Selling Free Items

You know...

Here's the thing about the clowns who are ripping off newbies by selling this free content.

They will see justice. Their lack of talent and initiative to develop and market product will be evident, one way or another. They will earn no acclaim, they will earn no respect. They will make little money and have little fun. They'll be going through the motions without feeling the true, spiritual satisfaction of raising order out of nothingness. They will never know the delight of having customers IM them to say they appreciate the hard work and love the product.

These dirtbags will get all they deserve and nothing more. It's the nature of it. Second Life isn't fun because of the money. Hell no. These people have an empty experience laying before them as they piggyback on the work of their betters. Never attempting to equal that work and never knowing the satisfaction of many problems solved.

A few people still get screwed. But at least we can take comfort knowing the thieves responsible aren't going to be enjoying SL even with the slightest amount of fullness.

From that statement, you sound like a RIAA/MPAA insider.

So, what is your opinion of used book/CD stores? The 1976 Copyright Act says reselling copyrighted materials is just fine.

As for the checkbox not obviating copyright law -- that's a deeper issue than either you or I are able to adequately judge at this time. Maybe Frank Lardner or Katykiwi Moonflower (or, hey, why not call in Ginsu Linden for an official LL position) would like to weigh in on whether the SL permission system's mod/copy/transfer flags are explicitly licensing the recipient to do what the permissions allow. At any rate, transferring ownership of an instance of a copyrighted object -- whether for profit or not -- is 100% legal within the bounds of copyright law.

This depends on the product. In the case of my T-Shirt example, it's not true at all. The T-Shirt is essentially a drawing. A pice of artwork that took me many many hours to create. By selling it with transfer on, or by making it free, I am doing exactly what I said. Giving away a T-Shirt making machine.

Well it's a morals thing. If you don't see it as wrong, there is nothing I can do to make you see it that way. I guess it's bound up with capitalism and market forces and whether you think that it's okay to suck money out of an economy when you don't put anything into it.

To me this kind of selling is basically parasitical.

Many of the sites on the internet that sell things like pictures, clip-art and sound files for instance are selling files that they not only did not create, but also files that were originally released by their creators into the public domain for the use of all. Recently I was looking for a simple "squeak" sound for a weathervane and could not find a single one that was free to use or even accessible without giving credit card info and paying for it. Then I remembered I had a disc from the early 90's with sound effects on it that *were* free and free use as well. Lo and behold, almost every file on it was the same as the ones now for sale on the internet. One sound site consisted almost entirely of the same set of sounds.

The original altruism of the creators is lost and tons of money is being made of their creations by people who contributed zero. To me this is just a big drain on everyones time and money and reduces efficiency.

Biblical, man: "They will earn no acclaim, they will earn no respect. They will make little money and have little fun. They'll be going through the motions without feeling the true, spiritual satisfaction of raising order out of nothingness." -- Enabran 2:3-5

A scummy and lowlife twist of pseudologic.

LMAO. The only people who ever ripped me off in sl were these so called "honest sellers" selling my junk at 95% more then what the item was worth just because they created it. But oh well, that's there right and I didn't have to buy it!

Let's not forget here either that most of the "free" stuff that people sell was created by people who could care less that you are profiting from it and maybe even want you to. Hell, I created a few stupid things myself with full perms that I see floating around and being resold, yippy, I'm flattered! If I make something I think I think I deserve money for and don't want it being profited from, I'll set the perms that way as many many do. What the problem here??

And that's exactly the same as code. I spent at least three or four hours a week over three months creating Cyberflight, rewriting it three times. And I'm giving it away as open source, which is kind of like posting the .PSD files for your T-shirt on the Internet and including the URL in the box.

I wish I had the skill to create really cool T-shirts that people wanted to copy. That's not what I'm good at. But, damn, what I *am* good at I put my heart and my art into, and saying that copying your kind of artwork is somehow different from copying my kind of artwork, that's really kind of cold.

This is just comical. The ones here who think this is wrong are the same people hiding behind there doors calling the city and having there neighbors cited for trivial code violations. Worry about your own business! The creators have options. Let them deal with it as they see fit!! Unless it's outright fraud, mind your own bees wax

Er, Clean, old bean, that last message of yours made no sense at all.

Bah.

Actually no - I'm one of the people that made some of that free stuff.. and I stated what I dislike about the re-selling thereof on the first page.

Ditto, except this thread isn't worth my time to actually debate.

Selling freebies, I just see as wrong. You are taking advantage of someones good nature. They chose to make something free, they could have easily sold and limited the permissions on, but they didn't. If someone sells that straight on, probably to someone who doesn't know better, I think thats wrong.

Thats just how I see it. And I think its the general way of thinking in SL.

Why isn't it like that in RL? I don't know. Any ideas?

The problem is...if I make am item I consider carefully whether to put it in my shop...give it as a present to my friends.., make it free to copy.

If I spend my time and my money (in uploaded textures etc) to make an item, and I decide to make it free to copy, I expect it to be free to copy. I do not want someone coming along and ripping people off 50 lindens or 100 lindens, and I certainly do not want people hassling me for after-sales support on an item which I made free to copy but they bought for 100 linden from someone they can't remember.

There is also the problem of the many items still in circulation which have full perms on them but ought not to. If you resell other people's stuff, which has full perms, you can never know if that's because they are really free to copy, or because they were ripped off.

SL is not RL. When I make something I can sell it and still have it. When I give someone something free to copy, they can have it, pass it on, or take it to pieces and learn from it.

What's the harm in reselling of freebies? Some things which ought to be modable, which I made modable when I created them, are restricted by some joker who charges 50 lindens for a non-modable version. And the goodwill which I felt towards the community, which made me want to make free things for other people to have, slowly erodes to the point where I am only interested in the next buck I can make, instead of the next person I can help.

Yes I can make things non transfer or non mod but WHY IN HELL SHOULD I HAVE TO????

Learn how to make stuff yourself and sell things honestly, don't rip off both your buyers and the creators of the things you resell.

Angrily
Cali

In SL terms, selling freebies IS fraud. If other people are ripping people off selling my freebies, that's my business as creator of the item.

I have never reported a neighbour in my life, and resent the implication that your position is moral and mine, immoral.
Cali

There's no point to the discussion, Caliandris. These sorts of dirtbags will never be convinced. Just take comfort in the emptiness their moral and ethical bankrupty will ensure them.

If the situation *really* got out of hand with a few of my products, I'd raise the prices - it doesn't take but a moment.

So far that hasn't happened.



And yes, I can understand other people's concerns about having their free items being resold.

I would be very upset too, if I ended up doing 'tech support' in such a case.

Luckily (for me) I heard about the misfortune of others in this forum, and I won't let my personal situation ever get out of hand.

That must have been a nasty, nasty surprise and yes, I think it would be highly unethical (even if lawful) to continue selling anything that caused its original creator misery.

This is getting funnier by the minute. So you are calling a very heafty percentage of residents in sl dirtbags? Because many of them have, do or will one day sell a free item!

Then make it no transfer? I guess I don't see what the problem with that should be. If you are giving the item away for free to someone, I think they should be able to live with that restriction. They certainly don't have a lot of room to complain when they got a free t-shirt.

I'm a bit on the fence on this one. I think the analogy to Open Source software is a pretty good one, but I can also understand why some creators would be upset when they feel their generosity is exploited. I think my conclusion is that I feel this behavior is maybe a little bit scummy, and something I would not personally do, but is also something that should not be illegal. If you put something out into the public sphere with transfer on, I think you should expect that someone will try to resell it, whether they got it for free or not.


Kyushu

All the open source software I've used has come with conditions. The most common condition is that the software NOT be sold for profit, even after the new owner has modified it.

Does it make you feel better to assume everyone else shares your depravity?

Does it make you feel better to ignore logical posts in favour of ad hominem attacks?

I don't buy that. At all. I think your viewpoint is very much in the minority among mature players. The Kid Grid may be different, I don't know.

And yeah, I'll call any resident that does that a dirtbag, majority or minority.

How is it logical to excuse bad behavior by saying "everyone else is doing it?"

Not logical at all. However, you might try reading a little further back.