Furniture and the Copy Permission

I posted this in another thread where it may not get the readers and answers that a new thread will get, so I thought I'd start a new thread.

Somebody posted, "Personally I don't really see the problem with a landlord rezzing hundreds of copies of a single item, but it seems most furniture makers are quite concerned about this happening."

and I replied:-

"If you can give me a good reason why someone should be able to buy one item of furniture from me and have a hundred copies of it rezzed and in use, I'll consider changing the perms. Or...

If you bought, say, a sex sofa from me, why would you want more than one rezzed? Or...

If you want 2 armchairs in your living room, why shouldn't you pay for 2 armchairs for your living room?"


I am interested in people's answers to those questions. In the other thread, one person had already mentioned the idea of having room sets in a rezzer (not a temp rezzer) and swapping between them, which is a very good facility to have, but it can't really be done unless the items are copyable. My thinking is that so few people do it that selling copy furniture for it doesn't come close to outweighing the disadvantages of selling copyable furniture.

What proportion of sales are sales to landlords who will rezz large numbers of copies?
What proportion of sales are sales to people who will rezz two or three copies?

If those landlords had to buy the NoCopy items individually, would they buy any NoCopy at all? I suspect not.
Is it better to get one sale to a landlord rather then no sales?

How about selling two versions off the Item?
a) A noCopy version
b) A Copy version at a higher price


If a landlord rezzes a gazillion copies, is this not creating an opportunity for many people (tenants and their visitors) to see the items and end up buying them when they decide to furnish their own places?

The copy version at a higher price is quite common but the higher price isn't much higher - 3 or 4 times the normal price, and yet the buyer can rez dozens and dozens of them. If landlords are renting out dozens and dozens of places for dozens and dozens of profits, using the furnishings to help rent them out, why shouldn't s/he pay for them?

Actually, landlords do pay for them individually. Most of those who have asked me for copy versions at a higher price have bought at my quantity discounts, which are quite generous - up to a third off.

Copyable hair, clothing, shoes etcetera is no problem at all. You can only wear one hair style at a time. Copyable furniture, houses, trees etcetera is completely different. The difference is in fact so obvious, that it doesn't need any further explanation.

So I agree with Phil. If you want two chairs, why should you get one (or hundreds) for free? The price level of my furniture is based on buying one item and is therefore low enough for people to buy a second chair, or couch, or whatever they want. If they want 20 chairs of the same model, I offer a big discount, as is how it works in RL.

And besides that: I also was conned several times by residents who wanted their furniture copyable, for temp rezzers of for their second home, they said. Later I saw that they decorated entire rental sims with the cheap copyable items. It's not the furniture creators (or house creators, plant creators whatever) that are responsible for making their items no copy, it's the abusers who made it necessary.

Potentially, 100% of sales:-

A: "Ooo, I like that sex sofa"

B: "I can rez one in your place if you want"

A: "Great - ty!"

C: "Er... you couldn't rez one in my place too, could you?"

B: "Sure - np "

I suspect not. If I were such a tenant, I think I'd fancy a change of furniture when I moved. And, of course, many tenants are tenants for the long haul. I don't see that consideration outweighing the disadvantages of selling copyable furniture.

Well, I'm an example of a landlorld/frequent home seller, who used to take advantage of the copy versions on furniture. When I used to rent homes, I could furnish the whole place for nothing, if I used copy items. I made profits off of each and every rental, whereas the furniture maker only made one sale. Same with home selling. When I sell a home furnished, I make a huge profit....but if I use copy versions, the furniture maker didn't. And they should. They should get a piece of the action. And I'm talking probably 50 homes.

This consideration did not really dawn on me, until I opened my own store, and saw how much work and effort was involved. And then, landlords started asking for copy versions.....and I had to think about how that was going to work.....and considered my own example of how much profit I made off these copy versions, and decided against it....based on my own "abuse." lol Even two years later....I've got a house for sale now, with the some of the same copy versions it. Got my money out of that one shot! For almost three years!

I bet some of those homes are still in place, with the same exact furniture.....even though it was copy, and not transfer, and still has my name on it, as owner. I bet they just left it in place, and didn't replace it with anything of their own.....which means a furniture creator or two missed yet another sale. Not to mention the sales they already missed.

Some times you can't fully grasp a concept until you are on the other end of it.

I'll take up the other end. I'm happy to have landlords rez multiple copies of my things - I think of it as marketing. If their tenant likes the item, they will more than likely come and buy it themselves if/when they decide to get their own land. Not only are you getting exposure to all that landlord's tenants, you are getting exposure to their friends and partners as well. When you sell something with copy perms, you are - in effect - telling your customer to copy it as many times as they like. When I buy a copyable item, I rez it as many times and in as many locations as I choose. If this is such a big deal, sell all your things as Mod/Trans only and be done with it. Don't be whining when you sell with copy perms and people !ZOMG! rezzed more than one copy.

I choose Transfer, instead. I think that is far more valuable. They can give it to an alt, they can give it to a friend, they can give it to a newbie, or they can resell it at a yard sale. Same amount of marketing, if not more. It still gets passed around...people still see it...and it's easier to pass around with Transfer.

Personally, I don't buy copy if I can possibly help it. I've lost too many no-copy dance balls and animations. The ONLY seller I know of who handles no-copy in a way I find acceptable is VKC. If you lose one of their dogs, you go to the clinic and pick him (actually a new one with his "training" intact.) up again. Where ever the original is, it disappears.

SL is just too buggy. The asset server eats things.

But all that being said, I don't buy much any more. I can build pretty much anything I want.

That's fine, Isablan. And I haven't heard anyone whining about anything. But it doesn't answer what I asked in the OP. I'm interested to know if people think they *should* be able to pay for one and have as many as they like and, if so, why they think that. I know that different creators do things in different ways, but I'm interested in it from the buyer's perspective.

After a nasty experience I had with my beautiful Wright House (originally the Linden freebie, but heavily modded by me, including a period style elevator and all new scripts) and everything in it being lost when an Island sank beneath the void... because it was so much of a pain to keep it backed up because of the no-copy furniture in it... I just hate no-copy furniture. The only time I buy no-copy *anything* if I have a choice (including the choice of making it myself by copying it by eye and memory, which I've done in a few cases) is if I'm planning on giving it to someone, or if it's effectively free.

Things like that do happen, of course, but is it a good enough reason to sell all my furniture as copy?

Once in a while, I get people contact me that have had similar problems, and I sort it out for them. Even a sim rollback at the wrong time causes it. Sometimes I only need to explain where a coallesced object will be, and sometimes help them with rezzing it. That type of problem is so infrequent that they've never caused me to consider changing my stuff to copy/no trans.

Depends on the furniture, I guess. We sell ours as copiable, but it's a completely different market from Phil's -- expensive, ornate BDSM stuff packed full of anims that landlords aren't going equip every skybox with, and, at the prices we charge, people understandably feel more comfortable knowing they've got a back-up. But that's not the market Phil's in.

Personally, I don't like buying no copy stuff because when I do, I always find myself rearranging things a couple of months later and finding I need another matching chair or whatever it is, and it's a nuisance to have to go back and get another one.

Different people have different priorities.. I would see Phil's policy as a reason for me not to shop at his store, but clearly lots of people don't share my view, so good for him.

Dude, I'm a buyer too. I buy lots of landscaping materials and animations. I prefer to be able to copy them and use in multiple locations. I definitely think I *should* be able to rez as many copies as I choose, assuming that the creator sold with copy permissions. It really is an individual preference thing - I never resell my trans stuff, so I would much rather have copy perms. Either you want to be able to use the item for a time and resell it or you want to have backups in case of SL borkage, it really is an either/or philosophy from a customer point of view.

No, but it's a good reason for me not to buy it.

This was before sim rollbacks were expected and reliable, and before coalesced objects. I got every. single. prim. back. one. object. at. a. time. in my inventory, with no possible hope of reassembling it, and it happened over a long weekend I wasn't online so by the time I found it it was way too late to roll back.

A lot of things inworld are copiable, and generally the community seems to be respectful of the creator's intentions, but it is a risky move to make and we do live in a world of content thieves after all. I'm surprised there aren't entire businesses out there whose sole purpose is to rent out copies of expensive gadgets and builds for a weekly fee.

One way you can tighten security in copiable items is to restrict script/menu access to the owner so third parties cannot control the scripted features, but that offers only limited protection in furniture and would still generate complaints.

What little furniture i do sell is copy-
I dont have any costs beyond the one time i make the thing so I guess I just dont care if 900 or 1 is rezzed. Tha's just me. And yes I shy from no copy stuff.

I also agree with Phil and the reason I make *most* of my items Transfer is for the same reason Mickey quoted above.

I would love to have the space and/or the system that allows a customer to choose Copy or Transfer but at the moment it is not an option for me.

I honestly prefer to purchase most anything (including clothes) with Transfer perms. I understand it is very handy to have Copy perms on clothes, shoes, jewelry, etc. to organize various outfits, but I would still like to give or sell an item I no longer want.

Back to furniture, due to my personal preference, I had Transfer perms on any furniture I make. (Which right now is a teeny shop.) My best sellers are the drapes & blinds which I sold for $25L each, my thinking being it would be inexpensive enough for the customer wanting just one set and still very inexpensive for customers purchasing more than one.

Over time I noticed that most customers purchased 4-6 at a time so just recently I changed the perms to Copy and increased the price a bit (still very inexpensive).

As far as landlords and large volume purchasers, I've had in my profile and my product info cards that if someone wanted to make a volume purchase to please contact me and I would work a price for them. No one ever did.

I wonder how much of the concerns of creators are founded on factual measurable issues or are the equivalent to old wives' tales? The 'landlord gonna rip me off' argument for example. How many times does this happen? All the time? Just once? Is once all it takes? Is there a creator who set their stuff to copy and went bankrupt soon after? Or is this a case of everyone waiting until they see someone take the plunge?

I get landlords asking me for copy items quite often so it's not just a theory. Also, when I was a landlord, I would have bought one copyable chair, for instance, and used it everywhere. It's not merely theoretical.

On top of that, we have one person in this thread saying she did exactly that, and another saying that he was conned more than once by landlords doing it.

There are no old wive's tales here

But the questions I posted in the OP are bit short on answers. For instance, if you buy one sex sofa, why would you want more than one rezzed, and, if you want 2 identical armchairs in a room, why shouldn't you buy 2 identical armchairs for the room?

Them dirty landlords!

If I want two jackets, shouldn't I buy two jackets? If I want two airplanes, shouldn't I buy two airplanes? If I want to listen to the White album in my car and in my living room, shouldn't I buy two CDs? You're begging the question (and for once that's the correct term) by assuming that real world analogies with physical objects should be expected to hold here. The only reason they should, is for your economic advantage... which is fair enough... but it still makes an unfair point.

So that's my answer... I shouldn't have to buy two chairs because it's to my economic advantage to only buy one chair. That IS a perfectly valid response.

It's perfectly legitimate for you to prefer your economic advantage, but my economic advantage isn't any less legitimate, even though I'm a mere customer.

However, there's another reason. I buy your chair, when I only need one. I add another room, I need two more. I can't find you, well damn, I'm stuck. Or I go back to your store and you've improved the chair, but I want the older version because it matches the couch I own better. That's another perfectly valid reason for being able to make a small number of copies.

You can say, I should have bought three chairs to begin with. Or I should by a new couch as well. That's obviously to your advantage, so I'm not presenting a reason why you should change your policy... but it IS, again, a perfectly valid complaint.

It's a theory as long as you can't show that a landlord actually doing that is costing you actual sales though.

If someone specifically seeks out a pre-furnished rental then I don't see how they could be considered a very likely customer so if their landlord happens to rez something 10 times that doesn't mean you're missing out on any extra sales.

If it's something your average (or a significant number of people who might buy at your store if only you offered copy as well) customer wants then it's going to make more sense to sell it that way (or preferably have the option) and get their business then to focus on an edge case.

I didn't say anything about lost sales. You're jumping to wrong conclusions. There would be lost sales, but that's not what I'm asking about. The questions I asked need answers from the buyer's perspective. I.e. do buyers think that they *should* be able to make as many copies of, say, an armchair as they like and, if so, why?

Btw, there is nothing theoretical about any of it.