starting to feel like a theif

Content creators that include any type of DRM in there product are at fault here.
You are responsible for content theft. How do you feel?

If I find you have impeded my use of your product by including DRM, I will bypass it. And I will teach others how to as well.

It's time consumers stood up against these bad people.

Lets assume I'm worried about content theft (true enough).

Lets say I'm looking for decent solutions (true enough).

Somewhere I learn I should make my items no-Mod.

Why?

That's where I stand in all of this. How do they reach the conclusion that no-Mod helps them in some way?

Now...

I have used no-Mod before on some items that were -not- for sale. Like a notecard or script, that I didn't want people peeking into.
- But when I put something up for sale I tend to go copy, mod, no-trans.

The only legitimate reason I can see for no-mod is to protect the integrity of your design.

The above said I recently put in 3 pictures for sale in my adult shop that are copy, no-mod, no-trans.

They're pictures on a 1-prim frame. I did this to try and protect against theft of the picture. But... I return to my question at the top.

Why?

Did my choice make any sense? It causes the obvious problem that the end user cannot resize the frame, cannot put the picture into some other frame (like a cycling images frame), and can't even re-texture the back or sides of the frame.
- All of which does in fact bother me... Because I want them to be able to do all of those things, I just don't want them to be able to get to the texture of the image itself.
(even though each is signed by the artist - so hard for anyone to claim they are their work).


But again... is there ever any logical reason for no-mod other than 'protect the integrity of the design'?

This.

When I put out my freebie shape, which was intended for use by new people, I put it in a box, and put two copies of it in the box, both copy-mod-notrans, and the second copy having 'BACKUP' added to the name. I then added a notecard that said what the backup was for...
- and telling users to start out by making a copy, and then wearing that.

Haven't had any support issues yet, and it "sells" like crazy being a freebie in my shop, xstreet, and sarah nerds.

If somebody did mess up all their copy's, since its free, I could give them another - but if you can manage to ruin it after all I did to protect you... you kind of need to step away from the computer before it hurts you.


My skybox works on the same principle. You buy it you get a copy-mod box.
You open that box and inside is a copy-mod rezzer, footprint prim, notecard, and LM.

The notecard tells you what to do in case it isn't obvious.

You take out the rezzer, which is copy mod, and click it. It rezzes a copy-mod skybox.

You could sit there on your land and rezz skyboxes all day long -stack them on top of each other, or whatever... mess them up, rip the apart, etc...

Unless you delete that original box AND the rezzer that stayed in your inventory - you're safe.

None of my support issues on it have been for user error (got one when somebody pointed out a feature not working as I'd intended it - and the rest seems to have gone well).

The short answer is you need to be able to mod an item so you can put copybot scripts in it.

I have this motion picture playing in my head... of this speck of a person, with a can of bug spray, crouched amidst a swarming cloud of a billion cannibal locusts. The swarm is feeding on everything...
...and this person is frantically spraying all around to slow its advance, to stay alive! But, it is of course a fool's errand. Eventually the swarm begins feeding upon it's self and upon the person...


...who realizes moments before they are completely consumed...


...that they were nothing more than one of the swarm.

Sure would make a cool illustration!

Once upon a time, there was a big hoo ha about prim mirroring scripts and especially variations that skipped the mirroring part. Those scripts do need modify permission to work, but they are also fiddly things that tend to require some extra work to do anything at all, and even then they don't get all the object's attributes.

Since the copybot etc. programs came out in 2006, the scripted copy stuff has been a non-issue. The newer stuff is faster, easier to use, doesn't care about permissions, doesn't use scripts at all, and captures the attributes the scripts couldn't get at.

And yet, all this resize script mania started well after the notion that no mod could help was made obsolete.

Plz someone send this to all content creators, oh plz oh plz....

If you were to copy bot such items, the scripts would be neatly left behind and so, not a problem for you

The idea that scripts and animations get left behind and thus immune to copybots is also an antiquated idea.

Is that what it's called?
No wonder my real PA raises her eyebrows every time I ask and kinda smirks. Why didnt she tell me its Highlighter???
Now I feel liek a real dimmy coz there's a fish company called Captain Highliner.
Jeesh, I really DO some and SAY some stupid things. I am always trying to be so suave and self-assured.

Is it? I know there's an exploit -- or was until recently (not sure if it's been patched or not in the new update) -- that puts animations and scripts at risk, but it's nothing to do with copybots.

I was in a feisty mood when I logged in. I still had an unopened hunt prize containing 28 color of hair from that store -- I rezzed all 28 colors.

Copybots work without scripts.

There are scripts that can duplicate the shape of an object as long as the object has no sculpties. These don't duplicate textures. Using no-mod protects objects from this kind of copying. Frankly, I expect that copybot is easier to use and makes a better copy because it copies the textures too.

Another reason to use no-mod is to protect sensitive contents in notecards. It's best if you can keep sensitive text out of notecards. For example, furniture with retexture menu has texture names or keys in notecards. Two ways to protect the textures:
1) use keys but make the object no-mod so the notecards can't be snooped
2) use texture names and include them in the object's inventory

Option 2 doesn't require no-mod; option 1 does. But frankly, textures are so easy to copy anyway; anyone with the know-how to snoop the notecards probably also knows how to get the texture keys. So, while there's an argument for this case, it's a weak one. Raises the bar a *little* higher, but not much, and at significant cost to the consumer.

I'm sure there are other special cases where no-mod is appropriate for content protection. The problem is that too many makers don't take the effort to learn when it's helpful and when it's not, and just do it to make their own life simpler. Admittedly, it's not a trivial issue. But I prefer makers who aren't ignorant and who do take the effort, and I reward them with my business.

While I agree in spirit, I don't completely agree with everything. If content creators include *useful* DRM in their products that don't hamper customers' use of them, I have no problem with that. (Sorry, I can't come up with any good examples, offhand!)

But I'm in complete agreement that if we don't like it, we shouldn't buy it. Also, we need to sick the dogs on those who don't properly disclose the restrictions before purchase.

Here are three examples: Invisible watermarking, No Transfer transaction verification (most content creators will not offer replacements without proof of purchase, for good reason), a service driven business model versus a product driven business model. I'm sure there are more.

Right. Copybot can't copy scripts or notecards or embedded objects.

Copybot doesn't copy animations. It's possible to make a copybot that can copy animations, but with additional effort on the part of the thief, who'd have to play every animation, and manually set up the object's scripts to use the animations correctly.

Well I started creating jewellery recently and I have items no copy, no mod, trans. I was not particulary concerned about the theft element as I don't think anyone would be bothered stealing my designs, and as you say they can steal my textures anyway. What concerned me was that people would mess the items up so much I'd be constantly replacing them. Editing linked parts on an item containing maybe a hundred or more chain links, little balls, gems etc is not for the faint hearted. I put resizer scripts into the simpler bracelets because that is all they need. Resizer scripts in more complicated items caused restrictions in permissable percentage change before sculptie parts went out of proportion to each other so I took the scripts out. Most jewellery only needs move edits, i.e. earrings, necklaces etc while resizer script seem ok for others such as bracelets and collars. I'd be very interested to hear what perms people would prefer to have on jewellery.

Nyll Bergbahn

I sell my jewelry copy/mod/no-xfer.

Personally, I prefer copy for worn items so that I can put an outfit in a folder and wear the folder -- quick change artist. Copy so that I can use the same item in multiple outfits.

Others prefer xfer so that they can give it or sell it to someone else when they no longer want it, or to share it among their alts.

I script some stuff for a friend who makes outfits out of jewelery -- really complicated breastplates and belts and collars with between 150-250 tiny prims each. She sells it no-mod now, though she didn't used to. Her reasons for changing were very much the same as Nyll's -- if you're not used to editing stuff like that, you're almost certain to make a mess of it (as I've found out).

So she now supplies it with notes on how to adjust your body shape to fit the items and provides a customized fitting service, at a very moderate cost, if you want it adjusting to fit your shape. I suppose she can do this because they're expensive items so she doesn't sell a huge number a day.

The scripts I make for her include resizer scripts, in case all you need is to adjust the size. These nag you each time you TP and delete themselves after an hour anyway. They can be re-propagated and re-activated if you need them (though since the outfits are copyable and come in boxes, you don't really need that), and everything else about the items is controlled by a single script in each linkset that uses llSetLinkPrimitiveParams or llSetLinkSomethingSpecific on groups of prims within the linkset, targetting them by prim name or description. Why more people don't use this method, I don't know, other than it takes a bit more work to set up.

I can see a reason for making stuff that's composed of hundreds of intricately fitted prims no-mod, but what people are talking about here aren't generally hundreds of intricately hand-fitted parts, they're maybe a a few dozen parts at the most.

Customer: "I bought X from you and seem to have messed it up."
Seller's copy/paste: "You can get a fresh copy from the box it came in. Or if you deleted that you can tp to the store and use the redelivery system to get a new copy."

Simple, straightforward, takes up none of the creator's time and does not require anything to be no modify.

Now that I can actually accept as a reason to make things "no modify": trick people into buying something and then charge them extra just to get it fitted.

Not really, cos what you tend to end up with is a load of unhappy customers saying, "I've spent ages trying to get this damn thing to fit and I just can't -- can you please fix it for me?". And then if you don't fix it for free, they complain like crazy. At least that was what my friend found and why she changed her policy.

size scripts in hair..BLEH!!

i bought some of those before..some let you size each strand and some just do the whole hair piece..

i don't mind the ones that let you do each piece..but the ones that do the whole thing without a choice of this prim or whole set are stupid..
you end up with something 10 times the size of your head because they curved strands that pierce your ears and face..

seriously..all this no mod and size scripts and junk are pushing me to making my own things..so i guess thats a good thing

Oh, I agree.

I'm almost tempted to try that outside the shop with that awful hair that yelled to an entire sandbox in English and Portugese that I was a thief for daring to rez it on the ground. (I wanted to add a small bow to the front to save an attachment point.) Except I wouldn't as that's too nasty, but the thought is a bit amusing.

One of the ugly things with no mod, is that the avatar mesh was light grey up until early this year. Not sure about when LL changed it to white, but it must be over 6 months ago. It was lots of tutorials about how designers should tint prim parts grey, to match system clothing.

Well the avatar mesh is white now, but a lot of designers still use grey sculpts. Try to fix that on a no mod item! I have a very very pretty set of leggings from a popular shop. The prim parts are no mod with resizer, and look much darker than the system part. I can suspect they are grey but what can I do? The designer don't sell all items with resizer, I got a scarf there that was tinted grey and fixed it myself in a few seconds. I sent the creator a NC where I tried to explain my problem with her no mod sculpts as good as I could. Never heard anything.

If anyone will translate this to Japanese I would be grateful. I have a link here where this is explained better than I can do.