Furniture and the Copy Permission

Because oftentimes they CAN'T buy them. I have only been in SL for just over a year, yet I have many, many items in my inventory, including furniture, that I originally bought long ago and the store has since discontinued the item or simply disappeared entirely. With such an item, if it's copiable, it's no big concern. I can rez more as needed, make modifications and save copies of the different modified versions, and so forth.

Yet with the idea that anything that could conceivably be used more than once should require an additional sale you essentially arbitrarily make customers dependent on the continued existence of your store in its current form.

I have two lovely armchairs that I bought no copy/mod/transfer. I modded them to fit with the rest of my decor, but the store has since disappeared. Now those two chairs are a constant worry. I certainly don't want to make major mods to them now, since I will never be able to get another fresh copy. I don't even like to rez them except to place on my own land for fear SL glitches or sim problems could make them poof entirely.

Such is the fate of no copy items.

I sell furniture myself as well, and not only sell the furniture as copy/mod/no trans but don't even mark it up for the copy "privilege." I think such a thing is a basic right of the customer, same as transferring transfer items. I've seen several of my items used by sim owners or landlords who rez dozens of them, and I know I only make $75L or whatever off that person. But the free advertising? Priceless.

The problem has been that, because I am a furniture creator/seller, it's been easy to misunderstand what I was asking, and very easy to assume that I was asking from my own point of view as a seller, so some replies have offered good thoughts on various aspects of selling furniture. I appreciate the time and thought spent in writing those replies. There was nothing in the OP that implied that that's what I was meaning, but it was easy to assume it.

I've just tried to write one of the questions in a slightly different way, but it could still be misunderstood, so I scrapped it.

I was wondering if there are people who have an attitude that is not far removed from those who think that everything in SL should be free. The difference being that they think they should only have to pay for one copy of an item and then they can then have as many copies of it as they like. Permissions don't come into it. It's the thinking that I was looking for. I was wondering if there are people who have that attitude, that's all.

It came about when someone said words to the effect of, "I see no reason why a landlord can't have hundreds of an item rezzed, having only paid for one", and I wondered if it was a similar attitude to the 'everything free' people, and if so, is it a common attitude. That's what I was trying to get at.

Right! That's a good answer. So you think it is (or should be) "a basic right" that people can buy one copy of an item and then rez as many copies of it as they like.

I'm not going to criticise your thinking, or even argue with it. It's what I wanted to know when I started the thread. It's a plain answer to the question, if you want 2 armchairs in room, why shouldn't you pay for 2 armchairs for the room? - and to the other questions.

Are there any more people here who think that it is (or should be) a basic right?

Ernst. Just out of interest, does that belief in a basic right to rez as many copies as you like extend to things like costly sexbeds, or is it limited to low cost items? I'm just curious.

I actually have a dining set that is copy and where I bought one table and one chair and it cost around L$250 total so there's certainly no surcharge for the fact that I might rez 10 million copies of it. Why is that so wrong in your view?

I personally don't care that much whether furniture is copy or no copy just as long as it's mod and in the general case I don't think one should cost more than the other or I simply wouldn't buy it because I don't buy it planning on using it more than once.

When I'm redecorating it's not too uncommon for me to end up reusing a copy piece somewhere a second time even though it's not really what I originally bought it for (ie I might have bought it for one house but find that I can actually use it in the other as well).

I wouldn't go back to the "no copy" store to pick up a second copy for the simple reason that for the same amount I can get something entirely new and different elsewhere. On the other hand if I'm bored with what I have and go look for furniture I'll start at stores whose furniture/accessories I've found I end up reusing because they'll have more value than a store that just sells "no copy" furniture.

So would I buy a "no copy" dining table and 4 "no copy" dining chairs? I would, but if it turns out I feel one of those chairs might fit elsewhere I'm not going to tp back and pick up more. I'd just tp around to different stores for something else that fits just as well/better and if I find a copy chair that store is going to get visited before the "no copy" one next time I need something.

As far as "impulse buys" are concerned: if I see something I think I might end up possibly using and it's L$300 or less and copy then I'll just buy it right there and then even if I don't have an immediate use for it. If it's no copy on the other hand I'll make a mental note that I saw something somewhere but that tends to be forgotten 2 tp's down the road already .

I didn't say it was wrong. I asked questions - I didn't give answers.

I read the rest of your post but it didn't address the OP, although the time you spent writing it is appreciated. Post #52 explains it (I hope).

OK, then lets try this:

I quote three versions of your question here...

Looking again at this version of your question, I guess the critical part is the phrase "from me". So my answer is that nobody should expect anything from you that you haven't explicitly stated you were going to give them.

Yes, I think I should be able to buy one and rez many if the item is copy enabled, and I think this because I think that if the creator of a copyable item didn't want people to copy it they wouldn't have made it copyable; and no, I don't think I should be able to buy one no-copy item and rez many copies of it, and I think this because I think that if the creator of a no-copy item was happy for people to make copies of it they wouldn't have made it no-copy.

The only reason I can think of why they shouldn't is that they'd be ridiculed mercilessly by their peers for doing so when they could have saved themselves the money buy buying a single copyable chair.

Phil, would I be right in thinking that real question you are asking is "Am I being a douche for selling no-copy furniture?". And my answer to that is no, selling no-copy furniture doesn't make you a douche.

Yes, I understand that. SL allows two economic models. Phil's question carries the hidden implication that one of these models is wrong, and that people must have a reason for preferring the wrong model. I'm saying that assumption is wrong, that there's no reason that the buyer should be expected to justify why they prefer the model he's not using.

from my perspective there is one very big reason to stick with copyable items. The grid is unstable. no copy items go missing far too often. The longer you are in SL the bigger your collection of things you love becomes. How many of us really remember who made that absolutely perfect for that spot little end table we bought in 2004? If it went poof because its no copy COULD you even find the creator to replace it?

I would far rather pay a bit more and get copy than lose something I really liked to grid borkiness.

"From me" isn't really the critical part - at least it wasn't intended to be. I was merely a generic seller.

Have a read of post #52, Pete. It tries to explaqin what I was trying to get at.

Whatever you mean by "douche", it doesn't sound nice, and no, you would not be correct. The questions were never about me, as can be seen in post #52. For the information, there is nothing that can be said that will cause me to change the perms on my furniture. It's ever been part of this thread, and it will never be part of any other thread. Even the first quotation in your post never made it part of my thinking.

Now we're starting to get there.

My attitude is, I'm afraid, that permissions do come into it. When I make something, I have the right to set what permissions I want, within the constraints of the SL permissions system. And whoever buys it has the rights I've chosen to give him. If I don't want the thing copied, I'll make it no copy. If I do, then he can make as many copies as he wants. I don't have any strong feelings either way about what permissions should be, other than that most clothing and body-parts made out of prims you're likely to wear should be copy/mod. The permissions on a particular item should be suitable for what I want to do with it, and I'll look for one that matches them.

I don't think creators should set the rights on their stuff the way I want them in the sense they have a moral obligation to. But, as a practical matter of fact, that's what they should do if they want my business. Which, of course, means they probably won't get someone else's business, because she's looking for something she can transfer.

You ask Ernst, later on in the thread, For what it's worth, most of the stuff my business partner and I make costs 1200--2500, and it's all copyable. That's a deliberate commercial decision on our part; we think the sales we lose by not making people buy multiple copies of BDSM thrones or whatever, should they want to have several rezzed simultaneously, are more than outweighed by the combination of sales we make because people like the sales policy.

Indeed, far from worrying about people using them for commercial purposes, we have actually been known to give them to selected club and themed-sim owners because we value the publicity.

You inferred it, but it was never implied. I only asked questions, but you inferred my answers.

But that's not the question you asked. You asked why people think they should be able to rez multiple copies of a chair. I'm saying that being able to rez multiple copies of a chair... regardless of whether they bought it for what you think should be the price of one chair, or three chairs, or ten chairs... is as natural in SL as NOT being able to do so is in RL.

Because that's not how SL works.

No, the seller isn't wrong, but you didn't ask about the seller, you asked about the buyer.

I just told you that I feel I have that right, but I still think you're dragging an assumption about how people SHOULD think in with you, because I don't feel that right is the same as "I think everything should be free".

If the landlord bought a copy-no-transfer object then, sure, they have that right. Just like when I buy a piece of clip-art I've got the right to print hundreds of posters with it on and put them in the front hallway of every room in a hotel.

Content in SL is digital. It can be like clip art, or it can be like limited edition posters. You prefer to use the limited edition model, but that doesn't make people who want to go the clip-art path wrong, or immoral, because it's a very natural way to do things in SL.

It's a marketing decision by the seller. That's all it is.

I think you ARE carrying hidden assumptions about real life with you, because if we were talking about textures, say, you wouldn't even stop to think about it. I've got textures I bought from TU and TRU for L$100 a box of 10 that I'm *expected* to use in my builds, and even resell them as part of a build, because they're clip-art. EVERYTHING in SL is just as much "clip art", and the only reason to sell it on any other basis is to create an artificial scarcity for reasons that make sense to the seller.

Pretty much all scarcity in SL is artificial.

Thank you, Innula. If I can summarise your post, you think that it's entirely up to the creator/selller and not a case of items *should* be buy-one-use-many in Second Life.

Argent:
I'm not going to argue with you. It seems as though you want to be argumentative, and steer away from the topic by nit-picking, but I'm not going to bite. Either you think that everything in SL *should* be 'buy one, use many' or you don't. Perhaps you'd like to give a short and simple statement as to which you think.

Exactly so. With the proviso that, a lot of the time, if the creator/seller wants my business, then items will need to be copy/mod because otherwise they aren't much use to me.

Then don't ask about furniture. Ask about paintings, or textures, or sculpted mushrooms, or chickens, or teleporters, or coffee makers, or airplanes, or animations, or gestures, or ....

People have different assumptions about the permissions of different kinds of objects, for a number of reasons, but they come down to two things:

1. Real life works this way, so SL works this way. I bought a number of famous paintings, in SL, until I realized that I was buying no-copy no-mod clip art. I gave them all away and uploaded my own copies of the same clip art.

2. A particular model works best for the seller. AO animations are normally expected to be copy because people can't share them, so the seller doesn't make more sales by making them no-copy. Sit animations are normally expected to be no-copy because some buyer is expected to be using the same animation in multiple objects, so the seller can make more money that way.

Furniture works well for you with the no-copy model. That doesn't mean there's anything "wrong" with the buyer who wants more than a specific small number of copies wanting to be able to take advantage of the other model. They're just being a rational economic actor.

No, it's not a similar attitude.

Ah ha! So the question you are asking is "Are there any anarchists (of the philosophical 'property is theft' kind rather than the bomb-wielding kind) in SL?". I don't know, but I would be astonished if there weren't.

However, givenandit becomes easier to see where the apparent confusion arises.

(But then again, to be fair, in the first of the above two quotes you only say you will "consider" changing the perms.)

Simply asking for a justification, and tying it to a negative stereotype, is absolutely begging the question. You don't see that, and are still asking whether there's a connection between what I see as a normal expectation in SL and this negative stereotype. I think you're missing something.

I asked the first quoted question (and the others in the OP) to a particular person and it fitted the discussion it was in. It was a mistake to simply copy and paste it in the OP of this thread. To me, the OP looks fine and shouldn't cause any confusion, but that's just the way I see it because it came from a conversation that I fully understood, whereas OP readers don't have that advantage.

I *was* missing something - that you are just argumentative for the sake of it - but I cottoned on already.

*As a buyer*, of course I do. Why shouldn't I?

There you go. It wasn't too difficult, was it?

I'm not being argumentative for the sake of it.

I answered the question honestly, and you misunderstood my honest answer. Now I'm trying to deal with that misunderstanding.

Of course it wasn't difficult, that same answer was there in my first response. But that's not the question you originally asked.