My freebies are being sold without permission.

Enough about Freebies... Have you seen the news? Our Benevelont and Supreme leader has named Anshe Chung in charge of the goverment. Full article link of Business 2.0 available at: http://sleconomyblog.blogspot.com/

I think that's a variation of the "LOOK! ELVIS!" distract-and-duck-out-the-back-door technique.

A permissions system may slow the selling of transferable free items but won't stop it.

It could be that someone would load up a vendor with them. Or even directly hustle them on the 'street'.

As in: "Psst, buddy, wanna buy a FreeView TV?" Sad but true.



Capitalism is not an ideology.

It is what people do when left to themselves.

A direct result of the base instinct to get as much as possible for efforts, however minimal, expended.



Some form of no-mod labeling may help the artist. "This item is given away FREE at..." or some such.

The 'exploit' is one of information - should the purchaser know that the item is available for free ahead of time, it would (mostly) end the exploitation.

Ha Ha Ha... you're really funny.

But thats not really my aim, though. The freebie discussion was fun and all, but its been a day and people are getting tired of it.

The masses need a new dhrama topic - so in the interests of SL, I've found one.

That aside, feel free to continue to discuss the merits of freebies... but I think you'll find interest has all but evaporated.

Not if you have talent and want to be original.

I am very new here but I have been following this thread and the ideas/methods of Ms. Bergman which I personally find impalpable and ethically just plain wrong.


Regardless, it is time to get philosophical with regards to the cause of this problem.

Theft of property is a real and mostly it is an easy thing to solve. Theft of intellectual property is another matter. The reality is that the richest man in the world is making his riches, at least partly, in just the way that Ms Bergman does. It is perhaps within the rules of the law that they can change a radius on a chair and call it their own, but morally it is reprehensible and does not follow the spirit of the law to do so. This is particularly a horrible method when the system is so much in the favor of the large capitalist, a small scale operation does not always have half a million dollars not to mention time and resources at its disposal to protect their products. Although, I am thankful that there is at least an opportunity for these unethical practices (my opinion) to be challenged through an international legal and punishment system something horribly lacking here. You have rights to what you make but no method to protect those rights.

Now what is to be done with infringement? First it is maybe best to first decide what is infringement? If I do something that is 90% like something else, is it "mine"? If I paint something in vanGogh’s style, is it "mine"? who says/decides how the 90% is determined, for some it is the process (reference: Charles Eames) others the result, for others it is just a matter of changing a texture on a 3d model. What detail is what makes it special, the radii on the corners? or the basic shape and form? or is it the materials employed? does form count for more than texture? Who says the rule requires a test of 90% similarity, some may think it is only 1%, others 99%? with all those questions and no real answers it is pretty difficult to say what concrete steps can be made! In my opinion, boycotting and/or slandering are common forms of protest, but they do not create a true justice.

But before one gets to justice one must determined the rules and regulations involved. There are some good guidelines for design patents and intellectual property (which seems most applicable when we are discussing here 3d model/product building) but really the guidelines only function within an environment with protections AND real punishments.

Punishment. In less civilized societies, it is meted out, with death and dismemberment (so says the 'civilized' of the world). In more developed societies, punishments are more often in the form of monetary losses/rewards and incarceration. This requires a legal system and lawyers .. I propose just that:

a formation of a legal system or at least a judge/jury system to take these types of conflicts/cases and find a resolution/verdict and if guilty, decide punishment.

I would love to hear some comments and get some discussion and suggestions on this.




for some mostly recent background/reference for these issues please read this:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7189482/from/RL.2/
main points: ikea is infringing on intellectual property forced to pay $44k in damages and $585k in lawyers fees... a quite astounding ratio of 13:1 lawyers fees:damages.

and this:
http://www.sitepoint.com/print/copy-great-designers-steal
a good reference concerning development of ideas w/r/t picasso's oft quoted but unknown if actually stated phrase 'good artists copy. great artists steal'

and finally this:
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9938407/site/newsweek/
walmart and its subsequent issues due to some apparent poor business practices.. and how it perhaps doesn't really matter.

I want to be original...

lol 1st off.. news? more like crap... ur blog isnt world news... youre no journalist aswell as no economic whatevermind. Discussion is still on over freebies coz people care about how their free stuff is destributed...

and.. yeh still dun take away from the fact that you sell freebies in ur expensive version of yadni's.

If they can't transfer the item to another individual once they legitimately receive it from the creator, exactly how does your example work (assuming they haven't hacked the permissions)?

Actually, i think they might have exploited some hacks or update failures in perms.
Freds Nuke isnt supposed to be transfer. somehow shes still selling it.

Hacking the permissions system is imo no different than picking the lock on a RL warehouse. It has nothing to do with capitalism (hence my caveat). Theft exists in all economic systems.

After reading Jamie's explanation: selling for more than I bought it for, I'm tempted to ask her:

Would you go to Border's, buy a book, then go home and run off 500 copies on your photocopier and sell it to your friends?

That's no less illegal than selling a freebie item that you picked up somewhere.

Unfortunately, the people who are selling free items (or items they received as gifts) for a profit don't agree with you... after all - it's "capitalism" and since items in-world are not physically tangible, it really isn't "stealing"...

it might not be physical, but in the end it all comes down to a few lines of programming. that goes for scripts aswell as models. someone made this. and the other one runs away with it. so stealing it still is. If im writing a book or a piece of code and someone steals it, copies it (dun matter if they put a new color on it or not) it remains stealing my property. just on text level. Which some bigger software companies make quiete a fuzz about if you attempt it.

Not to mention that since Fred's nuke was in fact No Transfer, the most likely way that Jamie could possibly sell it is some sort of hack. Which is something I doubt LL will look well upon, since its getting around their perms system.

Exactly. I find it reprehensible that people think it's ok to sell other's items without any consent... Don't know why the "top economic mind" thinks stealing is permitted in a free market society... oh well.. not saying that I have any mind in economics - stealing is stealing and it is always wrong. Go look it up anywhere - Hammurabi's code, the Bible... etc.

I think there was an update that negated original permissions and several items became full permission even if they were not set that way.

I've never hacked anything, thank you very much.

and you claim that you dont sell freebies either. which infact is true, so how are we to trust anything that u say -.-

-edit-

Then you must be out to look what you can yank out on guns out there. Even retail ones.
Coz as Fred noted, His nuke and Winters Bullet were in your shop before it even went into the public as a leak. I dont think this falls under freebies but infact stealing.

How you bypassed the permissions on the nuke is still a mistery but somehow it happened coz i got one from your store which is 100% the same as the one fred once handed me.

I doubt Jamie hacked anything. Hacking requires intelligence.

hehe true =P
tho taking advantage of a bug doesnt -.-

I'm a relative noob to SL (I celebrated my one-month birthday yesterday), but I will make a point of keeping people away from Bergman's Burglaries as long as I'm here. Her lack of ethics is reprehensible, and I hope she pays for it in the end.

Jamie, as many have said before me, you are no expert. I don't even think you're a successful business-person. That would require a basic understanding of principles relevant to your field. You clearly have no grasp of copyright law - possibly the single most important concept in SL. You're a charlatan and a fake who makes money off the hard work of others. Is that capitalism? Perhaps, in the same way that cotton plantations were.

I'm sure you'll either ignore my post or respond with some flip comment that will further reveal your ignorance. Either way, know that I and others will be actively working to bring you down.

Nice.

And he calls himself "Da5id." There's hope for us in the next generation of newbs, aye, there is indeed.

Welcome to the infant metaverse, Da5id. Be careful. There be sharks here!

Thank you for the heads up! I'll check this out for myself (no offense but that is the right thing for me to do), and if I find it to be true, this shop/seller will be added to my boycott list and I'll be sure to let my friends know.

That's why I used the phrase 'transferable items'. Because, barring 'hacking', you are correct.


A creator can set up a vendor that issues 'no transfer' items for free.

The difference is that such distribution makes the items not-so-freely available - which seems to be the raison d'etre of the monetary 'freeness' in the first place.