Would commerce continue in SL if Permissions were Abandoned?

There is no natural scarcity of goods in SL in the first place. While the price people are willing to pay changes depending on the economy, charging based on something that has intrinsic scarcity (time) means that your price basis will always have intrinsic value. It's not a complete crap shoot like it is when you're depending on permissions.

I guess that if permissions would be abandoned (or copybot gets rampant enough) people would stop selling anything and instead would start renting their items off, and not letting anyonre rez anything freely. Even with permissions in place renting off is a much better choice than selling, at least for some particular items. That is because the buyer can rez an item wherever they want, making you lose control over its usage. In RL this is not the case. You cannot move a house that easily from one place to the other.

On the long term though, I guess, the economy would collapse if copybotting/replicating became a reality. We would enter an open source world where everyone has everything they want and need, and the motivation to create something new would have to come from the inside - from the human desire to create.

But there's not a lot more open-source developers than there are non-open-source developers. Not by a LONG shot. Sorry, you're wrong again.
Open your eyes, then. If I sell you something copy/no-xfer, you can copy it. You can't sell it. Bingo.
If I sell you something xfer/no-copy, you can use it all you want, but only one copy.

If you don't like no-mod stuff, then DON'T BUY IT. I usually don't; I hate no-mod stuff. All my products are modifiable.

And there are very legit reasons for making certain products no-mod, and not just to avoid copying.

Also, note that if you do open the cover of many products, you void the warranty. Furthermore, lots of products are potted so you can't possibly modify them. Others have identifying marks on key components removed so you can't easily duplicate them. This happens most in industries where people copy designs, btw. SL imitates RL.

Anyway, I feel you'll be happier in a grid where there is no permissions system. I agree that such a place would be interesting, and it would be very interesting to compare it with SL.

No, the legal system does that in RL because until recently, it's the *ONLY* way it could be done in RL. Trust me, if there had been a mechanical way, it would have been employed, and it would be legal.

I disagree with Monalisa in that her comment applies only to goods, not services.

I say that a person's inventiveness has intrinsic value, and the permissions system does a very good job of protecting that as a valuable asset.

You keep asserting that the legal system is what should be used to protect IP rights. But you seem to ignore the fact that it would be completely useless to all but the biggest earners in SL, since it's a micro-economy, but legal issues are worked out in RL courts.

Or are you suggesting some kind of SL kangaroo court?

Seriously, for us to have any IP rights in SL, they need to be protected by the permissions system. To believe that anything else would work is ridiculous.

Just as a minor note: this is the basis behind "Software as a Service" -- which is why so many companies try to sell their digital products as a "service."

The idea is to create scarcity by cutting you off if you misbehave or don't pay rent. When you consider the fact Second Life itself works like this... well, it works out.


As for perms: they're a crutch. Even the best and the brightest haven't quite figured out what'll happen to information products like newspapers, when perfect analogs are finally available online. Hell, they're still trying to figure out if Obama broke the law by giving Queen Elizabeth an iPod. The answer to how an economy like SL's would function absent DRM is pretty far down the copyright food chain, right after figuring out whose bits they are in the first place.

Case in point: perms only work right now as a formality. I use them myself, but acknowledge that my work is just as hackable and Copybotable as anyone else's.

Hahahaha you are a bouncy one arent't you lol
i believe i was responding to this RL topic below..i'm not sure what the heck you thought i was responding to..that's the second time you have twisted one of my posts around to pick little bits to fit your needs of godmodding..when you pick peoples posts apart and try to make them look as if they are saying something else..it only falls back on you

you called me out on RL business i gave you RL facts and the economy and who is hurting right now which is the labor force..
you think people should be able to use what they buy as they see fit..i gave you a perfect example that they cannot..
don't switch back and forth taking my response from rl to sl when you were talking about RL business..
I didn't come to this thread to play win or lose the topic with someone out for a win the thread game..
so if you cannot quote me for what i am saying then don't quote me at all please.

Why even ask if people need to be trusted with items they buy? Key word here is "buy."

Since it's paid for it now belongs to that indiviual. No, the sl "gods" (content sellers) can't say squat about what anyone who "buys" their wares or anyone elses for that matter can or can't do with it.

But as so often is the case, content sellers feel they have or should have a link to stuff they've made even if someone purchases it. Reasoning behind this is they feel since they made it, it represents them so no one can do anything with the items they've paid for. I tend to agree with this as there's so much badly made products in sl along with lousy customer service which go hand in hand that I do agree it does represent them in more ways then one.

Their arrogance in this and in many other things regarding their wares and shops has sky rocketed and continues upward. Which is why I don't mind seeing many of them lament and whine how badly they're doing with sales dropping which they post here all the time.

Everything tends to come full circle.

Not true. if it was true then adfarming would still be the major business activity on the mainland. After gambling that is. And smex.

I think people make dangerous assumptions that Opensim will be like SL culturally.

It is not, and I don't see it going that way. It looks and feels like SL, but it is not SL and it doesn't want to be SL.

I do not see any way they can implement a common microcurrency in a hypergrid. The uses of Opensim are really quite different than the uses of Second Life in most aspects.

The only viable currency in a hypergrid is going to be real currency, the only viable store models in a hypergrid will most likely be on the model of a Renderosity or a Turbosquid. They have existed for many many years with "full permissions" 3d content for sale to 3d developers, and the sales of items to Opensim grids will also most likely be aimed at people at the administrative level of their sims. So they will want and demand full permissions work.

They also pay more for it, just like any company who needs a graphic designer. In fact I am certain they will, and I welcome it. It is just a different model, and it means some people are going to have to "grow up" to this market. Some may not be able to hack it, for all the same reasons they don't really hack it in SL much of the time. They don't have the 3d skills and the platform requires them more and more to create compelling content.

Don't discount that economy - it is the same way the programmers are working. They contribute their work for free as its too huge a project for any one person to do. They actually could use some of us 3d artists who want Opensim for our own purposes to help develop the common content to all the grids as well. They are contributing to us, we should contribute to them, and then use it to sell services to those who need them.

If you used Opensim you'd see right away what the use of the permission bits are. It is to keep foreign users from mucking with the content on your sim/grid.

If you turn the perms off on your opensim anyone can change, take or delete your stuff. So you turn them on! That was one of the first things I did once I got mine going. :/ It should be a default setting, as a lot of people get hosed by griefers that way.

Copying can happen, just like it can happen in SL, but no reason to allow anyone to change the content that is YOURS on your sim.

That is what I said: If perms were gone in SL, people would rent off their products instead of selling them.

Interesting post, and I agree. It'll be a very different kind of economy, missing the current bottom tier of consumers that I believe generates the majority of sales in SL, and one where small-time product builders won't have much in the way of business opportunities. On the other hand, those of us who, like me, are in it for fun and not RL profit, will still be able to make cool stuff and have lots of fun doing it.

Nearly gone will be stores selling products. They might still exist, but with a very different sales & profit model. Since all products are essentially free, the purpose of shops will be to collect excellent products focusing on a target audience. People will go there to buy things simply because it'd be less time consuming than finding it all on their own. The products on display will change rapidly because any popular store will quickly be copied. Prices will need to be low enough that copycats underselling them can't undersell them by much. Still, copying them would be so easy that it would be very hard for all but a few top dogs to make a profit this way.

So the more likely replacement would be places with high quality freebie collections that profit from visitors in some other completely voluntary way.

Realistically, without permissions, gambling and services will own the lion's share of the Open Grid economy.

It'll be an interesting experiment in partial Communism. Objects will be shared freely by all. John Lennon would love it! But of course, for land and services, Capitalism will still rule.

Which is why there's no point to talking about "moving from Second Life" to the OpenSim hypergrid. I'm not going to give up all this stuff for a cheaper sim:

I have given up absolutely nothing by installing Opensim. It resides on my network internally.

If you don't want to install it it is your choice, but it has not cost me a dime. I still maintain my Second Life land like anyone else does.

They are two different models.

Take for instance an elementary school. You have a class full of 5 year olds and you want to take them into a virtual world. Well, you CANT DO IT IN SL. Due to laws regulating collecting information on minors under 13.

So some edu asks someone to build content for their classroom, hosted behind the firewall. Why is this somehow a threat to your biz in SL? Because you know, its NOT.

It's like designing a website for someone, except its a 3d world. You people are weird, I swear.

It is no more communistic than installing Apache on your webserver and hiring designers to develop whatever the hell you want to develop.

There's no difference. It is just design. People who waive the fear of technology boogieman are just not paying attention to how the real design world functions. You haven't given up your copyrights in anything you sell to a world developer any more than you have to someone you sold web design services - because its all governed by licenses. There's no communism at all, unless that's what you choose to engage in.

Me personally, I am using it for developing the art ideas I never could quite afford enough land to do, aside from learning the platform to help others to get up to speed with it. I am dealing with RealXtend and OGRE and really able to get my work from my 3d programs into the world FAR more easily, things I can't do in SL at all. I am having a blast developing multisim terraforms that I could not do otherwise because only the independently wealthy can own that many sims in SL. I don't do it on a grid, I do it on my freaking computer like I would in any other graphics program I own. Only difference is that I can actually invite someone in if I choose to open the firewall to it.

It is just another 3d program on my computer, and its no more communistic than Poser, Modo, Carrara, Zbrush, etc. Most of the people I talk to are 3d artists and developers, mostly involved in machinima and architectural visualisation, many are universities.

"Installing OpenSim" isn't the same thing as "Moving to OpenSim". OVER and OVER again people come up with "If Linden Labs does X, Y, or Z, I'm *leaving* for OpenSim". Ain't gonna happen.

I would just like to say "boobies"

http://market.renderosity.com/

http://www.daz3d.com/

http://www.turbosquid.com/

are all full of merchants selling stuff, mostly for 3d programs. Full "permissions" haven't shut them down at all. They sure don't use copyleft either. They have been around long before Second Life was around (I entered these communities around 1999-2000 - nearly a decade ago), and they are *still* around.

And there's a LOT of merchants there. And I didnt even touch on the gaming sites, where designers also sell products and are hired.

But yes, to work as a designer in a wider world which is "weblike" you will have to have designer skills. But I doubt the Second Life economy will go away, and people who are afraid of the outside world of course don't have to leave here. There will probably be other grids who operate on a similar microcurrency model. Personally I find it limiting, but I can see the allure. I personally see the risk in that they can't control copyright very well - allowing anyone to upload and sell merchandise unrestricted actually furthers content theft by allowing any idiot to upload anything they troll for on the internet and resell it for profit. It's a plague in SL. Oddly enough, its not so much of a plague in the opengrids because there's no way to monetize content theft. Yes there is rampant uploading but as nobody can actually sell it for money, it's happening on far less of a scale as it does on sites like XStreet, where it can be converted to easy money.

I however see opportunities beyond SL, not necessarily replacing it. However as other 3d worlds proliferate, you will probably see a lot more 3d artists and developers enter the space who currently regard SL as being a "toy".

I think Argent meant he wasn't going to leave SL for OpenSim.

As someone who argues for the merits of SL's permission system, I certainly am not criticizing OpenSim or those who find it interesting or useful. I think it's great that there's room in the world for multiple models.

There used to be a philosophical discussion about "competing governments". This argument had to remain theoretical, since it's not practical for people to actually choose the government in their RL. But for virtual reality, we may actually get a chance to try several different flavors and vote with our virtual feet, so to speak.

I think it's totally cool if there's a grid where it's not possible to protect intellectual property using any mechanical means. I'm very interested to see where that leads. I'm sure I'd enjoy spending time there too, though I'm more likely to stick with what I know -- I must be getting old!

I'd also like to see a grid where the permissions system supported value-added resales. For example someone makes a widget that can be used in subsequent builds. The widget could be a texture, animation, script, sculpted prim, or object. The creator chooses the value-added price model, setting a per-copy price and a per-transfer price (either of which can be zero).

Whenever someone builds using this and other component widgets, the prices of the components gets rolled into the sales price. That is, the least the maker could charge is the sum of the components' prices. Anything left over goes to him. And, he can choose a value-added resales price model too, to be paid per copy or per resale.

Yes, there would be a bunch of serious details to work out, and it might be inherently unscalable.

Most folks don't realize how this would stimulate product development in an economy like SL's. Wouldn't it be nice if someone making a bed could easily integrate a pose engine without paying a huge sum for a set of full-perm animations? Wouldn't it be great if animators didn't have to trust the builders they sell to?

As someone who works in these and similar areas, I see how much the current model is grit in the gears. Lots of people ask me for full perm animations, but sorry, I'm not interested in seeing all of my work floating around for free, like I see for certain other animators. SL would see an explosion of growth in businesses making components used by product makers, and customers would get better products at lower prices.

Heh, I suggested that back in the OLD suggestions system, back before Jira.

What I suggested was that you could check a "Royalty" box, and select a "percent of sale price" or a "fixed price" that you would be paid when someone sold a product that used your creation. This could be used both for royalties for value-added sales, and for commission sales.

Hardly comparable. If I understand it correctly, these are artists selling their designs to users of 3d modelling & rendering programs, rather than selling end-user products like those found in a typical SL shop, or most of the products listed on XStreet.

It would be interesting to compare the market sizes and growth rates for these two kinds of businesses. The links above don't market to the massive bottom-tier of the economic pyramid: the typical consumer, who just wants to buy something and use it in-world.

I'm convinced that the SL economy would be a tiny fraction of what it is without the permissions scheme, and the quality of goods would be far lower.

I get your point, which is valid. You seem to be completely missing mine.

Forget about your sever or program. Think about the virtual world in which the denizens live. In this world, there is no "ownership" enforced when it comes to intellectual property, and objects are nothing but intellectual property. So, if Gillette makes one shaver, as soon as they sell a single one, everyone in the virtual world can have one for free. That's the extent to which it resembles Communism, or more specifically, what Lennon was writing about in his song "Imagine". Admittedly that's only a fraction of what Communism entails, but it is a significant issue: ownership of objects and ideas being public rather than private.

Note that I'm not arguing against any of the issues you've raised, or your valid points on view about the value of services.

I do not believ that services are the only things of value. I don't think you make that claim, but, ignoring land, that's what would be the case in an Open Sim grid without permissions enforced grid-wide (which I can't imagine being workable).

Why am I not surprised?

I tried to get a discussion on this going, but it didn't lead to much. Try again, new thread?

Tell you what, why don't you write up the JIRA this time?