Perms on Textures

I know this is OLD Hat by now

On my visits to new texture stores ( doing my rounds LOL ) i found one that sells them no mod ( didnt know till i bought some to check out!) displayed in hologram so cant check perms

So anyway no modify.

Now I assumed that meant no good to most builders?

But went back to my store and took mod off one of my textures to find u can do anything with it apart from download it

SO i have to ask myself in light of the texture theft in SL am i leaving myself wide open to abuse here by offering full perms?

I do leave a card in the packs outlining the custom work I do and the take down order but if all people want to do is build with them then maybe I shouldnt be selling them with modify?

So heres the question.

Would the fact you cannot download it to your hard drive deter you from buying or using my textures?

Thanks

I've not answered because I don't honestly know.

Most of the time I don't download textures to my hard drive to be honest. But every now and again I do to tweak it just right. I think if you offered something whereby as standard they were no mod, but you could buy individual ones full perms (maybe at a different price) I might go for it so I could use most of them easily, but if needed move to a full perms version, but that's making your selling system way more complicated.

I also use a multi-texture displayer that uses keys to display textures which would stop working with your new textures if they were made no mod, which would affect my use of that for new textures.

That said I rarely shop for textures nowadays, I tend to make my own from scratch, because then I know they're what I want, so I'm not a good person for market research. But just some thoughts for you to consider.

It would matter a lot to me. I do a lot of bulding and there are times that I really need to alter a texture to get it just right for my own uses. Being unable to download it and tweak it would make it considerably less valuable to me and I would probably not buy it. I don't mind paying top L$ for a box of textures if I know that at the end of the day they are mine. Being unable to tweak them would be like buying a tube of paint at the art store only to find that I wasn't allowed to mix it with other colors to change its hue. Not being able to sell object with the texture on it would be like not being able to sell the painting once its finished. For those of us that have the skill to tweak the textures, we also have the skill to make our own. Its a little more work, but if I couldn't have completely full perms, I'd just quit buying those textures and make my own altogether.

My advice would be to adjust your pricing and offer both options. The builder that sees the raw texture as a finished product might be interested in No Mod textures available at a reduced cost. The builder that wants to layer textures without duplicating prims will definately want your more costly full permisson textures to add stuff like text, images, etc. over them.

I think that if you are going to make textures exclusively yours, it's good to make them yourself. I.e. get a digital camera, go out and start snapping pics of different surfaces and modify them in photoshop.

I haven't bought textures in a while, heh.. not since the 1.7 update where the texture loading time hasn't been the best, especially when loading new textures I've recently uploaded. Even profile pics / My Picks pictures take forever to view.

As far as I'm concerned, as long as the texture looks good though, and can be applicable to my building needs in some way, I'd buy it.

events and photo album sites

Being able to DL the texture file means that I can use the Fabrics and other materials to create specific customizations using that texture...

I can make a wall with a particular kind of window in it by adding touches of Alpha and other textures to a stone wall texture I have DLed...

I can make a dress by being able to use a DLed fabric texture to serve as the base material, and then manipulating it to fit the template correctly so that fabric distortion doesn't happen and I can smear and goo the edges where the seams meet so that I (Or any fashion designer, for that matter) can actually USE fabric textures for making anything more sophisticated than the most primitive of clothes.

This issue (mod or no mod) would not affect the photospeccers, since the textures for that stuff comes from a different source. Pieced originals, however, are a different matter entirely. If fabrics cannot be DLed and manipulated on the templates, to be uploaded as a finished clothing item, then why sell fabrics at all?

I understand the concern as texture vendor, but if the usability of your product would be compromised, then there is no reason to have the product.

What I would recommend (If I might offer my tuppence), is to no-mod the really difficult and complex textures that were created of several layers or took a lot of work to make, or somehow have a clever process that is tricky to use or otherwise would be irreproducable and were really dicey to make... Those you don't want just going everywhere.

Scanned textures, Fabrics and other items that were not HARD to create or came from web-photos or otherwise would be easy-to-recreate-but-are-economically-viable-because-you-have-already-done-the-work-for-me-thank-you-very-much should probably be Moddable/DL-able, since making them no-mod would only:
a) Compromise their usability
and/or
b) Discourage sale since I can make it myself and have full perms when I do
c) Discourage sales to people that prefer to have a backup of the textures they have bought since SL's asset server is really really shaky right now, and they want to Offload as much of their stuff as possible to make sure that their "paid for" property is not lost.

I would be willing to accept that there are certain textures that I could not back up, as long as the price was not Exorbitant for the no-mod copy and I as long as I knew that I had the option of a backup-able version for a higher price (That COULD be exorbitant, as long as the texture was worth the cost (see essential element (b) above.)).

SO...Here's the business model:

MOST textures (Simple ones, Fabrics, Stone walls, etc...) moddable. Standard pricing. Difficult textures that need to be DLed to get full use will simply have to cost more. Market forces will determine the correct rate to charge.

Difficult or Complex textures that do not need to be DLed to get full use from them - No-Mod w/ Standard pricing.

Difficult or Complex textures that do not need to be DLed to get full use from them - Moddable w/ Higher pricing to offset the risk that someone may be stealing your hard work and reselling it without adding unique adjustments of their own....

I also suggest adding a license agreement that is posted at your store that indicates that textures sold with full perms are not to be resold without modification.

You have a good reputation, Lil.
If you found someone directly reselling your difficult textures and they refused to stop doing so after you asked them to, all you would have to do to put them out of business is PUBLICISE your findings in a very BROAD forum and show how you are the originator of the texture. Most content creators in SL have very dim views of people that steal IP and most end-consumers (many of whom share that view as well) have very little use for raw textures.

If a texture does not have full permissions a lot of scripts will have problems and will not work with the script. IE: Texture Organizers, my THiNC Book & Press, etc. The reason why its because a texture is not very useful for a script unless they could get the texture key. Without full permissions the key can't be retrieve. It's a big downfall of the scripting language but right now the reality.