Does selling freebies violate the TOS?

I suspect I'll probably get kicked all over the forum for this post but....that wont stop me

Im not so sure it helps anyone to spoon feed noobs. Let people learn to use search to find things, allow them to make their own mistakes and learn from this.

*sigh* I was waiting for this.

So in your eyes no freebies should be offered at all? No Textures, no sounds, no animations, no scripts? Everyone should be forced to find out himself how things work or to pay for help?

How did you gather you knowledge?

cu
Aleco

aye and they should add a "Transfer When Rendered Only" permission on Textures so artists can sell their textures with transfer to commercial developers without them being tossed around SL between friends and strangers and then resold on SLX by noobs who happened to catch a box that was being tossed about and thought " hey full perms! me make L$$$!!" Despite there once being an End User Agreement License issued with the original set sold and long since been removed from the folder or box.
But hey. Ive been asking and preaching for 4 yrs....Philip Linden once IMd me back in the days when they walked amongst us common folk and he replied
"Sorry Lilybeth about your theft issues, as yet we can not think of a way to add a permission to textures that wont effect it transferability in other manners...if you think of something let me know!"

erm? ME?

AND the really annoying thing is there already IS a way to sell anything you create having used none trans textures. But because its a bug you get a "shout" about not having the rights to modify this object
So remove the shout and artists can at last sell their textures no transfer " as " texture whilst still allowing their commercial artists to sell anything they create using it.

Its a simple thing to ask. Textures are as important as prims in SL and LL arent offering us anything to shout home about with their freebie collection so Id say texture artists that are brave enough to sell their skills to others who then use to create things THEY sell in SL should be given the same damb protection every other content creator gets. ( as weak as that is its better than what we have )


Yea I know I DO go on about this but with good reason.

*sigh* I was waiting for this too....

I didnt say no freebies should be offered at all. Nor did I mention paying for help or forcing people to do anything at all.... Where did all this come from? Not from me.

What I said was that maybe its not a good idea to spoon feed noobs.

Dont do everything for people, let them learn to do things for themselves. Notecards can be just as useful as giving out free shit. Its not like theres a shortage of freebies out there. I keep a notecard to explain how someone can find the Knowledge Base in the hope that this will enrich their SL experience more than a pair of free earings. I drop this on people who ask 'how do I' type questions. Hopefully, they'll know where to go next time they have a query.

If you want to spend your time creating packages of freebies for noobs then thats entirely your perogative. It would appear that its also the perogative of other enterprising people to take your freebies and resell them as you hadnt set them as no transfer.

As for 'gathering knowledge' I havent written a thesis on the benefits to noobs of doing everything for them. But based on life experience Ive found its far better for someones development to let them learn how to tie their shoelaces for themsleves than to have to do it for them everyday.

It not a bad thing if people have to discover how things work and do things for themselves.

Maybe I should have quoted the particular thread that prompted my original response. It was not yours Aleco, it was a post by Sharrie Criss #18

I found freebies immensely valuable as a source of functioning scripts of various types.

I guess I'm just a spoon-fed n00b and of no value to SL.

I'll reiterate, I didnt mention freebies.


If you take the time to read my original post you might notice that I didnt mention anything about giving out freebies. Freebies are a wonderful way of learning how things are made. Im assuming that you had to find out how the scripts worked at some point to be able to use them effectively. You had to go and look out this information and read it, yes? Fiddle about with the various functions and LSL to see how each change affected the scripts performance? You wernt spoon fed this information were you?

What I said was that spoon feeding noobs might not be a good thing. Let people learn to use the search engine and the Knowledge Base how to tp and look for things themselves.

Theres a difference between someone asking 'How do I find things that are hidden underground' and someone who asks...'Im here, tell me how to make money, tell me how to become a land baron, tell me how to become a successful shop owner, I like that give it to me'. In my opinion thats the difference between helping someone and spoon feeding.

Maybe I should mention, that my help station is a german one.

Have a look in it and then judge yourself, whether that is spoon feeding. I collect, sort and offer freebies. Some friends and I also collect LMs, sort them and offer them for free, they are updated and tested once a month. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Somdari/6/67/106

The freebies I offer there are not only for noobs and newbies but for more experienced users as well, who look for tools or materials. The intention of the creators of the freebies in many cases was, to give something back since they received help too. If their stuff is in some unsorted mega freebie packs, no one will really find it. Setting the freebies to "no transfer" as some freebie stores do, hinders the development of new stuff, specially if it's textures.

cu
Aleco

I have to agree with Caroline about spoon feeding noobs not necessarily being the best thing for them. She didn't mention freebies at all, and it's a pity that things are so often misread. However...

Why is it necessary to set freebies as transfer? There may be good reasons for it, but I can't bring any to mind.

As well as being able to set an object as a permanent freebie, so that future owners can only give it away free and not sell it, I'd like to see a system of royalties introduced on sale goods so that, say, 10% of all future resale costs of a product is passed back to the creator.

One reason is, that otherwise creations done with for example freebie textures can not be given back to the public. They can't even be given to another Avatar to test the functionality.

Ist's about the same question as about free software licenses. Some scripts in SL are already distributed under the BDS license for example. I even found skins, including the single textures, that are under the BSD license. On the creators web page, you even get the psd files.

Why should anyone give code away under that license? Simply because he wants others to be able to use the code without restictions. It's the same intention that some creators have in SL. They want others to be able to use their stuff without restrictions. Setting these freebies to no transfer would disrespect their intention.

cu
Aleco

I mean when creating something and letting it loose as a freebie. I'm also thinking of finished objects rather than stand-alone textures and scripts. Objects can be used by people, and I can't see a reason to make them transferable, when making them transferable means that some sharks will sell them. If people see and want them, they can be told where to get a free copy.

That's what I did for example with the free smile from Dolly Rock for long. But in the end I made a free, editable object that does the same to be able to give it to someone directly. I wouldn't want another store to use it as a reason to get people to their store by not giving it away full perm so that every one has to get it from the store himself.

cu
Aleco

Yeah, exactly Ordinal...hard to believe!

I think most of the freebies I have seen or owned in all my time in SL have "conditions" written in the Script...but how many "freebie resellers" open each item and read the script to see the creator's notes on distribution?

Even if it comes in a convenient "Readme file", I don't think it would hold up in court...ALSO...who would pay to take somebody to court for selling a few items they released for free in a virtual world platform, which cost a small fraction of one cent USD even at L$1.

most of the freebies i come into contact with are no transfer. as it should be. if it's free, and you want your friend to have one, TP them over and let them get their own copy... seems a no-brainer to me.

there are classes, groups and wikis dedicated to this knowledge all over the grid. i wish they were as easily accessible when i joined.

You've obviously never been to Yadni or any other serious freebie "shop".

Non, freebies should not be no transfer. That's something people invented that wanted to force people to come to their shop to get that stuff. Where did they get it from? They obviously can't have received it set to no transfer, so why to change the permissions the creator gave his works?

cu
Aleco

Gene Replacement was wobbed!!!

Not to say anything negative about classes and so on, but there really isn't any better way of learning scripting than to have access to good-quality modifiable scripts in-world, actually _in_ the object they are meant to be used with.

Classes are fine, but they inherently can only cover certain preset topics, and they are an awful lot of work to set up and make generally useful. Advice is handy when you have a script that you need to get to work, but you need to have a basis first. Wikis and scripting libraries are also useful, but they don't illustrate how the script works in practice as well as actually having it there, particularly if that script also uses notecards and subscripts and rezzes items and sends link messages to other prims.

I give advice on forums and inworld, and have a wiki of my own and even a scripting forum myself, but real working examples that you can take apart and play with are pretty much indispensable in my opinion.

(On the other hand, I don't think that freebies really help much in teaching people to build, texture, animate etc - they illustrate what's possible, but having access to a bunch of prims doesn't really tell you how to get those prims into those shapes and positions. Free textures are extremely useful to content creators but that isn't so much a learning thing as an asset thing.)

TOS Specificly states LL will not get Involved in Trade disputes between players, BUT LL also pledges to protect the Creative rights of Content Creators, and here is where the apparent conflict arises.

If you Buy a freebie from a reseller, then no, you have no recourse. it's a trade dispute.

If someone is selling Content YOU created, and Placed out for the Sole Purpose of FREE distribution you DO have recourse under TOS because the reseller is Violating your rights as creator of the object, and profiting from your work (And the fact you Give the property away does Not in any way remove your rights to Enforce ownership of the original Creation).

Angel.

So I can at least sue him for selling my stuff and have to contact the creators for their. I'll see how that works.

cu
Aleco

Because everyone wants to share good stuff, and quite simply the idea that someone needs to go to your parcel to get the freebie does not scale well.

Unless you own a sim, and even if you do own a sim. It's up to the creator though. I make some of my free stuff no trans, the rest full perm.

You might all like to thank Eloh Eliot btw, for her very generous donation to the community of full perm skins. She also has a vendor in Suffugium which allows you to pay whatever you want for her latest skin. Make her happy!

Whisper.

This is precisely what is wrong with the perm system. Allowing non-creators to change the creators perms on free items.

If the creator made them full perm and free, LEAVE THE PERMS ALONE. It's morally bankrupt of anyone to change the goodwill of the creators gift.

This really does need a wiki entry.

Sadly, cases of illegal copying aren't dealt with under the TOS. You can't AR copyrighted content (otherwise anyone could go to a Star Wars sim and AR everything in sight). Instead it's up to the actual creator to file a DMCA objection and have the content taken down, and then to themselves proceed with a subpoena and lawsuit against the copier. And this is problematic because it will cost money and involve other risks, and it is unlikely you will be able to show that you have lost anything, given that the item was free to start with.

Also, in the absence of a license saying otherwise (as there is for textures), the fact that the "copy" box on the freebie was checked will be interpreted as you having given universal permission to copy. Yes, most experienced SL users know that this isn't the case, but courts tend to judge based on what "a normal person" would think (and that means a normal person from the real world at large, not a normal SL user).

I very much doubt that "but Windows lets me copy all those CDs/MP3s/whatever and give them to other people, so that must mean I'm allowed to resell/distribute them!" is going to convince anyone, especially if a "cease and desist" was issued by the copyright owner before taking someone to court.

Just because you can perform certain operations on a container doesn't automatically mean you have permission to perform those operations on the contained copyrighted work.

That's true, but the technical function of SL isn't the issue. As it is, when a person views that item in SL, they see a box marked "copy" with a tick next to it - it's not unreasonable for them to believe (in the absence of any other license) that this means it's OK to copy it. Your CD doesn't have one of those on the packaging!

What's at issue is that belief in the human being's head - not anything to do with SL's technical functionality. Yes, it's true that in SL the copy box is linked to the technical functionality, but that's not a natural law of the universe - it's just LL's decision - and nothing prevents the judge from just deciding that's a dumb idea.