Merchant Elitism at its finest

tomorrow's 'serious' merchants are today's 'just goofing around and seeing if anyone likes it'.

Speak for yourself!

I do not like some of the ideas but I completely understand people being upset. People really need to start throwing every idea out on the table and also start hollering at LL. Hopefully the lawsuit will also force LL into taking some kind of action.

Listen, everyone knows that I am one that has always preached calm in the face of Copy Bot. We have survived. But I have also been playing with the latest tool that is out. It still has some kinks but the one it stole a lot of it's functions from will be hitting the grid within the next few weeks. When it does then it is going to completely change the game unless LL can come up with something to rein it in. It is not going to be pretty and the Copy Bot fiasco is going to pale in comparison.

Just one aspect of it:

Ar ar ar!


/me runs for cover from banstick

Eek! yep, makes the damage from copyboting look like a bread theves, when every user on the grid could have have texture copying features as part of their standard viewer

We might as well dump the whole perms sytem while we're at it.

Now that is what I would call poisoning the well.

HOLY CRAP

I can't read the thread. My browser chokes on Security Alerts when I try to access it.

Linden Lab needs to provide some sort of system for dispute resolution so that there is actually recourse for a customer who is ripped off by a merchant.

Some sort of 'licensing' could be a start, but it's not the end of the deal. In real life, in the U.S. at least, the states regulate businesses by requiring licensing. The main point of licensing is to provide a customer with information the can use to find and sue a business when the business does not perform its end of a transaction.

Some sort of initial 'licensing' in Second Life isn't enough. What does a consumer do when a 'licensed' merchant rips them off?

In real life, licensing isn't meant to be an artificial barrier to entery into the marketplace by a merchant. Licensing fees for businesses are typically nominal. However, since in SL, people are doing business for much smaller money most of the time, even small fees are a substantial barrier to entry for merchants.

What Linden Lab needs to do is not create artificial barriers to entry into the marketplace, but provide dispute resolution. And Linden Lab won't do that, because there is no profit in it. I can see creation of some sort of 'licensing' by Linden Lab as an appealing way to deal with the problem, because it's one of those things where Linden Lab can claim to have addressed a problem and then not have to actually devote any resources to fixing the problem.

Well the licence to be able to sell doesn't guarantee anything about what you are selling it's more a bond to be lost if LL determine that an account has broken the TOS to warrant it's loss and would have to be something along the lines of stolen content, not just a "I didn't get my item" or "the item is crap" issue.

Dispute resolution works great at the moment for theives you report them selling copybotted versions of your stuff a week or so later the DCMA takes effect and they create 10 more free disposable alts the next day selling the same item again. Very simple process. Short of spending a month and a small fortune on legals and investigations, then hiring someone in their small foreign country to "remove" them, you might as well not bother.

Cute. But the point stands. We are heading towards a flashpoint with regard to content theft, and at some point, somebody is going to have to admit that "allowing absolutely anyone to create and sell" is chasing after an ultimately futile dream, but at a huge cost.

Second Life has already gone across the bump where most people can't engage with the creative process, because they just aren't good enough at it. What's the proof about that? The very same toleration of content theft! The main reason why people who might be moral in every other way ignore content theft is because of their perception that it only affects lucky, rich, creatively talented people whose edifices would rise beyond all society but for a little crime to keep them in touch with reality. When I joined SL in 2005, this just didn't exist. There was much more of a perception of a shared creative effort. And, yes, it even persisted when the free accounts opened up.

I doubt very much that anyone who doesn't have the commitment and establishment to give real life ID information to the Lab could ever have the ability to build a successful in-world business. I don't see, as a result, why sale and transference of own-built objects shouldn't be limited to people with ID on file. That wouldn't make us Blue Mars, although it might make us pre-2006 SL.

I see no reason to deviate from that goal, it has worked for ebay.

Where "most people" is defined as "Yumi Murakami and the mouse in her pocket".

You can't make infinate copies of Ebay items for the cost of a mouse click. And Ebay attempts to verify it's sellers with a fair amount of success, where LL does not bother.

Now, come on Argent, that's just ridiculous. You aren't seriously claiming that the thousands of claimed-and-unused names, the hordes of camping/clubbing zombies, the people who go to sites marketing as containing "the copybots you need to succeed in SL", and even _the people who answered the SLCC survey_, are all engaged with the creative process in SL. (And I mean the process, not the results.)

Here's some food for thought for you: the idea of "talent" appeared in society before anyone ever knew about DNA or anything like that. So why, then, when they observed that some people were a lot better at some things than others, did society conclude that the reason must be something inborn, immutable and inevitable? Which, at the time, would be something that nobody would have an explanation for?

Setting aside that the audience is "part of the creative process", why are you claiming that people who haven't tried to create anything are unable to?

The audience isn't part of the creative process in a way that requires them to have access to the sale and transfer tools.



Well, if they don't want to, that's a reason why they can't (that fact will prevent them ever choosing to). If they _do_ want to and haven't tried, it must be because they can't - or because they think they can't, but that thought then stops them doing it and they indeed can't.

Most of the audience for my stuff got it from other members of the audience. Yay!

Which is ok, since the proposal was that unverified users should be prevented from transferring objects they've created.

No, the proposal was that they be unable to transfer objects, period.

Observe:

Yes but that's a different point, anyone is allowed to sell on ebay was my point. People get scammed on ebay, ebay try and act. The fact that scammers exist hasn't stopped people selling on ebay.

And what's to keep someone from editing prims and scripts created by someone else, handed to him full-perm?

It would then count as being edited by them - ok, it means you couldn't just use the existing Creator record, but I'm sure something new could be added.

Plus, of course, most copybots aren't capable of editing an existing object into another.

Yes but they don't let just anybody sell, only verified anybody's