What is fair? Mod/Copy/Transfer houses

I have been struggling with what permissions to set for my houses.

I think every house buyer should be able to modify thier house so that is a given.

I originally made some skyboxes Mod/Copy/No Transfer and had customers complain they bought one for a friend but then could not transfer it.

I sold a couple Mod/Copy/Transfer houses to someone who said they wanted put out several rent houses, so I agreed to full permissions at a higher fee, only to find later that they had gone into competition with me selling my houses. So I'm real reluctant to sell something with both Copy and Transfer allowed.

I know several builders sell Mod/Copy/No Transfer houses, and you see them used alot as rental houses where the land owner bought only one house and then put out dozens of copies of it on his land. That seems grossly unfair to the builder. But maybe it works out ok in the long run because he gets alot of exposure resulting from so may of his houses being out there for people to see. This is in my opinion the best sort of advertising.

If a home owner wants to make improvements to a piece of land and sell the improvments with it, it seems reasonable that they should be able to sell the house. So the transfer option seems desirable.

Lately I have been thinking the fairest alternative is to sell a house as Mod/No Copy/Transfer, so if the owner can modify and transfer the house if they sell the land. But they can't sell multiple copies of the house.

In order to address the Copy issue, I have started prividing extra pieces of the basic house components, with full permissions, already textured, so the owner can make additional walls, windows, doors, walkways, etc. using those components. This allows them to do landscaping and small modifications using materials that match thier house.

With this provision, setting Mod/NO Copy/Transfer permissions to the house seems the fairest alternative to the buyer and protecting the sellers interests. But I would appreciate hearing others opinions.

On a house, I'd suggest mod/copy, No Transfer. If they modify it and screw it up, they can rez another one and know at least they can have a good looking house at any time. If they tear it down and want to put it back up in a month somewhere else..they can do it easily.

my 2 cents...

Sell it how ever you want. Just make sure it is explicitly stated for consumers prior to their purchasing it.

I'm a mod/copy no-transfer person myself, for the houses I build.

coco

Agreed...
Mod/Copy/No transfer

If they want to buy for a friend, you could conceivably institute a gift certificate system that issues a no-mod/no-copy/transfer object that bears an identifying number... that number is stored in a DB with the Value that is attached to the gift certificate. Then they can give THAT to their friend and the friend can either
A: (Less complex, more work intensive) bring it to you for the swap out,
OR
B: (More complex, less work intensive in the long run) bring it to a vendor (created by you, since there isn't onew that I know of yet) that is capable of accepting Gift certificates in exchange for product.

Have to agree with the Mod/Copy/No Transfer, it's the only way to go, you do have some issues with ppl setting up numerous homes as rentals, but it's a small price to pay for advertising your product, at least the payed for the first one.

Such thing DOES exist, I know Wuvme Karuna uses one, and she bought it from somde guy... Might want to ask her.
Anyways you can do like me and just put an ad in your shop that tells your politics, and says that your items are copy/mod/notrans and therefor people need to IM you for gift version. You dont HAVE to make things as complicated are you seem to see them now LOL.

EVERYTHING should ALWAYS be MOD/COPY/NOTRANS, in 99% of the time. My opinion.

I think that things like houses should be Mod/Copy/No Trans. I may buy a house for the design and not so much the textures. I want to be able to mod and have an original copy as a backup.

In the cases of clothes and skins for example, those items should be Mod/Trans/No Copy. Too many people, myself included, have things we never wear and can't give them away to people who will...

I really agree with ZsuZsanna on the clothes/skins permissions, I like to give things to new resis that I don't use anymore. On the houses, as long as you don't have a problem with people rezzing multiple houses, mod/copy/no transfer is good (and have a sign that tells people your permissions, and says to contact you about gift versions).

Most houses don't have a lot of scripting, so isn't there an issue with scripts that can copy all the prims? I suppose the textures would be safe (haven't tried it), but the shapes and their relationships could be exactly duplicated couldn't they?

No matter what you make - give - or sell - you will NEVER please 100% of the people all the time.

All you can hope for is to think of what the majority of users will find most usefull, while protecting yourself at the same time.

I make things so that people can have mutliple copies - some people will want to give to friends, I make things so that people can give as give to friends, some people will want copy..

You can work around individual cases.

Then there are the very small amount of people who will never be satisfied no matter what.. give them full permissions - they want you to customise it

Some people - thankfully a small group - are NEVER satisfied.

I started out selling my homes as Mod & Transfer because I thought they should be able to sell the house with the land if they ever wanted to.

I have since changed any new home I make to Mod & Copy, as I was run ragged before, fixing homes when people messed them up. With Mod & Copy, if they make a mistake, they can just rez another. Cuts down on my housecalls a whole lot!

1 - Never give anyone full permission anything unless you plan on them reselling it, thus charge them accordingly for resale.

2 - I sell a lot of my prefabs mod/NO COPY/Transfer, mostly my old ones. These ones are fairly cheap (most are 200 or even less). So if someone wants multiples they can buy them, I am prettly lenient and have given out many replacment houses for ones people have messed up. I have sold copiable houses for rentals as a special deal upon request, usually of course at a higher price.

My newer prefabs are mod/copy/NO TRANSFER, but they are significanly more expensive and in my opinion a lot better than my old ones. The price reflects the permissions and the quality.

It is hard to say which is a better value/more popular with customers, the bulk of my sales are my older prefabs that have the mod/no copy/transfer permissions.

You could sell one version that is Mod/Copy/No trans and another version that is Mod/Trans/No copy and people can choose what they want. But as you found out the hard way, don't set all perms unless you want it to end up being a freebie (or worse, pirated).

I won't buy a prefab that isn't Mod/Copy/No Transfer. I like to retexture too much, and make modifications.

I was reading through the initial post and my first thought to the argument for Mod was "include extra parts!", which I am glad to see is exactly what was done!

I think the houses should either be (No Copy, Trans) OR (Copy, No Trans), but always Mod. This way you are protected as a merchant from free copies of your housing making their way into everyone's inventory.

I prefer the No Copy method, as I hate to see an area inundated with copies of an object I made AND from a more mercenary standpoint: if they want more they'll have to buy more! On the issue of Mod, once the owner has started to modify the product they have "voided the warranty", so to speak. If they mess it up, well they choose to modify it! Of course there are cases where I am sympathetic, but that's really a case by base basis.

So my $.02L: Mod, No Copy, Trans