Selling Free Items

Oh, please. Don't compare me to the dinosaurs in the RIAA.

As for reselling copies of copyrighted material, that applies to single copies, not profiting off of others intellectual property by reselling infinite numbers of copies. I'm not allowed to go and sell Fight Club on the street for five bucks on DVD-R.

Very well put!

Going back to my original post in this thread I want to say once again that there are a couple sellers of free items in sl that I wish I would have found on day 1 here. They would have made sl alot more enjoyable in my early stages here. These guys are not crooks, dirtbags or anything else but good people. If creators IM them to remove items of theres from being sold they follow through with there requests. When i had a problem with an item from one of them they offered a refund or replacement. Never tried to pawn me off on the creator. These guys took the time to help me out and teach me a little about sl and that in itself was worth more then the cost of the items I bought from them or the items themselves. Maybe there are people here who are nothing but scammers out for a quick buck but don't put every person that sells this stuff into that catagory. Some people enjoy having a little store, it's part of the fun here and there intentions are good ones. Selling free items is a good start for them, a way to meet new people and start to understand a little about how things work here. Most of them probably don't even know there doing anything wrong, not saying they are. I understand why this upsets some people and others I just don't. But this is very simple, you don't want to deal with bush signs, buy your own sim. You don't want your item resold, set it to no transfer! In the mean time go right ahead and complain to sl to change things but leave the sellers alone. Most of these people are good people just trying to have fun like you. Maybe they don't like what you do here either but it gives them no right to grief you about it or purposly cause problems for you.

Im wondering why if they feel its right to resell freebies they must defend their actions so vehemently? We all know whats right and wrong, defending something that you know is wrong doesnt make it right.

They can do as they please. I, however, am free to also do as I please.

And one thing that pleases me is to no longer get annoyed at it, but help inform people they are buying things they can get for free.

I do this as a segment on my radio show on sundays, I now do it by posting classifieds as I find them.

It's something that gives me pleasure in SL.

I need the url for the broadcast, Siggy

So, you agree then that it's okay for me to sell the copy of Fight Club I purchased at the local Blockbuster as long as I'm not making dozens of copies in DVD-R for resale.

So, why is it not okay to the sell single copies of item's I've purchased from YadNi's Junkyard for L$1, or received at no charge? I'm in legitimate possession of that unique copyrighted item. There's no difference between the two, other than the fact that you don't like it when people resell cheap/free items in SL.

Fact is, there will always be those who like to traverse in that ethical grey area of "not doing anything technically wrong". These vultures don't care one whit that they're violating the spirit of the law, as long as they're making easy profit. Shame on them, but SL's rights system enables this behavior. This needs to change, not necessarily for the protection of the creators of free items, but for those who may unwittingly buy these items, not having any way of knowing the creator meant for the item to be free.

As someone else brought up in this thread, and I'll repeat it here because it makes so much sense, there needs to be an extra property for objects to be set transferable for FREE only.

If I make something I intend to be had for free, I want it to be free forever and in every case, period. PERIOD. No chance of anyone getting ripped off, no chance of unethical resellers making any clandestine profit off my hard work.

I sell lots of free items! The only catch is they are my creations and I sell them for $0. Anyone who sells my wonderful creations is the lowest form of scumbag.

I'm trying to inform people like you that YOU are wrong! What makes you so right?

Good for you, and I see nothing wrong with your actions

THANK YOU

Shame on you. You don't get it. Many creators don't care that you are reselling there items, some encourage it. As I said for the tenth time, creators have options to prevent resale! Just because a person is selling 100 free items and 10 of them are made by people who don't want them resold does not make a bad person trying to munipulate any system. Think!!

But your idea was good

How about this idea. Someone make a database or web page or whatever where creators can list there names stating that they do not wish there free items to be resold! I bet 95% of the sellers would be happy to have such a reference. For now there is no way to sort the crap out. I'm not even a seller and I have over 6000 items in inventory. I wouldn't know where to start to find out which ones I can or can not resell. Good lord!!

Well susie, make them no transfer!

Maybe as a creator of some freebies its my right to be upset if others use what I made as free to gain from them. Its basic work ethics, some of us have them, others dont. Some of us are some are just higher up on the evolutionary ladder than others.

what would be interesting is to be able to lock the permissions, like forcing an object to be always copyable or always modify , might sort circuit these dirtbags...

I don't put no transfer on my freebies because people can't hand them out to friends etc. I don't want people having to trek back to wherever it is, just because someone who can't be bothered to create their own stuff decided to take my creation and resell it.


Stop comparing it all to RL situations. Very rarely will a RL company put out a freebie out of the goodness of their hearts, it usually acompanies another product, because it costs too much money. This isn't RL. This is Second Life. And *trying not to sound like a bad western* we do things differently around here.

I don't have a problem with people who don't know better. If you do something without knowing its wrong you can't be blamed. But people who know most people think its the wrong thing to do, they can. And don't tell me most people don't think its wrong...

I tell you what.. I'll put a poll on the forums, heck I'll go out round SL tomorow and ask people. The majority of people will say its the wrong thing to do.

If you need L$, put in the work and actually MAKE something. There aren't people who come in and can automatically build. They learnt, close to anyone can. If you can't be bothered you can go without or use your RL$$$.

You can say we're wrong until you're blue in the face, but I believe the majority of SL will disagree with you.

() Mod () Copy () Resell/Transfer () Freebie

Freebie should make the "Allow anyone to copy" flag stick on... so even if someone does try reselling the item, even with 'value added' it can still be taken for free... it might help train newbies to open an object's inventory and try taking the freebies out by hand first.

I suppose it could be bypassed with a clever vendomat and a naive customer. Pushing the button costs money, but you get the candy for free.


Ages ago I had an item, called 'Orbit' which had a very abstract green/blue/red painted sphere (the original painting is mine and hangs on my wall at home), which spun and had a pair of trials going from magenta to cyan. A mod copy of this L$5 item was slipped out somehow (my fault? bug's fault? No idea anymore). I found the thing all over SL with new scripts stuck in it... people using it as a 'money ball' or tip jar or whatever. I would log in and find several requests things I'd made that I'd never heard of because folks would rename the object. Anyway... while I was annoyed at the loss of control over what was meant to be just a decorative cheapie... I was also amused at the various uses folks came up with for it. So maybe it was a wash.



I've been giving this some thought with recent adds to the Particle Laboratory. New modular scripts that you add to a prim to determine particle on/off behavior. Should they be mod so that folks can learn from these examples... and then run off and sell their own? Hrm. No, i don't think so.

I suppose there needs to be a spectrum:
Free, Copy/No-Transfer low-lag modules
Pay (small amount) for individual no-copy, transfer modules.
Pay (medium amount), and agree to license for copy & transfer.

I still prefer the barter system...
Pay (mod/copy/transfer content you made) for mod/copy/transfer things I make for you.

LOL. Let me rearrange someones quote in here and say it this way; Why is it when dumb people have nothing smart left to say they start with the insults? Go read a book or something

It's a no win situation. I want my junk to be given away freely so I choose not to make it no transfer. I can't imagine anyone paying paying $50 for my schoolgirl outfit (which I saw at a yard sale) when they can get it for free all over the place.

The majority is not always right though. We have seen this time and time again in history! I just think people need to lighten up a little about this.

I'm wondering, is there an acceptable mark up price that would not bother you so much? Like reselling a 1$L item for 2$L ?

"lighten up", "not against the rules", anything other than taking responsibility for your own actions.

I like how you ignored the rest of the post.

So whats the majority wrong about? Exactly?

As far as I'm concerned, if I want to make a freebie, not have to make it no transfer so people who can't be bothered to make their own items con people out of L$ for a FREE item, I should be allowed to.

Please justify, taking someones hard work, and making people, probably new people, cough up L$ for something, the origional creator, intended to be free.

Another point here I think should be mention is maybe some people don't want to take the time searching all over sl just to save a buck or two? Here is what I want, the guy is selling it for 5$L with a sign next to it saying this item is free in sl somewhere if u care to look. I'd pay the 5 bucks myself!

So true, you have been nothing but insulting through this whole thread

You got me there! I'll stop, sorry, my anger made me stupid for a minute. Your point is taken

But if the person there had put it out for free (another advantage to making it transferable), you'd be up 5 bucks.

If you want to sell freebies, you can, its not agaist the rules. If thats all you care about, fine. But the majority of SL will think, that you're too damned lazy to go and make your own items to make some L$, and you shouldn't be doing it.

If you care about that, stop selling freebies. If you don't, stop complaining on the forums.