Selling copies of another person's work without permission should be considered theft

The more talk I hear about Permissions, the more it I wonder why we don't just call it what it is: a DRM system.

Blimey Cali, if you are shady and greedy then I would like to be a member of the Shady and Greedy group, please.

IMHO The Mod/Copy/Resell/Give Away is flawed as it is now. The resell should be its own option and the Give Away should also be its own option. By clicking the Resell option, you should be able to set a price and resell once (as long as the Copy is not allowed), and the Give Away option you should not be allowed to set a price. This way, if someone made their item Modify/Copy/Give Away, the owner would only have the option to Give Away the item to someone else, NOT sell it....multiple times. I can see how it would be a very difficult to sell certian things the way these options are now. I make all my clothes No Mod/No Copy but they can Resell or Give Away. This works ok for me cause the original owner can only resell it once, which is fine...but I do run into problem with the wearable prim items because by making them no modify, they can't be sized to each individual avatar, so I do have to spend some time custom sizing things for people. At this point though, I would rather resize and fit things for people rather than allow my permissions to let anyone see my building specs. Anyway..its a flaw and of course people will take advantage, especially people who have no idea how many hours are spent to create high quality items, such as Craigs pose balls, which are some of the best in SL, if not THE best. I hope LL will fix this someday, until then, if your prims don't fit...call me

Selador, please.... can i join too? I can act greedy and shady... Just give a full perms item and i'll sell millions of copies


BTW

There's a nice spin-off of this discussion on the land and economy forum featuring our not so greedy and shady and admired land tycoon Anshe Chung...

94418

PS

Anshe we love you

It is hard enough to get people not to sell your stuff when you have set it to no copy and they still find a way to copy it. Do you honestly think when the item was purposely left copyable that people are just going to go by the honor system and not try to make a quick buck off of it, especially with Linden Lab's mantra of GET RICH IN SL? It completely sucks, but there is nothing that you can do. LL won't intervene, and social pressure is meaningless - just ask the mutliple assholes who continue to sell other people's items with impunity.

Regardless of whether reselling them without modification is OK, reselling them with full perms for less than you bought them for should be an obvious no-no. Either no-copy or no-transfer (depending on the kind of animation) would prevent them from becoming effectively freebies.

But when you buy something full-perm for L$1000 it seems reasonable to see what the intended purpose for selling them full-perm is.

It's ethically wrong to sell something someone else made without either altering it enough to become yours or adding it to something you've made (in this case furniture). An exception to this would be ONE copy in a yard sale of things you do not use anymore.

It's ethically wrong to download animations and upload into SL and pass them off as your own work.

It's ethically wrong to take textures off a website and upload into SL and pass them off as your own work.

It's ethically wrong to copy t-shirts from the net and being them into SL and pass them off as your own work.

These are all considered theft, yet, people do them. Obviously few actually care what is wrong or right. Its sad that we have to protect ourselves from these sorts of people, but that is just the way the world works. If you create something, do the proper permissions for the item for the general public. If you are making something like pose balls for furniture, set up a group and keep an eye on them.

I have seen a increasing number of this kind of theift lately.

A shield being sold for 45 Lindon, on SLX that was a freebie Going by the name of the Force Shield. It is really the Energy Shield you can find for free in yadni's junkyard and other freebie places. It's not very good but it helps newbies untill they can afford a good one. I reported it to SLX and they told me that there was nothing that could be done and my best bet was to write a review.

I saw a place in a sim, that was selling freebie weapons for high amounts too. I wont give names cuz then the topic will get locked hehe. But always make sure you check who the creator is before you buy anything. Right click on the vendor, edit it, and check its inventory. right click on the item you want to buy and check its properties (unless its a J-E-V-N vendor then you cant hehe). if the owner isnt the creator dont buy it! Contact the creator about it, let them know, and buy the item from them instead hehe.

I have made sure that nothing i sell has transfer rights to avoid this problem. Scripts are all no modify aswel. I know this isnt the best solution for some. I also refuse to pay over 2000 for anything in SL (excluding land). just to do my part in preventing inflation. Last thing i want is for Sl to become as inflated as EQ or AO where you can buy currency in the millions - hundred millions for like $20... I meen if you can buy clothes in Sl for more then you pay IRL then your being ripped off! I meen these arent even real.

I'm proud to say that today I was accepted as a member of the Shady and Greedy group. Are we going to get our own forum?

On a similar note...

Today I saw an item I thought was a freebie (ZX4 chopper, I'm pretty sure it was in one of those freebie packs from Yadni) being sold for 600 linden. Now if I'm right and the item is a freebie... Seems pretty immoral to me.

This thread is about theft, but no one has suggested a real remedy.

If someone got realy pissed off with the situation, they could copywrite a desine in RL, wait until someone else ripped them off in SL, and then start a law suit RL that would cause the Lindens so much hassel that they would be forced to address the problem...

Conspiracy to defraud is a serius RL crime.

Of cource anyone doing this might never be alowed into SL again....

The only solution is Linden action, either through proper inworld policing or through the permissions system. Seemingly they want to have the appeance of policing inworld but it's obviously pretty resource intensive and doesn't seem to really be enforced (Bergman's Bargains?).

Allow resale sounds like a good idea although it seems a bit freebie specific.

No it's not, it's retail. There's nothing wrong with me going to Sam's Wholesale Club and buying a case of cokes and putting them into vending machines in office parks. There wouldn't be anything wrong with me going to Plush and buying a bunch of outfits, marking them up 50%, and selling them in my store. It's not a viable business model in SL because my customers could just go to Plush themselves, but it's not ethically wrong.

What makes this a problem isn't so much that he's reselling animations, it's that he's reselling full mod versions. I'm not in-game, so I can't check, but what's the documentation and license on the animations, is it clear that they're not intended for direct resale?

Ty Argent thats all i needed to know =) if it had came to my atention like that from the begining there would be no problem what so ever. but as i said i picked up the balls from the place and not putting nothin down unless i have my own yardsale rofllll. but ty for explaining about the permissions. we never had a yardsale or delt with any of them so i was just goin by what i have seen.

~Miracle Brokken =)

Why would anyone release something full permisions in SL and then be surprised it got abused? It has gone on long enough and with enough frequency to come to the conclusion it is something you just must accept. It is theft yes, but in order to bring such a case to legal battle would not be cost efficient. Eventualy, I would presume, someone with enough RL cash to make a statement will try such a thing.

I once tried starting a group of business owners to ban such people from their stores, clubs or malls. I did not get tthe support.

So we have to issues here. 1) People are stealing 2)The majority of people this impacts dont care enough to try and put some effort and resources to stop it.

I have an animation called rolling thunder, I made it like 2 years ago. During one of the permisions glitches it got sold with full perms (as with many others of my ani at the time) Some I have been still reselling without full permisions for very cheap. WELL, last week this guy IMed me. Telling me I must remove an item bcause it is a freebie in SL. I found that very funny.