New Copyright Threat Warning

Of course! I don't pick on people ... not on purpose anyway. We disagree on some interesting things from time to time, Peggy, but I enjoy the exchange of perspectives. As someone on the radio said the other day, "If you and I were the same, one of us would be unnecessary."

I'll agree that it's a bit of a diatribe but I think calling it hate filled is a bit much and if your going to denounce me for it at least refute the points I put up in it. Incidentally I don't hate anyone here, I respect the skin creators and the effort and skill they put into making their wares but that doesn't mean I'm not going to speak some harsh truth against the way that section of sl commerce is run and how customers are mistreated by the merchants and creators in the skin and fashion industries of sl.


Note: If you feel that I cross the line from attacking arguments and against general sections of society to personal attacks by all means call me on it. I do my best to not attack people but when I'm caught up in the middle of a wall of my own text I sometimes do cross the line.

this is a bit offtopic but I think it should be said that although we can all take each other's statements for or against each other's points of view personally I think it is misguided to do so for the same reason it is misguided for us to devolve the argument into slinging mud at each other personally which is that it is not only unproductive but it also makes the entire argument seem frivolous which I know non of us want considering how serious this is.

Thank you, Gordon. That's reassuring. Hate doesn't really have much place in a civil discussion. When I see commentary that seems a bit over the top, I tend to tune it out, which means neither one of us is listening to the other one, so we both lose out. Strong disagreement is another matter, and quite healthy.

The only thing in your last note I find myself feeling hurt by is its blanket condemnation of merchants and creators in the skin and fashion industries. I am quite willing to agree that there are people in SL whose business practices are less than admirable. As a very small-time designer and bit player in the fashion industry myself, though, I don't like being tarred with the same brush. Perhaps it would have been more prudent to complain about the way that SOME customers are mistreated by SOME merchants and creators. Yes?

Disclaimer: I believe object permissions have their place, and do not have any sympathy for people who go out of their way to override them with the knowledge that the creator does not want that to happen. Piracy is never the answer. I'm also assuming that the reader understand how scarcity affects supply and demand.



It seems like trying to treat anything in Second Life as subject to scarcity of physical space is just doomed to failure in the long run. There's nothing wrong with the SL design per-se, it's just the state of digital reproduction. If you can legitimately view the asset, there's going to be ways to copy it, legitimately or otherwise, lossless and infinitely, at more or less little to no cost.

That being said, it seems like creators could largely protect themselves against this kind of problem by adjusting their business model to account for the fact that digital assets are hard to protect, but labor is, by contrast, relatively easy to protect.

Therefore, possible solution would be to consider the result entirely the buyer's property with it's use or modification entirely up to them, and bill them for hours worked on creating it for them, and don't sweat what they do with it once they have it. Adjust billing accordingly. Instead of lowballing how much your labor is worth by dividing your labor's worth by how many units you expect to sell, sell the labor itself and charge for how many hours of your labor it takes to build something on someone's behalf.

Of course, one would have to sacrifice volume for quality, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing: I, for one, am more likely to pay L$10000+ for a few hours of a builder's time, if the result meets spec, is a well designed, with full perm that I have full control over, than I am to spend a few Linden dollars on something from any random automated vendor on the street. After all, y'all have an electricity bill to pay, I'd rather see builders spend their time at least making enough to pay off the bandwidth, upload, juice for their 1L computer and the time of the very real 1L person behind the screen on the other end for their time. The last thing anybody wants to see is a talented builder hang it up because they didn't sell enough of some item, and then someone pirates it and completely undermines their efforts after only one or two are sold at a low price, on the expectation they'd make it up on volume.

I'm not one to go handing out what makes me unique, on the other hand, I would like the freedom to use Second Inventory to take my purchases off-grid. If I'm paying for the builder's time instead of for the item itself, I'm not going to run afoul of the builder if I do this. And if my tastes change, I can always mod it later, or hire that builder (or even a different builder) again for a few hours to update it for me.

Essentially, builders, instead of giving yourselves titles comparable to the first world and treating the result as such, consider treating the job more like 3D animators for contract hire. You might end up with fewer customers, but you'll attract a higher paying, more sympathetic clientele.

But that's my opinion. I could be wrong.

Yes I agree, blanket statements like that aren't accurate and should be avoided. More accurately it should be stated that from what I have heard and seen first hand, heard second hand, and personally experienced the skin and clothing industries within SL have consistently higher prices, taking into account the factors involved of course, and much lower customer satisfaction compared to other sectors of creators and retailers of second life.

Nice to see that everytime I post it opens up the vocabulary of other posters. In all seriousness though I really wish there wasn't this irrationality against even mentiong Glintercept or related tools but I guess that's a topic for the other days. The fact that textures can be easily copied is, if I understand it correctly, less an issue with LL's infastructure and more to do with the nature of displaying graphics client side and open GL (open gl is vastly preferable to other alternatives for licensing and other reasons) and although greater minds than I on the forums and presumably within LL (a presumption but I'm guessing it's come up there) have tried I don't think there's any way they could prevent texture theft. Even if they did content protection doesn't work unless you control the whole chain from server to monitor and for many many reasons that is impossible.

That fails to take into account that labor can be sold, and people do make "open source" objects.

The primary problem with your argument is that it bears no resemblance to the way things actually are. A cabal? Price fixing? Come on now. That's just silly in a market that has everything from free skins to very expensive skins and everything in between, including open source skins that you're allowed to modify and resell. My own prices have gone from $10k a pop to $750-$1500 as the amount of choice available to consumers has exploded and the market's become saturated.

Consumers determine prices by making choices based on what they want and what they're willing to pay for it, just how the real world works. When you see something that you think is overpriced, doesn't offer the flexibility you want, and doesn't come with the level of service you require, you don't have to buy it. Just to be on the safe side, during the next secret cabal meeting, I'll make sure your name's not on the "force to buy at gunpoint" list. And lastly, when everyone in a certain market offers the same kind of service, with similar pricing, and similar levels of service, is it more rational to assume that those similarities are caused by the environment they're operating in imposing similar restrictions and limitations on everyone, or to imagine some conspiracy theory designed to shaft the very people we depend on for sales? I'd say the former, but that's just me.

I think I said like a cabal, I realize you don't have secret meetings although if she fulfilled her threat to do so, I am banned from at least one store (a clothing store I believe) because the owner doesn't agree with my publicly posted views, her loss. I agree that price fixing isn't a great term for it because it implies collaboration on prices among different merchant however from my experiences in sl there has only been one maker who has released his/her skins free and open with the original texture files and maybe a handful more that have some variation of open source licensed goods and generally those are skins that nobody wanted to buy. I'm not saying that all creators should release all or even any of their skins for free but as far as I know it really is a number I can count on both hands that are doing this. It's nice to hear that prices are going down a little bit but I think that choice while expanding is still very narrow compared to my cliche list of comparisons for these posts.

I can't speak for Peggy.

But to me, your "humor" comes off as nothing but condescension.



In point of fact, I disagree with some of Peggy's concepts as a little to ANTI-BUSINESS. Sorry Peggy, you're pretty much the only one who is even close to being on my side, but some of some of your arguments do go to far in inditing the skin makers.

They have EVERY right to expect their work to NOT be passed around freely, and wanting to make money is not a crime. As a Libertarian I say they can charge whatever the market can bear. Value is assigned by the creator, and agreed upon by the customer.

I've said that from the very beginning if YOU, Rudee, and the rest of your clique, had bothered to actually read what I wrote instead of skimming though it and joining the choir people claiming I don't know what I'm talking about.

It's clear you didn't even BOTHER to read what I said as exampled by this:



*I* never suggested that in any way. I said YOUR consumers have rights after they purchase your content. Those rights are limited to personal use.

You're groups entire argument against boils down to "The consumer has no rights because we might some how loose some money somewhere if they do."

I even put forth the issues accreditation, and agreed that with suggestion that it this process might be illegal simple because of the criminally one sided DMCA, providing you a legal argument to shut this guy down.

Instead of discussion I got:



The comedy of this statement is that I've been dealing with this exact type of IP discussion since DAZ3D was still just the Poser dept, of Zygote, and Fractal was selling POSER 3.

I've been at it for 12 Years, which mean *I* am 10 years ahead of all of you. Hell... I was dealing with these IP issues 3 years before Liden Labs even went into business.

I bet I'm significantly OLDER than Mr. Malaprop as well. So the "son" comment was equally laughable.

And then of course there was the verbal excrement of Ms. LillyBeth Filth that was as comedic as listening to Bill O'Reily or Rush Limbaugh try to defend their indefensible positions.

I've spent well over $10,000 on 3D CONTENT from the Poser community. I've been modeling in Lightwave since version 3.2 on my Amiga (1993).

This was my first real introduction into the SL "community". I cam here to find a way to bring my skills to your community.

Your ignorance, arrogance, and hypocrisy has been reprehensible.
in my 12 years of being part of a 3D community, I have seen some clique's and cult's of personality, but you people make the worst of the Poser world seem downright friendly.

If you treated Peggy half as bad as you've treated me, it's no wonder she's railing against you.

I don't know what she has invested, but my total investment in SL is about $10 from a year ago. That's the last I'm investing.

I'm sure you'll "sour grapes" my comments, and pat yourself on the back for it. But you've driven away a proven customer who has already invested greatly in his 3D hobby, and a content creator who has been at longer than your community has been alive.

Enjoy your victory.
I hope SL grows in popularity... because as soon as it grows big enough. As soon as THE BIG MEDIA thinks there's enough "meat" in you're community to make a "meal" out of, you'll learn the REAL meaning of Copyright.

Lighten up, guys! Disagreement is fine, but the pointless sarcasm is getting really old.

I get where you're coming from, Gordon, I just disagree, and I don't see the reprehensible behavior that you seem to see in the skin market. Your feelings about it struck me as hyperbolic and unfair. Hateful wasn't the right word. More like "Wait... What?!"

I'm guessing this is one of those things we'll have to agree to disagree on this.



/me bites his tongue and refrains from replying sarcastically

I have actually read the entire thread and I want to address some issues. But first a statement. I personally side with Chip and Chosen on this. I find Erikadu's candor refreshing and wish him the best.
First off, someone doubted the amount of time required to make skins and clothes due to the use of masters. Because no one has offer up an explanation I will.
I make clothes. Most is photosourced. This requires that I get the requisite permissions. This takes time. Personal free time. An example is the Olympic mascots I made to celebrate the Beijing Olympics.
The Idea came in 2007. I sent the first of 3 letters off translated into mandrain to ask permission to simply replicate the their icons into the 3d environment after determining that they (BOCOG) did not do so themselves. The 3 letters took all of 2007 and a good chunk of spring 2008. I got my limited permissions in May 2008 to render in 3d environment only the symbol, the torch and the mascots in second life only. I fortunately didnt have to explain what sl is because they have their own version.
I made the five mascots out of sculpties. It took me a total of 48 hrs. The shirt took 1 and the torch took 3 weeks total. It cost me a total of $200.
So how much did I actually make? $10! I sold about 10 sets and a dozen individuals. I still haven't sold a torch because to get the flame to work correctly required me to either make a flame or buy one. The torch run was already half done by this point so I bought one. Sadly, while it worked, I couldn't box it to sell on Slexchange.
On the mascots I sold them for L$100. I spent L$800 to get them on the front page of SLexchange for a week.
My personal cost far outweighed the profit. and I have the letters (and the doll) to prove it.
I have made skins for every game I have ever involved in except this one. And I won't. Oh I have the talent. If you think that is arrogant, find some people who are still using the aragon skin for Dungeon siege or the custom ones I made for SIMs. The time involved to make the skins and sell them and market them is beyond what I have available. I work 8 to 12 hrs 5 days a week at an airport to pay my bills. I have immense respect for those whose primary job is making items for second life. But I already ate my share of cheese samwhiches for my novel at sits quietly on Amazon.com. (normally I would say the title, but that would like my RL identity to my virtual and I perfer not to do that)

I have come to believe that for all the flaws an poorly thought out avatars in SL, There, the direct competitor is far worse as is kaneva. I should post a pic of the mesh for the avatars torso. While the did figure out that gmax meshs should me used, their avatars are so ulgy and the textures are so small that all their corporate partners were SL first.

I am 37 and have been in the system since 90s. Our copyright system is broken. It was broken by people like Disney who didn't want their property to enter the public domain. However, it is still the law and while dealing with NBC/Universal or BOCOG can be infuriating, it is the only way to go. The system that LL built is weak because it was bleeding edge and never set to scale properly. I trust Chip and Chosen and John, they are right. What you fail to understand was big Media is here. CNN and reuters are here. Coke was here. Nissin is here. Pontiac was here and made caLLie cLine #97 on the Maxim Hot 100 by have her do commercials for them. So was Herman Miller, and endless others. There is some many corporations that were and are here I could do a full College level Powerpoint presentation on the subject. Their ultimate response? Eh!
It did make the premissions far easier thought. Some say yes, most say no or I don't know. Some actually don't care and have said so because because they believe it is a game.

It takes me 1 hr to make a shirt of sufficient quality to sell, make the marketing pics and upload to slexchange. Thats an hour of freetime I give up. It don't pays teir. ($25) My job does. I spent $600 willingly on SL in 2007. I will spend that much on SL this year.
Do I think the skin makers should make at least minimum wage in US?
The Linden has real value because you can exchange it for real world Items. Circuit city did it and so did 1-800-flowers in world. It has a directly updated exchange that is available 24-7 on the SL page of Reuters. So any comparisons are valid.

I met a passenger in at work who said something interesting. I discovered that she (about 16) played Wow and I told her that I made clothes in SL. She said that she refused to join because she would have to pay rl money and she didnt want subsudize me. I believe that is one of the unspoken cruxes of problem. They dont want to pay for the virtual clothes because they are transient but nevertheless to be involved they have to look acceptable.
I think that I addressed my issues. I am sorry if I rambled.
Thanks for reading.

Please read all the below with this in mind:

For $4 RL money, I can't even buy a mass-market unframed commercial print to stick on my wall with blue-tack. I need to spend at least $12 in my part of the world.

For $4 RL money, I can buy a hot chocolate or a latte, and enjoy it for ten minutes.

For $4 RL money, I can buy a skin that I can wear on my SL avatar, enjoying it for years.

The last is the best use of that $4, IMO. And all of it goes straight to the person who provided me with that pleasure, either recompensing him for out of pocket expenses such as bandwidth, depreciation and tier, or giving him payment for his time and effort.


Declaration of interest: I'm an SL consumer, and an SL content creator. My greatest SL income so far comes from animations, I also make and sell clothing and furniture, and am experimenting with prim shoes. I teach for NCI, and help people on the NCI channels. I write tutorials that I post for free on my blog. And I got my starting cash for my SL business (which is making tier!) from NCI show and tell entries, and from the generosity of a couple of residents who made space for my early vendors in their stores.





Some do, some don't. Some reuse parts of their existing textures, and not others. For this particular exercise, I chose to presume a fully redone skin. But that's why I broke the math down into each individual facet - so those who disagreed with it could see what I'd done, and redo the math based on their own determination as to what's realistic.



Then redo the math, taking that out, and use the remaining figures. Do the same with any figures you disagree with. I'd be interested in seeing your results.



Why should any one person dictate what another person's time is worth?

The customer determines whether the product is worth the offered price to that customer. If it's not, they don't buy it.



Therefore, the Redgrave numbers are going to be vastly different from the numbers for a mid-level-popularity skin maker, and even more different from the numbers for someone near the bottom of the rankings.



You can feel aggrieved if you want to. I just wanted to point out how much it takes for a mid-level skin maker to make minimum wage from her skins.




Nowhere in my post did I include raw materials or manufacturing costs. In fact, I intentionally left them out because they don't apply.

As for 'any sales are pure profit': that's not quite true. Profit is revenue - costs. My whole post there was a breakdown of costs, and what level of revenue is required before you start to make profit.

By my calculation (and as I said, you're totally free to change the numbers and redo the math), the hypothetical skin maker starts to make a profit (presuming she pays herself/the artist minimum wage) in week 72.




I'm not. I'm just saying that surely an artist deserves to make at least minimum wage. (So does everyone else who's producing a good or service of value, IMO.)




I think you're using the wrong word, Gordon. Extortion requires force. What you're actually seeing is 'market forces' or even 'haggling'.

The seller has something the buyer wants. The two negotiate, and determine whether the buyer is willing to provide goods or services or tokens (money) to sufficient value for the seller to part with their goods or services. If that is so, then a sale takes place. If not, it doesn't.

Simple trade. Been going on since Ug the caveman swapped a haunch of meat to Ulla for the nuts and berries she gathered.





I'm not one of the elite skin makers, so I can't say for sure what they say among themselves. However, I recently went skin shopping. I saw a wide variety of market segments, and skins that were, quite frankly, appropriate to their market segment.

Among the nicest skins (to my personal taste), the price variability was in excess of 500Lindens.

On my short list, there was no sign of price fixing. Just market forces. And yes, my short list included the most expensive skins.

As it happened, I actually got my second choice skins for free. Yes, that's right, free. All I had to do was join the designer's group.
Sure, it was a particular makeup - but that happened to be the one I wanted anyway! Sure, the free skin comes with built-in underwear, but I don't do nudity so that's actually a bonus.

(I did buy a set of that designer's skins, in a different makeup, because I do believe people deserve reward for effort. Besides, I love the skin and some of the makeups.)





I must be a freak. My store breaks even, has paid for me to buy a few items I'm not yet skilled enough to make at top quality (working on it, dahlinks), and if it keeps up at this rate, I'm going to start converting Lindens to RL money by the middle of next year. Maybe I'll see if I can do a conversion on my Rezday, which is in April.

Yes, in April I'll be a one-year-old avatar, and I'm already running a business that's doing well enough that I can afford luxuries. Ridiculously high barrier to entry? Naaah. Not in my experience.

Have I been networking with the right people? Only if writing in these and the SLExchange forums, and being actively helpful on the NCI group channels counts.





Thank you.



Actually, it's similar with all intellectual property. You purchase the right to use, not the right of ownership. To quote from a random book I picked up from my bookshelf: "Copyright 2007 by Mercedes R. Lackey. All rights reserved."

That's the short form. The long form actually requires all the words of the Berne convention. http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_Literary_and_Artistic_Works

My best written-in-five-minutes-or-less summary, for SL purposes, goes like this:
* You purchase the right to use the artistic work for personal use only.
* You may or may not have a right to make copies for your own personal use.
* You may or may not have the right to transfer your right-to-use to another person, but if you do that, you no longer have a right-to-use it yourself.
* You may have the right to make derivative versions for your own personal use (ie: mod perms), but this does not transfer that right to anyone else to make derivative versions on your behalf. (Derivative versions of a work are strictly controlled under the Berne convention.)
Additionally, you do not have the right to represent a derivative work as being the pure creation of the original creator, if you then resell your right-to-use. (Not listed in the mod/copy/trans permissions system, but a logical extrapolation of the Berne convention, IMO. YMMV.)

I do have a tendency to forget that many people don't have my level of understanding of copyright law.




Yup. That's the way it works. And sellers are perfectly within their rights to price themselves out of the market if they wish. Some sellers doubtless do.



Oh, okay. So you want the seller to sell the first skin at .. let's see. Minimum wage is 1703 Lindens. Eighty hours.

You want the seller to sell the first copy of their skin at $136240 Lindens, and the rest free? The SL market doesn't work that way. Who would buy a skin at $136K Lindens knowing the second person to buy it got it for free?

That's what all the math in my previous post was about. How to get the skin-maker minimum wage for 80 hours worth of skin creation, after tier and other expenses.




All that 'good customer service' I've heard so many people talking about in this thread. At the $6.55 minimum wage, and a 260Lindens-per-USD exchange rate, 1000 Lindens buys you 35.335 minutes of someone's time. So if you keep a seller busy for half an hour then buy a 1000 Linden product, the seller has gained nothing from you.

And while some customer service is fun, do people really do customer service with the unreasonable subset of the SL community 'for the love of it'? I wouldn't!


As for the software & equipment for making the product: accountants do allow for that. They estimate what percentage of the equipment's lifespan has been spent on this product, estimate replacement value, and apply one to the other.





Given how upset people are about spending $1K Lindens on a skin, I don't think we're going to have much luck getting people to spend $136K Lindens! And that only brings in minimum wage, and doesn't account for any of the overheads.

I've - so far - only had one person approach me for a custom job who had any intention whatsoever of paying a living wage. I actually referred him to a friend of mine who would suit his particular field better.

But yes - given customers for this model, I'd be perfectly willing to work to this model. I have no objection to it - and the Berne convention does cover this type of work too.




Quoted for truth.




Alas, also quoted for truth.

Just because something is possible, doesn't make it legal.





You upset my cat. She didn't like having mushroom soup splutter-laughed on her while she was sitting on my lap.

Love it.




I have written two editions of a book. The second edition took as long as the first, because I reviewed every word. Even the bits that haven't been changed took time to check the current accuracy of. The bits that have been changed, of course, took extra time. And the entirely new items, naturally enough, took even more time.


With my SL clothes, once I have found the right seam line for a particular seam, of course I keep using the same seamline. But I might change how I display it on a particular garment. I might change the intensity of shadows or highlights depending on the underlying colour. And I certainly add new material for each new product!

Sure, the different colours of the same product line take less time to make than entirely new product lines. Sure, each new product line builds on the last, and I'll grab a layer from product X to add to product Y.

But I change the product X layer to better suit product Y. And I put enough new material into product Y that yes, it did take as long as product X. (Actually, my newer stuff keeps taking longer than my older stuff. I'm getting fussier. This is good news for you, because my products are getting better.)

So, presuming that skin makers work rather like I do, I expect that yes, each new product line of skins takes its own forty or eighty or whatever hours of work. (Skin makers, care to comment?)


Aaaand... I think this thesis is written. I hope it all fits!

You're conveniently leaving out the fact that it's not $4/skin but $4/make-up/tone so the actual cost of any skin is going to be multiples of that amount.

I'll use the Dazzle example again since it's easy to use the numbers: limited edition dresses at L$3k/dress with 60 copies/dress which sold like hotcakes in a matter of hours after release or in other words L$180k/dress or US$680/dress.

Using your "less than minimum wage" claim you want to argue she spent 85 hours on every outfit or 8 back-to-back days at 10 hours/day for one single outfit? Given the fact that she was able to release 20 of them at the same time (160 days continuous work at "minimum wage" that's just a little bit unlikely. It's likely far more accurate she made them all in the span of a single month and it netted her US$13,600.

Did she deserve to make that much? Most definitely and all the more power to her for being able to pull that off, but don't make claims about how undervalued content creators are when money is being made hand over fist.

I'd be very, very surprised if a skin in a well known store doesn't earn its "manufacturing" cost back in a matter of mere hours after its intitial release, if it even takes that long.

The problem with your argument, Seshat, is that you constantly want to equate SL and RL economies. When people come to SL, they recognise, or SHOULD recognise, that while there are some links between the RL world and the SL one, they are actually quite slight. You constantly base your figures on the RL minimum wage, but in truth, that has little relevance in SL. Maybe there should be an SL minimum wage.

Whys should skin, or furniture or clothing makers expect to be paid the US RL minimum wage when nobody else does. Lawyers and business consultants that offer advice in SL do it at a rate that ties in with the SL economy. They don't expect to be paid rates that reflect their RL charges. It seems only you guys fail to make this distinction.

I agree that at the high end, the skin manufacturers probably do very well, and that at the mid and low range, less so. But most people in SL aren't there to make money, they are there to have fun, be creative, make friends. And sure, market forces will dictate, to an extent what people are prepared to pay, but then, it is also a pretty captive market.

The point that has been made throughout the thread is that certain content creators want to have it their own way totally and don't seem to care about everyone else's experience as long as the sheckels keep rolling in. Don't tell us that things can't be done, when clearly they can. Don't blame LL for your paranoia. Trust your customers.

Hmmmm.... I guess I run in the wrong circles. I own a small dress shop. I'm not the world's fastest designer, so it takes me the better part of a day to make a new dress design and fabric from scratch, get the seams to align properly, bring it in world, do a photo shoot for an ad, and get it into the shop ..... if I'm lucky. If I were charging minimum wage rates for my time, that would be something close to L$17,000. I sell the dress for L$300, so technically I will have to sell 56 dresses to break even by that calculation. In fact, I'm very lucky to sell 2 or 3 of that dress in a month.

So, I'm not going to earn enough selling dresses to pay for my time. That really doesn't bother me, because I'm retired and not trying to make a living by converting my in-world wealth to RL dollars. I need to earn enough to pay the rent for my shop, and I can do that easily with what dress sales bring in. Still, I'm not a rich SL merchant. In fact, I can earn more in tips dancing in a club for two hours than I sometimes net in my dress shop in a week.

As I look around and talk to friends who, like me, run a shop or two and make a modest living in SL, I have to ask, "Where are all the price-gouging merchants I keep hearing about? Who's trying to skewer the customer?" The designers I admire in SL sell their dresses in about the same price range I do, so I can't believe THEY are price gouging, if I'm not. So who is it?

Just reread the thread Rolig. No one is criticising the small designer such as yourself. We aren't suggesting that you are price gouging. However, it is pretty clear that at the higher volume end of the market for skins, the creators are gouging. Charging people a vast amount of money for small changes to a base skin they have already bought....and then...complaining when someone has the temerity to use that skin to create a composite with, say, a tattoo, when this is a no-transfer piece that only the original purchaser can use. The complaints also relate to the me me me attitude of these people who are so fixated on protecting themseleves against a horse that bolted months ago, and blaming everyone but themselves for the deficiencies in the system.

No one would criticise what you do, well, I wouldn't anyway.

Thank you. I do appreciate that. I have read the entire fascinating thread and I understand the point you have nicely summarized. Maybe it's just hyperbole, but I'm not sure that everyone is as clear about it as you are, however, so I feel compelled to raise a flag for the small merchant.

I'm really not trying to pick on anyone, but even in his nice apology yesterday, Gordon said....



I'm willing to believe that there probably ARE some unscrupulous merchants out there giving the rest of us a bad name. From my own personal experience, though, I just don't see anything to justify the impression that "the skin and clothing industries within SL have consistently higher prices ... and much lower customer satisfaction compared to other sectors of creators and retailers of second life." If it's true, I'd love to see proof. If not, I would prefer to see people complain about the REAL culprits and not keep lumping all merchants together as an evil class.

I tend to agree with that. I don't think that most skin dealers, even at the high end are ripping off their customers systematically. And I'm pretty sure that most users are very satisfied with what they get, but to an extent, that's because they know no better. Skin makers have developed a market where people expect to have to buy additional make up versions. And people accept this in their general ignorance that alternatives are there.

Most high end skinners don't offer the ability to buy a second or third version of the same skin at a reduced price. Doubtless they would claim that this would create unmanageable red tape. Some sell fat packs, but then you have to buy all the skins when you might only want to or three. The point is, that you usually have to pay again to get the body textures you have already bought.

I'm sure that people like Chip would be only too pleased if an alternative such as he has suggested were available, but it aint. And skin makers do pretty well out of the current system, so in reality, would they really want to see changes.

Getting back to the original topic. The service Enkidu provided, if he did it as he said, wouldn't impact the sales of skin or tattoo makers. It would impact the Second Lives of many in a positive way. Now I know that these guys don't know him from Adam, neither do I, but he seems pretty straight up. What we've been saying all along is that these guys should really try to think a little more outside the box and not assume that everyone is out to rip them off. Anyone that wants to do that could easily do it with Copybot or GLIntercept and wouldn't be as upfront and open about it.

God yes! If you've been around these forums for long you'll know that I've been complaining about the avatar system for five years now. It is unbelievably frustrating not to be able to provide customers with the felxibility they desire. And there's another dimension to it... I was SL's first skin maker - the first person to start using the tattoo slots for base skin textures to completely hide the default avatar skin. Before I did that there was a thriving market for tattoos and makeups that people could buy and apply themselves, but the kind of skins I made made that impossible, but they were one of SL's first "must own" products and within a year they were the standard. The tattoo mrket lives on using clothing layers, but the makeup market was dead, and I killed it. I STILL feel bad about that, even though someone else would have introduced full body skins if I hadn't done it. It was inevitable. It was so inevitable that LL should have anticipated it. That they didn't is pretty remarkable, but things happen, but in my opinion there is absolutely no excuse for them not having rectified the situation yet, all these years later.

I consider it negligent. Not just because there should be (and would be) a huge secondary market for add-on products for skins, but because the limitations of the system encourage texture ripping. I don't blame LL for not being unable to stop texture rippers from working, but for the fact that a smarter design would take away many of the reasons people turn to it in the first place. Avatar customization is probably the most important, and most enjoyed aspect of SL. Along with land, it's the primary driver of the economy. Why then have avatar features been entirely neglected? We haven't had a single feature upgrade in that department, ever, unless you count the Great Crotch Massacre of 2003, when LL added the male "package" slider and every pair of pants and underwear in SL was suddenly crotchless and had to be redone.

I think that this may be part of the crux of the matter. Changes to the avi architecture could be very complex and might have the effect of rendering many people's products obsolete. Also LL aren't renowned for their foresight as to the effects that their changes might make.

Should the architecture change, do you think that tatt manufacturers would upgrade their customer's products to work on the new layer? Would they do this for free? Would skin makers? It's clearly quite a thorny issue.

If i'm a photographer, I can rest assured that LL are working on whizzy new ways to improve the graphics so my pictures are better. If i'm anyone else, I don't seem to be on their radar. I fully agree that a more flexible system of using skins and tattoo layers would be great, but I don't see it happening soon.

I wish I'd been to see Enkidu whilst he was operating and got my skin and tattoos sorted.

It really would depend on how extensive the changes were. The kind of system I described earlier in the thread would be easy to adapt existing products to, but from previous discussions about this issue with other clothing and skin makers, I think a lot of us would be willing to see our entire existing product lines become obsolete if it meant getting a better system to work with. There'd probably be more outcry from consumers if that happened than from creators. When the pants issue happened, I fixed all of my products and offered free replacements to anyone who owned one of the affected items. Not everyone did (because it was a huge amount of work), but a lot did.