Freebie resale continues

Whilst looking through classifieds an ad caught my eye and I discovered a familiar sight. A place called "! Armory Overstock" is selling a wide variety of weapons freebies and you'd never guess who's up to their old tricks.

I'm not sure if there are legitimate sales mixed in but I recognise quite a lot of freebies from the last time this happened.

Also a freebie helicopter in there for about 250L, I got mine for 0.... gay.....

Hey Eata you planning on placing a draw/holster script into your desert eagles? Love the way those guns look!

Offtopic but the current way it works is just another way for making holsters, either you can send all prims invis and keep it attached or base it off attachment (like we did). Because they are a looooooooooot of prims to keep hanging around I think its better to make people detach them.

list prims = [2,4,5,9,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,28,31,32,33,34,35,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57]; // Prims to hide
integer in_holster=TRUE;
integer holster_channel=4657837;

holster_alpha(integer alpha)
{
	integer i;   
	for(i = 0; i < llGetListLength(prims); i++)
		llSetLinkAlpha(llList2Integer(prims, i), alpha, ALL_SIDES);
}

That's what I use for my holsters. I figure it's close to what everyone else uses. At present I only have one gun that really belongs in a holster, a shorty shotgun that'll be out as soon as I can develop some newer bullets

Ok enough hijacking

Burke, there's actually a vehicle for sale there which says its made by you, the SH-25. Is that legitimate?

Yes. The SH-22 and SH-25 SWAT, the Stanchon Turret, Sklunkr, and a few other stupider creations were licensed to Jamie. Because 1)She's the only person that'll buy them 2) they get seen and 3)It pays my rent. My stuff on display there has gotten me several requests for custom jobs, and a few comissioned jobs by some of the Top Tier (not the FIC) of secondlife.

How the fuck can a helicopter be "gay"? You talk like a schoolchild.

Ok I've had it confirmed that there is at least one freebie there being sold without permission from the creator.

I don't meant to put down the legitimate sales like the ones of your items Burke but this peson seems to still be far from having turned over a new leaf and doing everything legit.

For lazy people like me who don't want to be one making (and storing) list(s) of prims if you want to hide/colour in something with 100+ prims, and updating them each time the design changes...

set_alpha( string Name, float Alpha ) {
    
    integer prims_total = llGetNumberOfPrims();
    integer i;
    for( i = 1; i <= prims_total; ++i ) {
        
        if( llGetLinkName(i) == Name ) { llSetLinkAlpha( i, Alpha, ALL_SIDES ); }
    }
}

... set the name of holster prims to 'holster' or just 'h' for extra speed or whatever, then call set_alpha( "holster", 0.0 ) to hide. etc.

Just curious, but what is the specific problem with reselling freebies? Seems like the vast majority of them come with no licenses or other "shrink wrap" agreements prohibiting resale or distribution. Without such, giving them away with the transfer permission and without any kind of distribution agreement, it seems to me to be perfectly legit to do whatever one sees fit with them.

I mean, yeah, it is dumb for someone to pay L$250 for an item which is free elsewhere, but that is the buyer's problem, not the seller's. Caveat Emptor, remember?

Besides, why not consider it a "Finder's" or "Advertiser's" fee? If someone is looking for that specific item, they may be perfectly willing to pay someone a fee for a freebie that is displayed where they can see it while shopping. Displays take up space, thus aren't "free", and it may be worth that L$250 to the buyer to avoid having to search through literally a hundred freebie boxes to find it.

Lastly, I am not defending people who are obviously and maliciously scamming others, claiming items as their own creations, et cetera. As long as they are not abrogating a well-established distribution agreement, and not misrepresenting something as their work, I don't see a problem with it. Perhaps I am missing another dimension to the problem, though.

The whole idea of a freebie is that it's meant to be freely distributed at no cost. As Yadni has proved there is no need for a "finders fee" and the prices here go well beyond that (I'd say 10L is about the max acceptable and even that is a bit). Taking something that someone gave away and selling it for a thousand lindens is a slap in the face to them and the whole idea.

SL is extremely bad at distributing information to new players who are likely the people who fall foul of things like these. Caveat Emptor only goes so far, after that you're just ripping people off. Would people still buy if it had a sign saying "This is also available for free if you can find it"?

The only reason anyone would pay for something they could have gotten elsewhere for free is because they don't know it's available for free. People profiting from the sale of free items are taking advantage of that ignorance for profit. It doesn't take an advanced degree in ethics to know that's an underhanded way to make a buck. People put out free items to help newbies have fun things to use, wear, and do, not to help scam artists enrich themselves.

I understand not everyone gets why this bothers people, but let me explain my reasons why it bothers me this way:
There are places in most larger cities in RL called food banks and clothes closets, etc. Their purpose is to give out food and clothing to people who can't afford to buy them. Would it be ok for me to walk into this place, get bags of free clothing on the premise that I need them, then take those things, repackage them and sell them to people on the street at prices marked up high enough to make them look new? Would it then be ok for me to not tell the people I'm selling them to that there is a place right around the corner where they can get these same items for free?

Thats what freebie reselling is, it's taking something that was meant to be a charitable gift and profitting from it in a dishonest manner and thinking it's ok because the person who made the donation has no way to prevent it. Most freebie items that are resold are able to be not because someone set those permissions and didn't care but because of mistakes, deciet at the time of purchase, a lack of understanding at the time the permissions were set and in some cases, permission bugs in the past.

Your right. Let me put it in better terms.

I find the reselling of items designed to be given away to be somewhat distasteful, it lacks a certain degree of class. One has to wonder if a person selling work claimed as original for profit that was designed for non profit has any moral standard beyond that of making a quick buck.

By the way, you talk like an overbearing condescending prick.

Here's the part of the ad that really makes you wonder why they don't check on some of the things going on in SL....

My question is how does it get the entire sim unless it spawns other items which continue exploading.

The classified for the store also boasts "Griefer Stuff" as well.

Perhaps we need to suggest to the powers that be that they separate 'transferable' and 'sellable' into seperate settings so that we can create freebie items that can be given away for free but cannot be sold for any value other than $0? Not sure how this would effect being put in a box that is then sold for a greater amount, tho, hmmm.

Char

Well, guns dont grief, griefers grief.

So I'm sure everyone who purchases the item is expected to use within the TOS.

Just like cigarettes.

Well, I took a peek into the place.....

Now I'm truly baffled how she constantly says she "never resells freebies" when she now has advertised the very blatantly obvious proof that she does.

As much as I'd love to provide the address to folks in my sig to show obvious proof, it would also provide business to the chiseler that owns the place.

And yes, 'griefer tools' is in her keywords list.

It sure would be nice if LL would do something about settings allowing avvies to specify if they can get pushed/orbited in safe zones. Make 98% of those weapons useless unless in a combat-OK zone.

Here, here! Can we please have a fourth permission? Freebie.
Transferable, but not able to be set for sale.

Instant fix for a lot of this issue. Protect new people. Protect creators who want to give genuine freebies.

pretty please?

Yes, this is so needed. They always argue, you gave permission to resell when you set it to transfer. Unfortunately, that is not people's intention with freebies, they're just working with a limited permissions system.

Oh, and I find advertising that a product is abuse report untraceable highly unethical, to say the least.

Fade, considering that almost anything this person does or says is highly unethical, does it surprise you? It is one of the few persons here in SL that I would straight refuse to talk to.

ANYONE who sells freebies is an asshat buttwipe without an ethical or moral bone in his/her body.

People making a buck off of ignorance is nothing new. Technically, everyone who sells something is doing just that... they are profiting off the ignorance of the buyer because he doesn't know how (yet) to make the same item himself.

Personally, if I put a "Freebie" into the public domain, I really don't care what happens to it, because I can't. It's public domain now, and someone can take it and sell it for L$1000 if they want (if they can get it; I can't imagine anyone willing to pay L$1000 for a 10-line follower script in a basic pet, for example). I will endeavor to make sure that my freebies get out there as far and wide as possible, but I'm not going to worry about someone making a buck off of displaying them.

As for Yadni's, if anything, it proves to me a need for better organization and display of items. I have just about every freebie box he has there, and most of them are sitting in my inventory, unopened, because I just don't have the time to go digging through them. I have no doubts that I have already paid someone else for some of the items in those boxes because of this. Of course, I was never ignorant enough to pay L$1000 for a freebie, either, since I tend to be pretty scrupulous with my money (and most everything I want that is over L$1000 goes on my project list so I can make it myself at some point anyway). Still, for the freebies which I have paid L$1 to L$250, I don't feel like I have been scammed. *shrug*

As for the food bank / free clothing store analogy, most often, you have to have proof you are on some kind of welfare program before they will let you obtain free food / clothes. Salvation Army thift stores are an exception to that, but then they sell the items cheap because they are most often second-hand. If someone gets a bargain at a SA store, and can resell it in his store for a higher price, the SA doesn't care. In the vast majority of cases, their prices are not much below the item's market value, and reselling them at any profit would be difficult.

If someone posted a sign in front of a displayed freebie that said "This item available for free elsewhere, or you can buy it from me now for L$250 to save you the trouble of looking for it.", if it is something that was worth L$250 to me in terms of time to go looking for it, I would consider paying it. There's also nothing in the world that prevents it from being given away for free elsewhere, or even sold by its original creator, even after giving it away for free.

Every newbie I see, I give them Yadni's LM among other things. I think that the Welcome Areas also have things like PathFinder's Picks, which are a bunch of LMs and notecards, including Yadni's. Thus, I find it a difficult argument for anyone to be ignorant of freebies that are out there.

Again, this doesn't include items which are licensed as no resale, and I would support LL putting in a technological method to enforce keeping something free as part of a license. Public Domain items are just that, Public Domain. That means they can be given away, sold, deleted, stepped on, used for kindling, whatever. It is in no way unethical to resell a Public Domain item, or an item which has a license which does not reserve the right of resale (like the GPL, for example).