Selling Free Items

That sounds like a REALLY good idea. Put the intentions of the creator into the rights system.

Yes, and that should be allowed, but since the recipient gets an object that has "freebie)" on the end of its name in the inventory, they'll be competing with all of their customers and the price they can get for it will soon drop back to zero.

This should be allowed because creators need to be able to do this! I know people who seed their freebies this way. They'll sell them for $150 or $500 but with full rights. Was it Hank Ramos who was doing that with an ATM script set? There was a big to-do about that last year, anyway.
Out of curiosity, why not?

Because the creator is happy to let you do it?

If you buy something with a modified version of Cyberflight in it, you can always get Cyberflight for L$1 from my silly little store, or from someone who has a copy from me. And if you want to put it in an antigravity backpack and sell it, you can do that too.

Now, if you don't follow my conditions for the sale of Cyberflight, that's different.

I recommend everyone making freebie objects, whatever rights you put on them, document what your intentions are. There's a description field, use it. That way if someone violates your intentions after they've been notified what they are, they can't play innocent.

They can also be used by the seller to ask what the creator's intentions are.

I must admit that freebie selling puts me off making freebie scripts, beyond those that are very generic and almost certainly exist already anyway.

On the one hand, I'm quite happy with people taking free scripts, putting them in an object they have created, modifying the scripts perhaps and then selling that object. The script is giving functionality to an object and motivating the creator to build something new that otherwise they would probably not have been able to make. Utility scripts like whatever that follow script was called to allow really, really large sets of prims to be effectively linked directly stimulate creativity. I'm not interested in making money in SL, and if I ever was, I'd take on custom scripting projects.

On the other hand, I would feel really annoyed if I found that someone was selling a script that I or someone else had written and explicitly said that should be free for distribution and modification. There's someone right next to me who's doing this - the vendor even still has the name "free" in scripts that are being sold for L$50.

I feel sometimes that there is a distinct lack of structure to protect content creator rights when there *isn't* a huge restriction. If I create a nocopy nomod item that's pretty impervious to being redistributed - my intentions as to sale are protected by the system. If I want to establish a Creative Commons licence, though, I have a lot harder time. I don't see why one licence gets a better deal than another.

I'm not saying that LL have some sort of conspiracy to promote capitalism and discourage free culture here incidentally - what with the heavy Lessig presence, free culture groups etc I hardly think they're disinterested in the issue. But it seems to me that things like, say, meta-permissions and unchangeable creator metadata could be incorporated. Say I have a script that is free for commercial or non-commercial use but has to be distributed mod. That could have meta-permissions such that it cannot be set nomod, and an item that it is in cannot be completely nomod. It could also have copyright data set in the creator metadata, just a free text field, that would be unchangeable by subsequent owners, so no stripping of it could take place.

(Actually, what really puts me off extensive freebie making is that I'm too lazy to actually tidy them up and package them. I have a million gadgets in my inventory that I've built then got bored of, and I've just never got around to sticking them in boxes.)

what a load of bullshit.

your telling me i can't sell anything here unless i make it? do you all live in a communist country?

what the hell is a free item anyway? cause someone puts something in a box and gives it away free thats supposed to make it taboo to resell? put a patent on your crap if you are so worried about it. sounds to me like you all are trying to spread your names around through giving away some stupid item for free. your motives are not so innocent.

this aint real life i know but if it was and you tried pulling this crap the economy would go to hell as i'm sure it would somewhat here too.

not all of us for whatever reason can build our own stuff. so if your telling me i can't go to a sale and buy something cheap than resell it at my place for more, you can go to hell!

i live in a free country with a free market. you don't like your things being resold, don't make em that way, duh!!!!

I'm sure Ansell Adams had to go through the same argument about his photography.
If that was the case, we wouldn't be having this debate. You wouldn't be able to copy a T-shirt, ever, and it would wear out, and you'd have to go back and buy another one. I'm sure some MMOGs work that way. SL doesn't.

I believe the making and selling of simulated T-shirts is a real business, and a different business than the simulated making and selling of real T-shirts would be. Everquest's economy works that way... the business is simulated, the manufacture iis simulated, the consumption is simulated. SL doesn't do that, the economy in SL is the economy of a software business, with the rights system instead of courts.

The software business didn't just wake up in the '60s with the whole balance between proprietary and open source software already worked out. It went through all the same debates that are going on now in this thread, except louder and more vigorous because there was more real money involved. I believe that the economy in SL is going to end up looking much the same as the software economy, the dynamics and economics are identical. It'll save a lot of hassle to abandon the idea that there's a distinction right now.
In SL, if you sell a T-shirt you sell one that never gets dirty and can be resold or copied, or both. It can't be recycled into rags, or dyed a different color. It can't have another pattern printed on it, or be signed by the whole football team. It can't be turned inside out, tied around the waist, used to clean your glasses, or support a sprained ankle. It can't be cut up and stuffed into your boots in place of socks. It's not like a RL T-shirt at all.

It's the same situation. The thing is, the parallel to the seller of an SL T-shirt is also that of a writer of code.

As a programmer, I have kept trains from crashing, controlled oilfeild equipment, shunted natural gas and electricity to people's homes (maybe yours), and without that code you wouldn't have gas, or electricity, and your car would be twice as heavy or half as powerfule, because RL is full of code that makes cars work, airplanes fly, and time processes, and without which.. well... we can't afford to go back to the '60s.

Sometimes, yes, I do feel like a magician or a wizard.

If the script is mod, they can copy the text out, create a new script object, and paste it in.

All you can do is notify people what the restrictions are, and then watch for people violating those restrictions... in your scripts and other people's. Like X-Flight.

Are you doing that?

Er, people release products for free redistribution with restrictions on them ALL THE TIME in the real world. YOU ARE, THIS MOMENT, using a computer that depends on that kind of software. It doesn't matter whether you're using Windows, a Mac, or some kind of UNIX box, or even something old and odd like a BeBox or an Amiga. You're using open source software.

Second Life is built on software like that. The database your objects are stored in is MySQL. The operating system it's running on is Linux. The webservers and wikis are open source.

This is real life. It works. Deal with it.

Glad to see there are some true Americans still alive. (Besides me, of course)

Classy... Feb 2006 eh?

What you mean besides you? I've only seen you the entire thread.

Oh Snap!

HuH?

Well there is the dry wit and eloquence we've come to expect from SL 'top financial mind'.

I love when people say "Oh Snap!". It is so goofy and yet it always makes me laugh lol.

Except Second Life is not real life. You're bound here by certain rules and laws just as you are in real life.

Don't you even feel the slightest bit of guilt leeching off of someone else's work and donation to the community? It's like me charging an admission fee to my property. I've made it, I want people to enjoy what I've done for free. If they want to put something in my tip jar, then that's great. If not, as long as they enjoy their visit, then that's fine by me.

How would you feel if someone stole something you had made and sold it? Because stealing is exactly what reselling freebie items is.

At least as you admit it publicly on the forum, I don't need to stop by your place to see what's on sale. I'll get it from its rightful source instead. Nice business tactic.

Lewis

I know its hard for you Communists to accept the fact there are many die hard capitalists out there - JustinJay is not me nor my alt.

Deal with the fact there are still Great Americans in the world.

I think it's very adorable and cute-kid sweet that you capitalize "communists".

But you both have one thing in common - your both shitheels

I found a great way to deal with it - I don't make shit for you to leech anymore. And more people are following suit every day

Any 'customers' you send me for tech support are also informed what a collossal turd biter you are

Oh yes. And if I distribute a script which doesn't have a disclaimer in it, that's my own lookout.

It's not going to stop anyone who wants to resell them though. They probably won't even bother removing the restriction notice, just sell things on. I've seen people doing this.

You haven't answered the question. Instead you have set up a strawman of someone rampantly copying items for resale. The example you used of someone making "infinite copies of Fight Club to sell on the street corner" is quite obviously a different situation to reselling an item the creator has said should be infinitely reproducible and redistributable.

You say you don't like people reselling items they have received at a discount, and it should not be allowed. And you also claim you resent being compared to the RIAA, who *also* feel that people should be restricted from reselling content which their members have produced.

So, again I ask, 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? Please don't just say that it's a "dickhead" thing to do or set up another strawman. I'd really like to hear how you can differentiate the two situations when they are so clearly parallel.

for those of you trying to complicate the issue, STOP!

you don't want your stuff resold, check the appropriate boxes! and don't give me any lame story why you can't or shouldn't have to.

you put $10 on the ground for a homeless person to take and someone else grabs it and you sit there and complain about it. my analogy may not be great but you get the point.

if you have stuff out there now that is being resold and you don't want it to be, im the person, most people are pretty decent if you give them the benifit of the doubt.

why don't people mind there own business. who cares if some poor slob is making a few bucks off some crap that's all over sl. more power to him!

try stopping these prick land barons making a fortune here. leave the common guy alone!!

Sure Jami-err Justin.

Darn those pesky facts! Just darn them to heck!



Facts = Lame Story?



It's not "not great", it's pathetic. And no, the point has not been delivered.



1) Wrong, most are actually utter dicks about it and will (at best) never respond or (more commonly) get indignant about it, and start threatening to "Ruin you" or something. Been there, done that, many times.

2) Shouldn't have to.




My creation, my reputation, my buisness. Simple as that. You're right about the "poor slob" part, however.



Theives are not the common guy. And leave land barons out of this, else I accuse you of bringing in a red herring.