re-sold. I'm MORE than happy if someone wishes to *give it away* freely. But that's not currently an option. Should be, imho.

Bos

There is no real way to stop selling if transfer is enabled. For example, a script could call llGiveInventory() during a money() event.



As noted, this is exactly the permissions paradigm supported by the system. Set the vehicle yes-copy and no-transfer. Your buyers can have as many copies as they want as protection against loss, but the object/script/whatever can never be given away or resold.

I'm with Boso on this one. A scripter spends tens of hours perfecting a script, plus time on top of that to build an object to attach it to, but then someone can buy copies and mark them up and resell them?

That's flagrant BS. People have asked me a number of times if they could buy my jetpack. "In 1.1 I might sell them," I always said. Now it looks like the answer is no.

Seriously, why should someone else profit from my labor?

This kind of sucks, I have a pair of scythes that have been selling pretty well lately... but as of right now all my for-sale items are no longer for sale.

I want the right to determine whether or not my items can be resold or given away, and if they are resold, the seller shouldn't be able to charge a single Lindenbuck more than they paid. If someone doesn't want to buy something they can't resell or give away, let them take their business elsewhere. That's REAL balance.

Unless you think people are inherently entitled to get everything their way at someone else's expense, that is...

I really really fail to see how no-copy/transfer hurts. You still get paid for each item the reseller sells. They have to buy it from you! As long as they aren't passing it off as their work it is fine, and if they are, it is a social issue and I believe a TOS violation. Assuming a bug-free system, each copy of the object that gets rezed in world has to be bought from you at some point. You get paid for them all.

Now of course, that assumes that permissions cannot be expanded by second owners, as in they set it so the next owner from them (3rd owner) can copy whereas the 2nd cannot. I have not personally tested this but hope it's not the case.

An object that the 2nd owner can copy and resell is a different animal, and yes that is bad.

I don't mean to sound inflammitory or anything, I just really don't understand at all how it hurts anyone.

I posted this in the Suggestion forum, but basically my (and other's) grumble is that, in example:

You make a flower pot, you sell it. You want the buyer to NOT copy it, because if they want another to decorate their home they can buy another from you, the flower shop guy!

Because you make it no-copy, it MUST be Resaleable. So now you find Fred selling your rose bud for $10 that he just bought from you for $5. Sure people can come to you to get it, but how many people actually *look* at Creator and go seek out the source? Impulse buyers, the lot of them.

--Anywho so you don't want to make it No-Copy, because the requires Resale.
--You don't want it resale, you're not a wholesale dealer, you're an INDEPENDANT capitalistic self-preserving flower shop guy.

So you stop selling flowers, close up shop, and spend your time hot tubbing in Jessie gaining "social" status from rating parties.

Now, this would be completely solved if objects seperated "Resale" from "Give-Away".
Make Give-Away a hardset non-option. ALL objects could be given away (the *original*) freely.

If you want to give Sally a rose bud, buy one, and give her that ONE special rose. You want another rose for Wilma, you player you, well come buy another special rose for her! I'm flower shop guy, not copy-machine guy.

Resale would be an option. Copy an option, and Modify an option -- none of which would affect the other's state.

Give-Away-Original would never be an option and would always exist on any object.

Contents IN an object should have no affect on giving away the item. But contents need the same protection. I don't want people pulling my scripts out of what I put them in, and putting them in their own objects.

Protection is great, it's better than before, more or less. But it needs something such as what I've suggested. As it is now I'm protecting my scripts and selling like I did pre-v1.1 -- by request and selling No-Mod/No-Copy hardcoded scripts for one user, a serious setback.

Then let them make copies of their jetpack but not mod or transfer. There is no reason for a person to have two, so you aren't losing any sales by making it copyable. And if it isn't transferable then they can't give them away or sell them.

As long as its no mod, no copy, if you set it transferable, you do still get both credit for your creation and payment for each copy in the world.

Ok, I think I understand where you're coming from Bosozoku. But.. I am wondering one thing first that I have not verified..

When I give someone an object with the permissions no-copy/resellable, can they then set it such that it is For Sale, buy Copy rather than Original? If so that is wrong, and I fully understand that complaint, and support any effort to control that sort of resale.

If that is untrue, then the "next next owner" gets the same object the "next owner" had, not a copy, and I still get paid for each instance of my object in-world. In that case I think we've just got a fundamental difference of opinion here and I'll leave it at that.

<edit, typos>

Step 1: Make copy
Step 2: Release copy
Step 3: Someone else claims it

So there'd have to be a protection against releasing as well...

Also doesn't work for stuff you'd WANT two of, like lamps, which I also sell (sold) for $25-$50 depending on complexity. Unless I make them copyable and sell them for $100 or more, I guess.

Oh can copies that are no transfer be released?? If so that is a bug. And what about copies left to rot - they should auto poof or something.

The second part holds true though: As long as its no mod, no copy, if you set it transferable, you do still get both credit for your creation and payment for each copy in the world.

I have to say that the current system if it works as advertised, is the most fair way of handling things that I can imagine. It's basically a combination of two good principles from RL.

The simple fact of life, barring lawyers, is this: If something is yours, it is yours. You should be able to do what you want with it. If you give or sell it to someone else, it's theirs. It's not yours anymore. It's only fair to allow them to then pass it on to whoever they like.

That being said, the other principle is this: Creators retain the rights to further instances of creation unless they sell that also. So, giving us the option to allow copy/no transfer is also a very fair move.

Huns, I hope your method of releasing things to the public doesn't work. If it does, that needs to be fixed to bring it in line with the intentions.