Texture Permission Reform Needed in the worst way

The more stuff I make the more it becomes obvious -

No transfer Textures need to be fixed so that the permissions apply only to the actual texture - and not the prim it is applied to. As a texture maker I want to protect the actual texture from being shared with others for free. What someone builds with the texture is none of my business. As a builder I do not care what people do with the prim after they get it. The best they could do is build things using the prims you give them to make other things. That is too limited and if the prim is no transfer - it is useless to them anyway.

I believe that if someone owns a texture - regardless of what the texture permission is - they as the owner should be able to build things that can be transferred.

It makes absolutly no sense at all to have the set up that is curently in use.


Can I hear from the x-purts on here .. and also what will it take to make LL change it?..

Uh.... No.

No transfer, No Copy, mean NO TRANSFER AND NO COPY - why should a texture that has these perms and has been placed on a prim be any different.

And I do not even think you can put No Copy textures on prims - Thank goodness.

I agree wholeheartedly with Von.

Another recent thread: /109/07/293866/1.html

JIRA that came out of it: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-3448

While I agree with Von, there is a problem in that there are some texture creators who really did mean to implement "no transfer" on their textures as a way of preventing the textures from being used on anyone's prims other than the person who bought them. For example, I know of one prefab builder who sells matching texture packs for her prefabs, specificly so her customers can do remodeling on their own homes, after purchase. But she absolutely does NOT want anyone who buys the texture packs to be able to use her own building textures to go into competition with her, in the form of someone else buying the packs and using them to make their own prefabs for sale.

Personally, I won't buy that sort of textures, where I can't use them on stuff I intend to build for others. But it is a valid choice for someone like that other builder, who sees her textures as an integral part of her prefab building business.

So, the question is, if the OP's suggestion were implemented, how would you deal with the case I just mentioned? If no-transfer on the texture does not make prims made with that texture also no-transfer, then how would that Builder be able to limit the use of her sets?

I guess we would need another permissions flag for textures. One would indicate if the texture itself was transferrable, and another would indicate if items that incorporate that texture would be transferrable. This could perhaps expand to all items.

For example:
(1) I might want to sell you a window script that has several nifty features. You may not transfer the script itself to others, but you might still be able to make homes and sell them, using that script. The buyer sees the script in their purchased prefab as a no-mod item that they can't read the code on.

(2) I might want to offer sculpties, prim architectural details, or scripted prim assemblies intended for use in prefab homes. Perhaps the new permissions would allow me to sell the assemblies or prims, in a way that allows the buyer to use them freely in their builds, but not to pass the assemblies on in the raw form. Maybe in that case the root prim for the building would have to be something other than a prim in one of my sets.

Not sure how this could be worked out, but the idea is certainly worth looking into.

Maybe two sets of flags: One set for "Next Owner", and an optional set for "Next owner after that first transfer". When the item is transferred, the buyer gets the specified "next owner" perms, and if there is a "Next owner after that first transfer" set or perms defiled, then that becomes the new "next owner" perms, and can't be set to anything less permissive by the buyer?

that is downright stupid.. what good is owning a texture if you cannot use it?

to look at it?

What would be a possible reasont that you would want someone to have your texture but not be able to use it?


edit..

Thats what the perms on the prims do.. if you want to send someone a useless texture put it on a prim with no perms or call it a photo or snapshot..

If a prim is no transfer as are most prefabs.. who cares what textures are on the prims?

the Prim cannot leave the person owning it so resale is out of the question ..

in effect all LL would have to do is simplify the perm process and handle the texture as a separate asset

if you want to sell a texture that is transferrable then you would just set it as transfer.. i.e. set up the texture perms identical to that of a prim.


This would eliminate 99% of all texture theft


I don't think that a extra tag is necessary.. if you do not want the next person to use a texture then do not give that person the texture.. very very simple.

if youre too stupid to set your textures full perm, or too stupid to buy full perm if youre wanting to copy and transfer the textures, what can i say? in any case your laziness or stupidity is not a good reason too break the perms on textures.

thanks

I will go there and beat the drum too

well.... yes.
i have at least a hundred textures (snapshots) that have been passed to me for one purpose; to look at.
imo its quite stupid to assume that the only uses for textures are related to building.

Wrong!

Textures are to build with

Photos are to look at

Textures are calle dtextures because they are made to apply to a surface to texture it

let me know if you need a diagram..

hahaha

textures are textures. it is not uncommon for people to upload textures for the purpose of having people view them rather than build with them.
if i give you a no trans textures i am going to be very annoyed if you can circumvent perms by pasting it on a prim and distributing it carte blanche.

the point is that the texture perms are supposed to be unrelated to the prim perms.

applying it to a prim should have nothing to do with owning or manipulating or using a texture. those that want to upload pictures for viewing then should upload them as images and nobody cares about the perms on images because they are just for viewing anyway and not for building. They can keep the image perms as is so you can sit there and make sure only you can see them. Since this place is mostly about content creation.. and not picture viewing or poseball hopping or forum drama generation.. lets stick to the subject..ok?

Content creators are the life of this place and jusdging by the huge amount of money that LL is collecting for uploads.. this should be a top priority for them.

As a container object (either through texturing or actually putting things in them) it makes sense that prims have the lowest common set of permissions. If I gave you a no transfer script, it's not going to be ok to put it in a prim and then transfer the prim. Same with textures.

Say I'm running a training course, then I may well want to give out textures to my students for their own use in the course, but not have them used in their products.

You misunderstood the case I was trying to illustrate. No-transfer textures are not used on prims that the original texture artist sells as a box of prims. They are sold as a pack of textures, which the buyer can attach to their own new prims, but with the intent that if those textures are used, the item textured with them should be non-transferrable.

Situation today:

Prefab builder can sell a no-trans texture pack to their customers. The customers can make their own prims, texture them with the texture pack, and add a deck or a balcony or a new wall to the prefab that they bought. But they can not sell that balcony, or that deck, and they can't examine the prefab and rebuild it prim by prim, re-texturing it with the builder's own highly detailed textures, to make a new product with the copy-cat as Creator, and that is full perms. (Yeah, copy-bot still can, but why risk getting Banned?).

Situation if no trans-textures can be used on transferrable items, and no other permissions are implemented as controls:

Prefab builder intends to sell a no-trans texture pack to their customers for use in modifying existing prefabs, and they have already sold lots of these texture packs, which are now in-the world and out of their control. But now the permissions behavior has changed. The customers can make their own prims, texture them with the texture pack, and add a deck or a balcony or a new wall to the prefab that they bought, as before. But they can also sell that balcony, or that deck, and they can examine the prefab and rebuild it prim by prim, re-texturing the new prims with the builder's own highly detailed textures, to make a new product with the copy-cat as Creator, and that is full perms. They can use the Builder's textures to create products that directly compete with that builder, which was not intended to be possible when the textures were sold.

Generally, most people who use very specialized textures to make a product will not sell those textures to others. If I am selling fine watches, or cars, or clothes, I don't need to sell the textures to anyone. Just the finished work. But building textures are somewhat unique. To remodel a prefab house, I might need a completely different shape or size of prim, textured on different faces than any existing parts. To do that, I need the original textures.

I have done it the hard way before. I've taken a custom-built house apart, and copied individual prims in the house, reshaping them as needed to make the parts I needed. But it isn't easy to do that. Nor is it always possible.

Personally, when I sell building textures, I sell them full-perms. But ever since copy-bot came out, I've stopped selling easily duplicated mass-merchandise items. I build custom work now, and if my textures are also reusable for someone else to build with, I'll sell those, and not care what anyone builds with them.

But some prefab builders do feel that it is the quality of their personal set of textures that gives them an edge over their competition. They rely on having lots of customers who are willing to buy copies of their prefabs. And having a competitor making similar houses with the original creator's textures could put them out of business.

I love the way people toss around the "that's stupid" before realizing all the angles of the issue.

My way is right! Your way is stupid! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

im not sure what you mean by 'upload as images'. any photo you upload is a texture, regardless of whether it is an image of a brick wall or the mona lisa or snaps of your rl b-day party. they are all textures and sl makes no distinction between any of them.
what you seem to be overlooking is the fact that some ppl believe no trans really means no trans, and that perm should not be overridden by simply pasting the texture on a prim.

this is the part that needs to be sorted out because this ruins the simplicity of things


As a "manufacturer" of building components - there are items that I make where I do not want to share my texture with the world. If I give no texture with the product, I limit the buyer to only resizing a prim with that texture on it, so I am forced to include a no transfer texture. Unfortunately, a builder cannot use my product in this case to make items that he/she/it.. can resell. This is the biggest problem, because it kills the builder market for my better items.

The only thing I can do now is to quietly offer my better textures to reputable builders full perm while the public gets the restricted version or no texture at all, just pretextured prims.


I realize that there are a lot of people that are using the current perm system for textures in some kind of band-aid way to protect their work, and undoing the systems would cause grief for anybody that has given away no transfer textures to date.

So instead of simplifying the process it will have to be comlicated in order to make it better.

The bottom line should be.. if you do not want people to use your textures.. do not give the texture away. A way has to be found that lets people use a texture to make things to sell, but not allow them to transfer the texture to a 3rd party.

Giving someone a texture that they are no allowed to use, is like putting a steak in a dog bowl and telling the Dog " NO" and try to keep it from eating the steak...

If I were that dog.. I would wait until you look the other way and eat it anyway..no metter what the consequences were

I have thought about this as well..

the script perms are ok the way they are, because they can be manipulated to work under any perm situation.

if I want to use a demo version of a texture for a training.. I will use a lesser quality or one marked "demo"

if you don't like a textures perms don't buy it ? seems simple enough to me

On the other hand.....


If I create textures that I want people to be able to build with, and actually market their creations, after all I only provided the texture, the size/shape of the surfaces, layout, etc., is their own creativity, I'm just helping to enhance it, then why should it be required to make it full perm so they can have full control over their final product?

That makes it possible for copies of that texture to spread around the grid, and also to other grids, like wildfire. Copyright notices like provided by Textures R' Us might give them a legal leg to stand on, but they're still required to go out and try to round up all the escaped horses from the barn after the fact, to use an analogy. Why not allow people to build things they can use however they want, without being required to make it easily possible to spread the texture in ways I don't want it to be spread in the first place?

That's a problem.

I think the solution that would cover just about all cases would be to have two transfer
checkboxes on the texture perms such as:

"Mod - Copy - Transfer on Prim - Transfer as Texture"

This way texture creator/sellers could sell textures with the first three boxes checked. Which would leave everything the same was as it is now Except that the new owner would Not be able
to Transfer the texture in any way as a texture by itself.

While this would not stop all cases of texture theft, it would provide a significant and obvious
indication that the texture is not to be passed to others without being used in a creation first.

I think that with a reminder such as this 90% of people would think "oh yeah, that is against
the rules" and stop trying to pass the texture.

that would work well if it can be implemented.

perhaps they can modify the "Mark as" system which seems to do absolutely nothing constructive now

Now.. what will it take for LL to get with the program? I am sure the time they spend chasing down Theft reports could be better used to hack up the current code a bit..and eliminate most of these.

Also Texture UUID's should be locked and not available for use to anyone to create with unless they also own that texture. I believe that is how a bot can recreate an object by using the UUID to paint a prim.

this goes for sounds too, as a content creator, using the UUID of a sound makes life much easier, but if I want to sell something with the sound in it and the script needs to be mod, ie for lockable doors, I have to remember to put the actual sound in and change the name, because I can set the sound to copy, no trans, but not the UUID.

I spent the last 2 months on a major rampage cooking up a script just to protect the sounds in my doors. I used to leave the door scripts mod and included the sounds too , but then when I started selling full perm doors the no transfer sounds became a problem.

So now I use the uuid in no mod scripts and give people menu and NC access to the functions they need to be able to manipulate.. so sounds are not so much a problem, because they are easy to burry inside a script.

You don't have to put a texture item in an object to apply the texture, regardless of permissions. The client's open source, someone should fix it.