My freebies are being sold without permission.

The owner of Bergman Bargins has stirred up quiete a discussion on slexchange about her items. People are seeing freebies and leaked products pop up in her line of products and were commenting this.

I visited her store, and to my surprize, i saw my friends Nuke there, a modded version of a nuke with the same script, jetboots that another friend of mine made, a chopper that leaked that he made... and worst for myself, a freebie that i put out totally unchanged and one with a texture change... this stuff is going out for insane prizes. Theres a ton of stuff here thats just slightly modded, or not even at all..

clearly, this is unacceptable.
id love oppinions bout this kind of behaviour and what should be done about this.
i havnt given her any kind of permission to resell stuff that i made, noir did my friends.
Freebies are ment to stay FREE and add to the good intent of sharing something.

Kind regards,
Kyran Nyak



*note to admin, this is a doublepost, its here and in stores coz i have no clue where it should go*

=delete=

link to main thread: /invalid_link.html

Just to set the record straight, it is not against the TOS to resell objects. I'm a capitalist, I bought an object at a lower price then I'm reselling it for. I can't be responsible for selling things for less than I paid. Sorry, thats rule #1 of capitalism.

Though you may frown upon it, its perfectly legal. What is illegal is to defame someone's good name and infer they are a fraud. Shame!

It may not be illegal, but I consider it unethical.

Jamie

I have up until now been a fan of yours now I am disgusted. Selling items that the creator gave away for free is not capitalism at its finest its fre market economy at its worst. I represent several failry large groups including the Carlisi family which numbers well over 100 gun loving wiseguys. I am asking my people to boycott your stores and show you have a free market system really works

I don't do this though. I'm merely pointing out it is NOT illegal. Thats all. Sheesh.

The atomic grenade I made I modified/created the script for. Its not just a freebie being resold. But if people are going to leave their scripts open to be modified, then I see no problem modding... isn't that what SL is all about?

Jeez.

Whats insane to me is that some people think you should have to create EVERYTHING from the ground up again.

That is a very inefficient use of time and resources.

I don't sell hottubs in my store anymore. That was an example of me buying an item I thought was legit off a 3rd party, but it turned out to be a freebie. So I removed them from the store.

I'm not an economic terrorist. I do make mistakes from time to time, but I corrected it.

What's insane to me is that some people think you should have to work hard to earn money to buy a Porsche.

That is a very inefficient use of time and resources, when you can just steal one.

You're hilarious I like you.

So, why are they still on SLExchange if you're not selling them anymore? Oh, and you didn't answer the question: are they the Super Hottub by Siggy?

Oh! I honestly did not realize this. I thought I pulled the plug on the SLEXchange ones, as well. I will do that right now.

Thank you for bringing this to my attention

Sorry this just smells, Self-titled as " SLs Top Economic Mind" all I see here is fraud. Maybe not against TSO but, definitly against any ethics or morals. I think I'll follow Boliver's lead on this one. Ever thought of creating your own original content to sell?

here here

anyone else see the contradictions here? 1st post she says she does do it and there's nothing wrong with it. then she says she doesn't do it. hmmmmm....

Dude(tte), that's Self Proclaimed "Top Economic Mind".

Greetings, I'm EC's representative to the SL Forums.

As some of you may know, the head of Entropy Creations, Varick Eisenberg, dislikes freebie sellers for many reasons. They con new players and players who haven't explored much of SL out of their L$ (sometimes resulting in those players even leaving SL, frustrated with a bad experience), they make money off of other peoples' hard work and good will, and their practice of selling freebies may even make some believe that making a freebie is pointless and thus deprive the rest of the community of something we could learn from or enjoy. For these reasons and more, we've been somewhat active in stomping out such threats. And as such Varick was drawn to this topic on SLExchange as he peruses the items there on a day to day basis.

After some investigation inworld, Varick has discovered quite a few appalling business practices which the Bergman business has involved itself in. In order to help the populace of SL and defend them from such well, to be frank, fraudulent items/practices, he is now in the process of compiling a box of the freebie items which are similar in design to those Bergman sells. These will be placed on SLExchange free of charge for any who wish to compare the two sets of similar items. The discussion which sparked this investigation can be found here:

http://www.slexchange.com/modules.p...ns&ItemID=34361

The ongoing SLExchange discussion concerning this topic can be found here:

http://www.slexchange.com/modules.p...der=asc&start=0

More to come as the box is compiled and made ready.

Hello again. As to the above posts... Jamie, yes it is in fact illegal to sell someone else's intellectual property without their consent. Reselling a no copy item to another because you no longer use it is one thing, selling a version over and over again because you somehow got copy rights, either through a perm bug or a leak is most definitely another. By doing so, you are in fact stealing profits from that person and that is possibly against RL laws.

Anyways, on to the investigation:
For those who wish to discern for yourselves the validity of certain statements made throughout these discussions, please goto:

http://www.slexchange.com/modules.p...em&ItemID=38803

To purchase (for 0L as the items inside are freebies), and review the freebies we at EC have found which are disturbingly similar to those found in the Bergman store. Pics will be uploaded as we resize them. There is also a list of corresponding items Bergman sells and a link to their SLExchange pages so that you may review the item (we don't recommend that you purchase the item, since it may turn out to be a freebie) and consider how similar they are.

hmm.. sl is about communities being creative and having fun. if possible not over other peoples backs tho.

if everyone would just mod a few things on an existing item, there would be a flood of similar things in SL. Fortunatly this isnt so. People try to be original and creative and if theyre successfull enough with THEIR stuff.. or a colaboration (which in my eyes should atleast be asking permission to mod) they make some money with it.
in this case your money is being made by just doing very minor to no changes at all... which isnt even remotely creative.

(oh btw, if u asked me bout using my grenade model and messing with it to sell yourself, youd prolly get permission from me. tho its far past that point.. and doesnt go for unmodded stuff naturally.)

It's copyright infringement is what it is.

They own the IP and they have every right to say how the IP is used.

I suggest you all send a PM to Apotheus Silverman and Tigress Stormwind to get this resolved.

They'll probably just cancel the offender's account.

The requested URL /modules.p...em&ItemID=38803 was not found on this server.

Hmm, trying this again then:

http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=38803

If that didn't work it might have something to do with your browser's compatibility with the site... If it still didn't work and you still can't get the box and want it, either IM myself or Varick Eisenberg to get the box. Same goes for anyone else.

Notice she suddenly went silent after being called out on the details of her fraud.

You may be interested in this comment made by Robin Linden concerning the resell of items that were meant to be free to the community:

/108/8a/74022/15.html#post769512

btw, that thread was locked afterwards, as I expect this one will be soon.