Selling Free Items

I was in Bear (197,215) today and noticed someone selling Freebies.

These freebies were made by Ryan Linden, Cory Linden, Olympia Rebus, Fey Brightwillow, and a couple others.

Yet more free to copies for sale

Sad thing is most of them don't know what they're doing is wrong, they probably know its frowned upon, but not wrong, wrong..

I've contacted the owner and the owner of the mall.. Should be cleared up soon

Please vote for a RESELL permission.

Good man, Zap. These situations always get under my skin. Its BASIC logic. Kind of like not selling air to breathe in RL - although they do that in Paris.

-Flip

I have not been here long and have not found any reason to post here yet until now.

When I started here I was ripped off and paid way to much for items that indeed can be found in sl for free and items that can not. The main reason for this was because I did not no any better. Now that I am the wiser and catch on quick I still find it difficult locating many items that I know are somewhere in sl for free. For a newbie, this is an impossible task and they will inevitably waste there few free linden dollars buying junk that will be useless from people who build some cheap items and sell them for ridiculous prices then complain about others profiting from selling free items. I just ran across a guy selling like 50 or 100 free houses, can't remember, for 250$L. Man where was he when I was a newbie? I wasted 600$L on my first house to find out it came in pieces, was to small and a piece of junk. I would have been more then glad to pay 250$L for 50 houses at that time. Maybe they were free but I'm sure it took this guy time, effort and money to find them all, put them together in one place and pay for the space to sell them at.

Further more, to the best of my knowledge, a creator has the right to not allow the item to be resold or they can add a note in the discription saying this or add a notecard.

This is not a matter of someone doing something wrong, it's a matter of people being jealous that they didn't think of it first or someone else is making a few lindens and they are not. I mean selling free items, whats the big deal? Look in the events, search for lawn or yard sales, go to them and you will find free items for sale in every single one. This is a good way for newbies to learn the ins and outs of buying and selling here not to mention helping circulate lindens throughout sl. Also look at one of the top spots for newbies, the junkyard, 95% of the stuff there has a price tag rather its a dollar or not.

Go harass with the sign guys, there the ones screwing up sl, not some guy who makes a buck here and there selling a free item!

Since you are new to SL, I'll spare you the raking-over-the-coals treatment that someone else will surely visit on you.

This has been a long debated thing in SL. One of the most prolific posters on these forums has been taken to task because the store she used to run sold many freebie items. Do a search on this topic and you'll find a lot of virulent exchanges over it.

Let me explain it this way: it may not be "illegal," per se (i.e., a violation of the TOS), but it is not considered proper behavior in SL to resell something for a profit that the original creator intended as a free item.

Simply said, don't do it unless you want to be considered a thief and a ripoff artist by the SL community at large.

And as far as the junkyard, we are not talking about items sold for L$1. That is the equivalent of approximately US$0.003 and is considered "virtually free," and many vendors do that because it is not possible to track the statistics on items given completely free. We're referring to items that were originally free or perhaps L$1 items being sold for L$100, L$250, or whatever.

P2

THere is a difference with Yadni's Junkyard

Yadni works very hard to make sure the items he has in his collections really are freely distributable. Often they are given to him directly by their creators and those creators are aware and have approved of the 1L price per box. In Fact if anyone objects to their objects being included in a box Yadni will remove them no questions asked.

I think alot of the argument is from creators who were not even asked before their creations were sold. And because many of them are being sold in such a way as to rip of New Residents.

There also was an situation that arose about a year ago (someone can correct the date please) where alot of not free content was stolen from its creators and then resold or given away all over the grid. For and Example I recently purchased a collar that contained an AO and 5 stand animations. I noticed the animations were all perms and knowing the person that created these animations was reasonably certain something strange was happening here since I had never known him to release animations all perms. SO I contacted him directly. Turns out these 5 standing animations were part of the big Hack/theft a year ago.

THere are many sides to this issue but most boil down to don't sell free objects without permission to do so.

Do what I've been doing - you see it - make a classified.. its only 50 bucks.

Go in find and search for rip off.

I used to make free items to instruct and help new players learn to build - modify and make their own stuff - derivatives that would be theirs to do as they wish.

Unfortunately a combination of freebie resellers sending folks to me to fix stuff they borked up, or sending them to me to give refunds to thier unsatisfied customers (oh Siggy made that - he'll give you your 500 lindens back) made me say 'shove it up your arse'.

So - no more free content outta me.. No instructional items to show new players how to build or script.

Who's screwing up SL again?

All the 'sign guy' does is make ugly signs.

Freebie resellers discourage folks from contributing to the communitity and trying to help new players.

Why is it "wrong, wrong"?

For freely redistributable items, I mean?

Look, I wrote open source software. I've been a contributor on and off to the BSD source tree since 1980, I've given away dozens of "freebies" that took me man-months to get working. Some of this code has been used in commercial systems, closed-source, and I got nothing for it.

So what?

If you buy Windows you get a BUNCH of BSD code in it. Microsoft is making WAY more money from BSD than anyone will make over the life of SL from resold freebies. When kirk McKusick, who is one of the top BSD guys, was asked what he though of Microsoft reselling his software... he said he wished they'd sell more of it, it'd make Windows better and easier to deal with.

That's my attitude, as a real-world content creator.

Why is this such a huge no-no in SL?

...

Siggy's problem wasn't caused by people selling free stuff, it was caused by people committing outright fraud. That would be like Microsoft telling people to bug Kirk when ping or traceroute didn't work right. If you sell stuff, you're responsible for it, no matter where it came from.

Because it's a scummy lowlife thing to do to take something someone else built and decided to give out for free, pack it up in a box and sell it as if it's something you made.

It's even worse when it's something that was never meant to be free, but became 'public' through some bug.

Now, I hope you don't need it explained to you why it's a scummy lowlife thing to do. If anyone truly doesn't understand that, they need to go back to kindergarten and start over.

In rl I buy an item from a store or sale and later resell it at my sale. How is that any different then here? Not a rip off.

Just because the price is .0003 does not make it any more right or wrong.



As in rl and as here I'm sure Linden would agree here in sl, it is impossible to check out every single detail and contact every creator. What about the ones who are no longer here? I think posting a sign saying you will remove any item at the creators request is more then fair to all.



LOL, I take it you don't have this jerk living next store to you do you?

It's a ripoff if what you bought was a book and what you sold were a hundred copies of the book.

Bad analogy. In this case, the "book's" creator has explicitly said that it is available for anyone to copy. It's just that now the reseller is taking a distribution fee.

Many items are originals as well with resale/transfer rights. Nothing wrong with buying those items cheap and reselling them higher. I do live in America!

I'm so sick of hearing about this copy thing. Don't check the box when you create it! If you do make it copy/transfer and don't want it resold, say so in the discription. 99% of honest people will respect your wishes!!

Scummy and lowlife.

Well my experience with this is... I made a Valantines Day Design for E1 and it was 1L until Feb 15th and I have never made my designs no transfer until what happened to me the other night.

I noticed that a person was buying 4, 5, 8, 9 and then I went to the vendor and asked her why she was buying so many... she wouldnt answer me. So while I was trying to make the items no transfer inside the vendor she kept buying and so I picked up the vendor at that point she said... "Hey where's the clothes?!" I politely said... I picked it up so I could fix it and she replied "fix it??? theres nothing wrong with it i just bought 4 already"... I couldnt believe she would stand there and say that when she clearly had bought 11!! So I said NO you bought 11 and I left went home and made it all no transfer and then went around to my other stores and either pulled that vendor or changed it out to a no transfer vendor.

I really hated to do that but I really felt violated cause I put alot of time into making it and it was for appreciation and a holiday item. I will never make another Freebee item transferable again... it only takes one to mess it up for all And she might claim that she had that many people to "give" it to but her additude clearly told me different. If the designer of an item asked me why I was buying so many I would have told her I have alot of Valantines to give out. As was the case in a couple others I asked that had purchase several.

Also after looking in picks and seeing they run a yard sale and going there only to see a couple other clearly "free Items" for sale makes ya wonder what they are going to do with yours they bought so many of. When asked I was told that she had made inprovements to the outfits is why she felt she could sell them... Well to me they looked the same in the pick but hey...

(After reading that we should make the original no transfer in one of the above posts I want to say that I had always allowed my items to be transferable so that it was easier for people when they shop to buy as a gift or give to a new person. Yes some designers will send it for you as a gift but in the case of a freebee holiday item we wouldnt have time to do anything else was my analogy but as I said that has changed now. Also i really didn't mind someone reselling at a yard sale once you paid me for my work but to take a freebee and sell for more then what you paid for it is just wrong in my opinion.)

How do you figure? By your logic, Nobody should be permitted to sell reprintings of books that have fallen into the public domain. Is that what you'd like? "Sorry, but 'The Collected Works of Shakespeare' is not available in print form because we're not allowed to sell what has become freely available."

For me... I have a few very inexpensive items, and I swear, this phenomenon is one of the best forms of free advertising I've ever seen.

People see my inexpensive items at yard sales or whatever... and sure, I hear the resellers make $L 40 or 50 out of each sale.

But regularly, a few folks who didn't know about me before, come over and spend $L 5k or 10k on a bunch of stuff. "We saw some of your stuff at a yard sale!!!111"

So... meh. Whatever. The whole idea of it scared me at first, but now I really don't care. In fact, I've pointed out a few freebies that would have been missed, to a few folk! Strange, yes?

Of course, I hardly sell anything with copy or mod rights, so no service issues in my case. Whatcha see is whatcha get.

Your comparing apples and oranges. Code is not the same as products.

In RL if I make a T-shirt and sell it, that person may eventually sell it to someone else or give it away, eventually it might end up at the salvation Army, eventually someone might use it as rag to clean a window, and in the end it goes back to dust.

If I try to simulate this behavior in SL by making the item transferable, it's like giving a machine to someone (for the price of a T-Shirt), to produce an endless supply of brand new T-Shirts. These T-Shirts can even be sold at a price far above what you paid for it essentially making *my* creation FREE to you as well as an endless source of revenue.

So by being nice, the creator get less than zero for their hard work, and the unscrupulous buyer gets fame, fortune and unlimited clothes for life.

How is that fair?

The only thing stopping this kind of thing is ones personal sense of right and wrong, which when SL started was fine. Now it's a capitalist wonderland and creators only have the choice of making their stuff no-transfer to avoid it.

What is needed is an explicit permission that one can set to make something free (like open source code), but also that it must *always* be free. If that was possible, then transfer would never be a problem again.

I have two items right now that I made just for fun and for the benefit of whomever wants them.

I want to release them for free, but I can't do it through the InfoHub freebie program because they not only require it to be transferable, they require it to be mod and copy as well, so any warnings I put on it, or giant labels saying "this is supposed to be free" etc. can be stripped off and the item will be for sale the next day, completely contravening my intentions.

SL products aren't the same as products. They're far closer to code than they are to t-shirts.

By making your item free, you are effectively saying, "I have made this. You may take it, and I do not want anything in return." No matter how many copies end up out in the SL ether, you've got your original to do with as you please, and you've already stated that you don't want any compensation. How does it affect you at all if someone else resells the item? All that really means is that they believe your hard work is more valuable than you yourself do...

Nope - because I decided to own my view so I don't have to put up with things like that.

but I can assure you that in my several years in SL I've had a LOT worse things next to me than a blue sign.

Many worse things.

1. You can't sell stuff as something you made, the rights system doesn't allow it... except for scripts. So here I am, one of the few people who can be "ripped off" that way, and I'm all for it. Ironic, eh?

2. Every case where I've seen people actually hurt by resellers in SL, they've been hurt because the reseller didn't claim they made it, and sicced unhappy customers on the original creator. And that's fraud.

Err, you have me mixed up with someone else. Not only aren't I advocating that but when I saw that X-Flight was something never meant to be free and that not only were people selling it but *Linden Labs* was, I publicised the rip-off and created an open-source genuinely redistributable subset of it, and recommended that people buy the commercial flight scripts if they wanted all the features of X-Flight.

Not only that, but the license for my script explicitly allows commercial use even in closed-source products, and there's at least one product using it that way.

So I'm putting my time and effort and content where my mouth is. You're welcome to resell my scripts, use them in your own products, just acknowledge where they came from (which is what you'd need to do if they were anything but scripts anyway).

Now, taking something that's not meant to be freely redistributable, that's different. But selling something that's free (or reselling something that's NOT free) is not inherently wrong.

Good point.

Another good point.

Good point and a fair idea!

Very good point and it should be flattering to the creator.

It's to bad for you and everyone else in sl that you have to spend tens of thousands of $L to just secure a view! I did the same as you but I should not have had to. But I never been bothered by anyone selling free stuff

Awesome. I agree 100%

Doesn't matter. Whoever holds copyright to intellectual property is permitted to determine what rights others have to reproduce and distribute that property. The checkbox doesn't obviate copyright law or common sense.

Everything is SL is software. T-shirts are software. Guns are software. The economy in SL is a software economy, the same economy that software developers have been living in all their lives. You think it's weird and strange because you're not used to it and you want to try an emulate a different kind of environment... but that's not going to work, not in every possible detail.

SL does an OK job of simulating it, it could be better, but it's OK. It certainly gives you the tools you need to get the effect you want:
In SL you do this by making the T-shirt no-copy, and making it available through a L$0 or L$1 sale box.

So you don't do that. SL doesn't force you to put full perms in the T-shirt.

If you play your song on the radio, I can record it, and put it up on the web, and anyone can listen to it, how is that fair? I can even chop it up into 10s slices and put it and a bunch of other songs in a jukebox program on SL, and sell it. And then bitch because I forgot to set the perms right and people are copying the music I stole around. How is that fair?

If you put a picture on a website, I can copy it and upload it to SL, and sell it for L$50 a pop, and people do that, and nobody on SL says a word. How is that fair?

If you write a program and someone puts it in a jet-pack and copies it around and everyone who makes modifications to it reads AND LEAVES INTACT the big warning that says "THIS IS ONLY FOR MEMBERS OF THE KAZENOJIIN", how is that fair?

You can create a popular video game, and I can make clothes that look JUST like the characters from the game, and sell them on SL. How is that fair?

I'm pretty sure that there were people doing this stuff "when SL started". I suspect that nobody at Linden Labs paid the estate of Frank Lloyd Wright for the rights to distribute a reproduction of Fallingwater.

People in the software industry have been trying to deal with that for 30 years now, and more, and there's really no way to do it, other than through the honor system. The closest thing to is it the GPL, and even that has limitations... and there's content creators RIGHT NOW in SL selling products that violate the letter of the GPL. I've seen 'em. I've bought 'em. I've had to reverse-engineer the control script in one when it quit working, even though under the GPL I should have received a copy of it.

That's true. If you don't want them to be freely redistributable you have to (a) distribute them some other way, or (b) take the same risks software developers who have the same concerns as you take, or (c) accept reality and do your best to prosper in the world the way it actually works.

I've found option (c) is MORE FUN.