Sellers Guild to be in the SL media: Metaverse Magazine interview

Hi Stroker,

If you could provider answers for these questions, that'll get me started. Being in Australia, I have a hard time catching up in-world with most people. My story deadline is Saturday 5pm SL time. I have no information on the sellers guild yet, so I'm not sure all these questions are directed appropriately. Feel free to add any extra info you think is relevant. I'll follow up when I get a better picture from these answers.

Thanks. Russell Hansen

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Thanks Russel, for the enquiry. The Seller's Guild is still in the formation stage at the moment and so the answers that readers see today may not be the same answer we would give tomorrow. On top of that many ideas are still in flux. So most of this is my personal opinion and assumption and some of our members may disagree with my thoughts.

1. What is the sellers guild?

The first sign I created for the group stated this:

"We are a grass roots organisation of Second Life shop keepers and content creators who have become dissatisfied with the current state of protection for our creations. Every product stolen and copied because of SL bugs and poor design gives less incentive for new products to be made."

The current Charter for the Sellers Guild within SL reads:

"Power in numbers!!
Staying informed about scams/thefts. As sellers we need to group together and stay informed. Planning peaceful protests if necessary. Arranging meetings with LL to help develop better systems of IP protection, script legacy and exploit/bug elimination. As well as to ensure LL ENFORCEMENT of consequences for violators/scammers and thieves."

Our members all have different problems and different solutions. Each of these should be persued to find the best solutions for sellers and content creators and for the SL community as a whole.

Over the next few weeks the above statements may change as the structure and postions in the Guild become established.

I see our members as a loose alliance working to solve problems faced by content creators and sellers in SL. I view us as being like a bit like NATO; in some situations the members will act alone or in smaller groups and in other cases the whole Guild will mobilise. It depends on the will of the people who have joined the Guild.

1a. What is your role?

The Guild is so new that voting on the structure and positions within the Guild have not been finalised. So far my role has been as an instigator. My nature is to defend the just against the unjust. This explains my business in SL and now explains my drive to create the mechanism where the content creators and shop keepers of SL can unite and defend themselves and propose pratical solutions to Linden Labs.

2. Who is it for?

Anyone one can join the group. The group is open so that complete transparency shows the larger SL community that we have no secret agenda or desire to become some type of secret organisation or mob. There has been much discussion about this leading to the thieves joining the group and monitoring us but I have argued that it is impossible for us to escape being "spied" upon, and others have argued that a closed group has more problems than an open group. This particular debate has shown the wisdom of the group and also its democratic processes. The group has no particular agenda it is a alliance of people with different problems and different solutions. These may even be contradictory solutions. I like to think that our members walk different paths but carry the same banner.

3. How do you join? Are there any costs involved?

Any body can join the Sellers Guild group for free in SL or they can simply participate in our discussions at our forum at /321/1.html. We are interested in lively debate and smart solutions.

4. How did it get started?

The inspiration for me starting the Guild was a message from Stroker Serpentine complaining about how he was sick of people copying his his products and selling the copies. I never looked completely into that particular situation. The complaint was sent to all in his IM list and it started a large discussion with people having similar problems. I realised at that point that simply complaining was going to do nothing and I saw that enough frustration and energy was in the community to create a SL Group which could potentially cause change for the better. At that time I was thinking of protests against Linden Labs but as things have moved along that seems to be a last resort option. Other members in the group firmly believe, as do I now, that sensible pratical solutions presented to Linden Labs with be looked at and implimented if possible.

5. How long has it been going?

The initial announcement of the Sellers Guild was here /108/91/124026/1.html on July 25, 2006. We got our forums on the 27th of July, 2006 which are here /321/1.html

6. Do you have a web site?

The group has not yet sufficiently evolved to look at this proposal yet.

7. How is it different from other similar organisations?

I am not aware of similar organisations. If I was to guess at what makes us unique my guess would be that the members in our group persue their own solutions whilst using the Guild as a framework for discusion and organisation. Our Guild is a resource for its members rather than a dictating organisation.

8. How many members do you have/do you expect to have?

We have approximately 200 members listed in the SL Group. I am aware of others who are aligned with the group but cannot join the SL Group because they have no free Group slots. From my point of view, and I believe most members, the group has no firmly set distinction of member and non-member but is in a constant state of flux as the members SL communtity drop into our forums and SL Group to make their voices heard before sitting again on the sidelines. This is how it should be in my opinion, we are a group that anybody can contribute to. We would welcome anyone to join our Guild and to join in influencing its direction or forming sub-groups and committees to acheive beneficial goals for our members and all of SL.

A good question to ask is; what are we fighting against?
This is covered more fully here /321/bf/125220/1.html
This is a partial list of the problems in SL that have been presented by members so far. It is important to note that not all members agree that all in this list is considered a problem. For example some members have no problems with their items being resold at a higher price than the initial sale price.

Problems recognised by some or all Guild members:
* Texture theft
* Other theft (sounds, animations, gestures, sounds etc)
* Reproductions/Couterfeiting (manual or automated)
* Script incompatibility between updates without adequate notice or adequate documentation
* Stealing scripts by using exploits
* Selling free items
* Reselling items at higher prices
* Copying and reselling Notecard content
* Using exploits to change information on objects such as Creator name.
* Using external programs to steal content from the SL cache or computer memory.

Again please note that much of this is my personal opinion and I don't claim to speak on behalf of all Guild members. Please see our forums at /321/1.html to get a better overview of our diverse yet unified perspectives.