Should Free Accounts Go

What Lewis outlined eliminates exactly 0% or in other words the only thing it accomplishes is inconveniencing a whole lot of people who have and are doing nothing wrong while at the same time not making it any harder for those who wish to sell stolen content.

Aristotle will happily accept fake information and "age verify" people, and even if you could argue that it could be made fool-proof enough then LL doesn't have access to whatever information was entered so it still wouldn't be any good.

Content thief age-verifies on day 1, sets up a store and gets caught. The exact same content thief age-verifies another account on day 2 using the exact same information and they'd once again qualify for what Lewis suggested. You gain absolutely nothing here.

And if you do away with that restriction then just replay the above with buying another prepaid credit card, signing up with a different RL name and they'd once again pass the checks. Qualifying would still be so ridiculously easy that it just wouldn't justify the negative impact for something that wouldn't dent content theft.

If you're going to do something as drastic as take away the ability for overwhelming majority of the residents to be able to pass on a (legitimate) freebie, or something they've bought but no longer need, or something they built for fun then it should actually make a big enough difference to warrant it.

As far as "some content creators might/will walk away": that's a given. If everyone random can qualify then nothing changes; on the other hand setting requirements will always result in a number of content creators who can not or will not meet those requirements. You can't have it both ways.

What if you could pay your premium & tier using Lindens earned from your business, actually you can by cashing out, maybe some people don't realise this, it's certainly cheaper for me to pay tiers from SL earnings than convert it to AU$ then back to US$. Sucessful business owners would only have to cash in US$10 once to verify.

I personally don't mind LL knowing exactly who I am and where I live and my credit card number for the privage of being able to run a business if it makes life harder for the scoundrels who have free reign with a continual supply of endless anoymous accounts while the floodgates are left open, how much water should we let in the room before we think about turning the tap off? Maybe LL don't think we have enough water till it is over our necks.

We don't need to stop free accounts just prevent them from running a business. Running a business should be a privilage NOT a LL given right.

Since the floodgates have opened to all these people who can't put cash into SL considering how much we have dropped the average prices of product and services, have we really done that much better over all or are we just sharing the additional cashflow amoungst more theives and money launderers?

[off-topic]
When I joined SL L$ was trading at over L$350/$1 and things were either priced the same or cheaper.

I'm hard pressed to think of any example where something was more expensive back then than it is now and some things like shoes have actually just about doubled in price.

Opening the floodgates - in part - led to the L$ stabilizing around L$26x resulting in 30+% more revenue for in-world stores over the course of just a few months.
[/off-topic]

Don't care. I *do* care that the measures are too easy to circumvent, but *if* there were a reasonably effective deterrence to content theft that inconvenienced some, then so be it. I'd rather lose some content distributors who don't care enough about content protection to countenance the inconvenience, in exchange for keeping some who care enough to leave if nothing is done about it.

Yep, for those content creators who fold & leave because they find having to give up their anoyminity too heavy a price to reduce content theft,I also say, "goodbeye" more market for the rest of us who can handle it.
Non premiums maybe should be allowed to only transfer or sell items for L$0, to sell for profit you need to provide some finacial accountability to LL, if that's a stolen credit card number well it's unpreventable but still one extra hoop compared to the free for all we have now what if it reduced theft by 30% even? isn't it worth trying? Why are we trying to retain our anoyminity for the benifit og theives, it's like campaining that having licence plates on vehicles or showing your drivers licence in a minor traffic accident to another driver is an invasion of privacy.

Actually when I joined up you could pay all or part of your tier in L$ to LL. As I recall the exchange rate was horrid though so no one used it.

ON ANOTHER SIDE (I doubt LL will do this but they could)
LL might just decide nope creators don't get their IP rights anymore.

Other games have had creators and the company get the IPs signed over upon upload.

Of course existing content would have to be signed over or removed from LL servers.

Is this draconian YEP

Is it likely NOPE not even close

Can I see a part lawyer bean counter coming up with the idea and floating it at LL YOU BETTCHA

This is an example of the straw man fallacy. See http://www.fallacyfiles.org/strawman.html.

You're also insulting me personally. I decided to ignore your earlier implication that I have ulterior motives. Please, let's not go down this path and sound like Pep and his latest windmill.

Thanks, I should have said "ad hominem", not "poisoning the well" -- the difference being that the latter happens prior to any argument to the person or group on whom the ad-hominem argument is made.

Therefore, I stand corrected: your argument was ad-hominem, not "poisoning the well". Thanks for the clarification.

I disagree. See the example on the page you cite for "ad hominem": You can't argue against reasoning by challenging credibility or motive. You can only use this tactic when disputing allegations, which can't be checked by other means. For example, if the witness on the stand says "I saw him do it," it's reasonable to question his motives.

However, motives are *not* at play when discussing the validity of arguments. Arguments stand or fall by themselves and the assertions on which they rest, regardless of motive.

Bear with me, because I'm arguing against my position from earlier. But, ...

Correct, so assume this point is deleted.

The intent isn't to directly disallow someone from doing wrong; it's to be able to know who they really are, if they do.

However, your other arguments (essentially, that having a credit card number doesn't prove you're the account holder) are valid. I suspect that regardless, this would reduce content copying by raising the bar a bit.

IMHO, this suggestion goes the furthest towards achieving the goal with the least collateral harm. That isn't to say that I support it, but it's worthy of consideration.

I prefer Tegg Bode's suggestion in another thread:

Linden Labs deletes copied content from the whole grid when it's found. All copies of the object, wherever it is, in grid, or in inventory. Everyone's inventory. Remove the demand for copied content.

Anyone who is age verified with LL? This one should be eliminated from this list. Age verification is Aristotle No-Integrity. Elvis Presley has no problem age verifying with their system. Nor does Tupac Shakur. If you asked around I'm sure you'd find that Patrick Swayze, Mary Travers, Henry Gibson, Ronald Reagan, Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Lennon, Richard Nixon, Michael Jackson, and many other people who share the same one common trait as all those mentioned above, are also finding it no difficulty at all to age verify.

I can buy an island and not be premium, premium account is not the answer here. We need to get away from thinking everyone who is not premium isn't paying any money to Linden Lab or that they are all anonymous to all intents and purposes, this isn't the case.

Right, Lewis didn't understand that aspect of the age verification system. It doesn't meet his own criteria, so it's best to assume this item is deleted from the list.

The problem with that is that it damages innocent consumers.

An argument in its favor is that it would encourage consumers to be more aware of whether content is original or copied.

The problem is that there's often no way for the consumer to avoid copied content except to stick to well-established businesses. Start-ups already face an uphill battle; I'd hate to add this additional burden.

It's worthy of consideration, but I see it causing too much collateral damage to innocents -- meanwhile, those who pirated the content walk off with the cash they've earned.

There's also a technical difficulty with this suggestion. I can't figure out how it could apply to modifiable content, without catching innocents in the net.

For example, if someone steals object X and distributes it copy/xfer. Mr. Nice gets one, innocently. He modifies it dramatically, possibly into something unrecognizable as the original -- just happened to use one of the prims. Should his creation be deleted? That's an extreme example, but it's hard to figure out where to draw the line, with modifiable content.

With no-mod content, there's no fuzzy line. All copies share the same formal object. I forget the SL term, but it's the asset server's data describing the object, distinct from any instance of the object, and shared by all instances of the object. But I don't want a solution that applies only to no-mod content. (I hate no-mod objects! )

Nah, the prims get new UUIDs when they're rezzed.

As I said the suggestion had nothing to do with owning land, a requirement to be premium to sell items above L$0 doesn't stop people renting estate land off others.

The alternative is to let them walk away with their cash anyway and continue doing it using more disposable alts we might as well intrduce measure to make it easier for them while we are at it.

I'm all for jumping through a hoop to prove I'm a real roo not a wombat.

Sure it would hurt like hell as it were implemented and people lost a few dollars value of items, but how does that compare any different to people who find RL pirated media won't play in some music/DVD players.

People would be smarter on their next purchases, and making life easier for new starters is only preserving the complete freedom for theives. The theiving problem is only going to get worse, never better as long as we do nothing and keep protecting their "rights".

If I'm paying uSD$295 a month to LL why on earth should I need to pay extra to sell items? if I'm paying USD$25 in tier payments to a landlord, why should I have to pay for a premium account? Premium account isn't the answer here, it's just an extra expense for merchants.

All I can say is that every time this call for nerfing Basic accounts comes around, it makes me sick.

Because as a sucessful business you will obviously be getting that US$10 back in profit anyway. it's an operating expense. Why do I have to pay the same $10 just because I can't afford to own a whole sim?

Why should people in RL business have to pay Govco to get business licence rather than just create any business name they want then have the bank openan account for them in that name no questions asked to protect their privacy?

Paying tier to LL for a sim is to me as good as premium anyway, common sense says premium status should be included as part of that.

Most businesses in SL aren't "successful businesses" then.

Oh, and you'd have to keep free accounts from calling a good half a dozen LSL calls to make this work. When a scripted vendor gives you a product, that's a free transfer. You'd also have to eliminate bots, or someone would just give out their inventory that way after getting paid.

Most businesses aren't shall I better wortd it as profitable, you could be suscessfully in your eyes I suppose like I am maybe, as I'm not making enough from my rentals to cover my tier, but it gives me a lot of prims to play with and I pay my US$10 per month for that privilage. If I wasn't getting half my tier I would be failing I guess and fold or tierdown.
Maybe ther are technicle hurdles,is the content theft reduction woth the hurdles, Idon't know, I'm just floating ideas so they can be pulled apart, maybe better ideas come from it. Many people seem to just accept filing a DMCA as the best answer we can ever acheive. Maybe the copybotters will get bored of money for nothing when their numbers grow to the point the economy starts imploding and leave...........

As I said on another forum the only really workable solutions are

1. Watermarking of all textures in an unalterable way.

2. LL actually following through on DMCA's and policing XStreet.

Anything else can pretty much be got around

These will help, but I don't se them coming, I don't believe there is A solution, multiple measures are needed, and if we can reduce it without making it overlly difficult to run a business then that is the balance we need to strive fore.
The theft is not going to get better while nothing is being done because we won't jump through one or 2 more hoops because it's too much effort or seems unworkable to prove we are legitimate reputable business people

Tegg I got no problems with hoops. LL has had my information for over 5 years

The reality is though given past attempts at fixing problems. LL is probably going to make alot of hoops that DO NOTHING to solve the problem when what they really need to do is swiftly and consistently and severly act when the orders come in.

I know quite a few people who are making enough from sales to pay rent, but no more. An extra US$10 a month would put them out of business... but in their multitudes they're paying the rent on the islands that's keeping SL in the black.