Informal poll: High Sales/HighTheft? or Low sales/No Theft?

Rhetorical question:
If you ran a SL business, and you had a choice between having a very successful business that was the constant target of content thieves, or having a less successful business that is ignored by content thieves, what would you choose?

The first - unless the stealing made it necessaray for me to keep on producing new stuff just to stay maintain the high sales.

Annyka, I do know what you mean. We've had some related experiences with the company I work for, Hosoi Ichiba.

We're certainly not one of the really "known" names in SL, but if you are into traditional asian-themed stuff, people tell us that we are one of the best, if not the best, they have seen.

What this has led to is that people have copied us. We usually find out about it through some kind should telling us, because we certainly don't have the resources to scan the various SL selling websites, plus touring around in-world.

We don't lose a ton of sleep over it, but we DO take action to shut down anyone who has obviously stolen our stuff. More often than not, they get nasty about it, threatening to sue us, etc., etc. and that causes some heartache for a while, just trying to deal with the angry thrashings that go on once they know that they have been caught.

We have found that LL have been quite helpful, once the procedures are followed - stuff gets taken down really quickly. The interesting thing is that, although we don't know for sure, it appears that people who bought the stolen goods got them taken away from them with no compensation, either. We have been banned from some sims simply for filing the DMCA and having THEIR stuff taken away, even though we offered to do them some sort of deal for the real (non-stolen) items.

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, pending the DMCA being filed, so to me it shows me that you are doing something good, if people think it's worth going to the effort of copying it.

There - just my opinion from our corner of SL.

I don't know how they copy you if you're "Unknown" or lesser known especially
when you're copying your ideas from real life even if your product is well done?
Just curious.
There is similar techniques everyone uses who has textured, built or designed
anything unless the designer comes up with something totally original but even
then I know my friends and I share techniques and tips, and I don't consider that
copying.
There will be greedy people who always take short cuts, it doesn't really matter to me because it doesn't effect me but I have had friends where it has happen usually its
obvious they don't even change the packaging and those friends make high sales.
I have had few questionable experiences where I saw content and wondered about but nothing I can say is obvious stealing.
A lot of best designers I know rarely sell anything.
Maybe it is because they are too busy creating?

hey!

(high) sales / no theft ¿

i cannot see any reason why people should pirate others work.
high sales, blue sky, whatever, ... -> is no excuse.

No fair!
High Sales/No theft is not an option for this example.

I'm not looking for excuses for pirating, and not asking about questionable cases that may or may not be copying. Assume that the theft I'm talking about is unquestionably content theft.

I can rephrase the question a little:

If you had the opportunity to dramatically increase sales, but that brought a much higher risk of content theft, would you take it?

No

Yeah. But the question in return is: Why are you asking?

Meaningless questions, unless you put numbers with them.

Which one makes you or loses you the most money?

Of course, once you know that, you've answered your own question.

I'm asking because I'm exploring some different sales model ideas and want to get some kind of idea of what the actual cost of content theft is.

I have high sales and high theft.

Because I have high sales I have lots of customers and they help keep lookout in world for the copies (not knowingly but most incidents of theft are reported by helpful customers).

I also employ someone (thanks to the high sales) to search for thieves and to deal with all the work involved with getting stolen content taken down.

Also, as long as you keep on top of the content theft and never let them distribute your designs on mass then it never really affects your bottom line. yeah, it may cost you a few sales but irrelevant in the grand scheme of things if you are pulling in allot of sales.

So I would take high sales with high theft any day of the week.

Also, i think you missed out an option. If people have low sales with low visibility then chances are they won’t get copied. I think the hardest category would be 'mid sales' and a medium amount of theft. People in the process of building a business obviously have good content if they are gradually becoming successful; however they may not have high enough earnings to balance out the loss of sales from theft. I think they are hit hardest.

Its just hypothetical, but for the sake of argument, say the high theft figure is double the sales of the no theft figure.

I'm not sure where actual losses would come in, but that's part of why I'm asking

I guess I would have to, as I understand it the more popular your product, the more likely people will copybot you.

Yes! Absolutely!

I'd choose to be very successful, but it sure would be nice if the theft didn't have to come along with it!

I have a good friend who runs one of the most successful businesses in world for a particular type of content. He's filing at least one DMCA a week, but doesn't seem too stressed out by this, and I don't believe it's affected his profits significantly. The key factor for me would be whether or not I could cope with the extra work involved in chasing down the thieves, and whether or not people ripping off my hard work was distressing. I know for some people, this is extremely disheartening, to the point that they contemplate giving up.

Anything that is popular will be copied. It is the price of success.

Once the novelty of having your stuff stolen wears off you should stop getting angry and start getting efficient. Finding and stopping thieves is just another aspect of doing business here and once you get a well managed process in place for dealing with it, then it just becomes part of the routine.