Freebe permission flags and minimum sales value.

OK There is this long BlahBlah battle going on about people reselling / giving away sellable objects as well as taking freebies and reselling them for great profit.

Main part of the suggestion is this: A freebie permissions flag. Kind of like the GNU license, anything that comes out of it must also be a freebe. So, if I upload my picture and set it as freebe, nobody can resell my texture to someone else. If they put my texture on an object, it must also be a freebe and will not be able to be sold for $L. Anything currently in-world is considered grandfathered and is fair game.

Extensions of the idea: Holding Value

If the texture was sold for $10 to Mr A, and he trys to resell it, the original creator gets 10% of the sale. The sale must be at LEAST the amount it was sold for so things hold their value. So my sold texture could be copied and resold (and not just given away as a freebie like it is now), but it would have to be resold for at least $10 If you take my texture and resell it for thousands, I would want a chunk. This protects IP. Now if you use my texture on one of your objects I would still get a chunk but only 1% or so. An object would be composed of the value of the prims I bought and 0 for the prims I create. I then take that min value and mark it up. On sale commissions get taken out before the money gets into the seller's hands. I am not sure how this would impact vendors and stuff currently in-world.

This could easily be bypassed by making the payment and the delivery of the freebie separate operations. Most scripted vendors will do this automatically.

Here's an alternative that will actually work:

Allow an item to have a "royalty" assigned to it. The royalty will be paid to the *creator*, not the *owner*. Only a script owned by the creator can transfer the object without this royalty being paid, and only the creator can set an object containing the item for sale for less than the royalty price or enable "anyone may copy" for it.

To transfer the object, you would need to set it for sale and have someone buy it, or call "llSellInventory()" in a script with DEBIT permission.

If an object contains multiple items with royalties owed on them, then all royalties will be paid at the same time.

This way you can set your freebies out but enforce a resale price that prevents competitors from simply reselling them as part of their own product... unless they pay you for the privilege. You could set the royalties to a token to track who's using your product, set them to a percentage of your price to effectively make your customers commisioned salespeople, or even set them higher than your own sale price to discourage resale.

Bump for Argent's good idea.

Just a side note, the topic says "minimum sale value." I think you mean maximum sale value.

First one sounds good. Second one sounds like you don't much care for the doctrine of first sale. Sorry. The 'I get 1% because you used my texture in an object' is plain evil.

This works for some things, but what about the case where someone takes a free script (say) and does a lot of work to improve it or otherwise add value. A case in point is those sailboats that are based on a freebie original script but havea lot of value added.

There is a problem with people selling freebie objects unchanged, but things get a lot more complex once you consider customised versions of those freebies.

that's one reason I want to see a royalty-based system. You could make a "basic foo" that you give away but set a L$10 royalty, and if I think it's a good enough base I make an "advanced foo" and sell it for L$50, and you get 20% out of every sale with no more work on your part.

Why should he get 20% without having to do any more work?

Err, actually, I do. Royalties would give you *more* ability to unload stuff you don't want any more, not less, because right now a bunch of stuff is sold no-transfer because there's only the choice of "no transfer" or "no copy" and it's something like a vehicle for which no-copy doesn't work out. Instead it could be sold copy+transfer+royalty.

Well, it would be "I get L$1 because..." but, why is that evil?

Because the constitution of the United States establishes the principle of limited monopolies to encourage the development of the arts and sciences, and royalties are one of the mechanisms for providing that encouragement.

Right now, if I buy a product, I don't get the textures at all. I don't get the ability to use *any* of it in my own products. He doesn't get 20%, and I don't get 80%, because the product that uses his textures or scripts or whatever doesn't get made. Everyone loses. This happens over and over again in SL.

He gets the 20% in exchange for my getting the 80%. Why do you have a problem with that?

Ok, that's reasonable...I can buy that. As long as it doesn't destroy the used-goods market (is it THAT big a market?) by driving up prices.

Alright, it's not eeeevil, per se...just seems wrong. The texture maker made their money on the texture sale. If they aren't making enough, adjust prices.

I guess I'm not sure what problem this is trying to address. If somebody wants to open their scripts and textures, they already can. If somebody wants to split sale money with somebody, they already can with a suitably equipped vendor. I, as a consumer (and as a builder who doesn't make textures, but sure BUYS a lot...most of which I've never used because they're all in bloody L$300 packs with the one or two I want and the 12 I don't) just see the price of goods going up so a few people can keep scoring off of subsequent sales of things they had a hand in at one point. It's not goign to be an 80/20 split. It's going to be a mathematically dubious 100/20 split, as the builder decides they still want to net L$x after taking into account the cut for all the texture makers.

The market will take care of that. If TextureFoo starts selling textures *and* slapping a royalty on them, TextureBar will advertise "royalty free", and TextureBaz will sell "free textures, you don't pay a penny until you make a sale" with no up-front prices and no royalties. Odds are you'll find some 300 texture packs getting *cheaper* because TextureBaz will be givin' em away in hopes of picking up royalties later.

If someone doesn't want to open their stuff up, though, they can already not open it up. There's no incentive for them to do anything else. The whole purpose of intellectual property law is to provide that incentive (YES, REALLY, IT'S NOT THERE BECAUSE A FEW PEOPLE DESERVE A WINDFALL).

Alright, put THAT way, it sounds ok. You supply good examples, I'll give you that. Clearly, you've thought this through more than I have. Texturing seems like a tough business.

So hard to tell, sometimes. It's used as a weapon so often that people assume the worst when others start waving it around.

Just wanted to point out that while this is a noble idea, it is not at all like GNU (GPL) licensing. GNU specifically states that GPL-licensed works MAY be sold, but PERMISSIONS (to modify, copy, and transfer) may not be withheld from any recipient of the work or a derivative thereof.
Additionally I think that having a true GPL-style permissions check-box in Second Life might drastically reduce the market for "ex-freebies", becuase once such an item is bought copies can be given away again.

Note: as I already wanted to do GPL-style licensing of Second Life objects, I will continue to look for such a feature vote, creating one in the near future if it doesn't already exist (keywords: GNU, GPL, copyleft, Free).