Second Hand Shops?

I love yard sales and thrift shops IRL and have gone to a few Yard Sales in SL. I recently purchased a piece of furniture at a yard sale in game (after making sure the price was not higher than the original price) then went to the creator's shop and bought matching pieces.

I think I'll form a new group called 'Yard Sale Junkies' in SL. There is such a group in THERE.com and it is thriving as are yard sales.

Quite simple, a yard sale is made normally to clean out your inventory, at very low prices and most of everything is a one shot thing.
A second hand shop is a regular business purposedly made to profit over someone else's creativity, time and effort.



Exactly the reason why i resent second hand shops. If everything was a limited edition second hand shops would be a good way to have goods that are sold out still circulating.
With the infinite supply of goods we have in second life, a second hand shop is a simple way to sell EXACTLY the same goods that the creator is selling (without the disadvantages that used items have in RL), undercutting him and thus stealing his sales.

It seems that your "war" against content creators is going a little overboard, Prokofy, hitting randomly whoever provides contents and wants to protect his rights to be rewarded for it. No one here thinks he is a gift of god, this is exactly the point and the difference with real life: in second life EVERYONE can create, and EVERYONE has the right to be properly rewarded for his creations (unless he willingly gives up this right, but this is a different story). There is NO elite of merchants (i don't deny there IS an elite, but it comes from different elements), because EVERYONE can be a successful merchant, with a little of effort. It doesn't even takes starting capitals. Only effort is needed.
In conclusion: You want money? Easy, create something yourself and make a profit over what YOU create, not over what OTHERS create. There are so many fields of creativity that everyone can do something sellable unless he has serious time issues (and in that case a second hand shop would have the same time issues than creating).
Or maybe you think that content creation is a grace of god talent given by god to a few elected souls? It ALL comes from effort (sure, some talents help, but effort is more than enough). For instance before entering SL i couldn't program a Synclair spectrum to do 2+2 in basic, now give a look to my cars to see what i can script. Talent? Nah, i simply hauled ass and studied, and now i harvest the fruits of those studies. Now i wonder why someone else should harvest those fruits instead of me (and in my name, since the products he sells still bring my name and despite what someone says i WILL be held responsible for them in any case, even if sold by someone else).

Obviously value is a scarce resource. If you could create things of value yourself you wouldn't be hectoring Ingrid to bend over backwards to make her products suit *your* profit making desires. If you had the ability to create your own value you'd be profiting from it rather than trying to make money renting land which is simply monopolizing a scarce resource by inserting yourself as a middleman where you aren't needed. I work for myself, not for the collective. I create rather than skim. You can't decide wether you're a capitalist or a socialist. It's rather amusing. If you learned to do things for yourself you wouldn't feel yourself under the thumb of content creators. "Get my straglehold off your neck"?! LOL. Poor you! Your obvious resentment (and envy) is quite amusing but you'll get no pity from me Prokofy... nor any handouts. Do things for yourself or accept the terms of those who can. It's as simple as that.

Not all people have skill or intererest in being content creators. Content creator and merchant are distinct roles, which can be performd by the same person or by different people. The merchant-only role has the ability to connect content creators with sales they might not otherwise make, through their marketing efforts.

Why is it a problem for others to profit? How is this hurting the content creator? They are still making sales - these are not pirated copies. If transfer is turned on, it seems totally legitimate for people to resell. That was totally my expectation that this was the case when when I first saw the transfer option, and there have been several content creators who have indicated on this thread that they are happy to have their products resold.

I, personally, would be happy to see others being able to benefit from work I'd done, especially if I was getting some form of compensation for it (in this case, the initial purchase price).

What this boils down to, in large part (aside from a belief clash) is a question of whether objects in SL ought to be treated like RL property (where there is a total expectation of being able to resell, as you _own_ the object once you buy it), as opposed to whether they should be treated like RL intellectual property (software, music, books) where there are a tighter set of rules about what a person may do with the product. However, even RL software, music, or books, after one is through with them, may be resold on the market without any permission from publishers. As long as a person isn't making and distrubuting *copies* of the product in question, they are free to resell.

So a question is, what is the relationship between these RL market facts and the SL economic beliefs that certain people have expressed.

If people buy "transfer" items, and are suddenly told that this upsets certain merchants, this puts conscientious people in a bind. This whole topic could just be dropped, but it's an important issue that needs some attention. Perhaps more permissions options are needed on objects, that allow the equivalent of an intellectual property "license agreement" to be made between seller and buyer - so that people know what they are getting up front.

An issue that comes to mind is how this relates to the idea of "price fixing" and blocking market mechanisms after a product is sold by a manufacturerer being illegal according to antitrust laws. When an object is sold, it's sold: the law of contracts involves a transfer of ownership. Again, the strange legal status of objects in SL becomes an open question. This is something that may eventually be resolved in RL courts, and/or with detailed policies developed by LL. Are content creators just granting a temporary, non-transferrable temporary, highly limited license of use when they sell a product (as in when no-transfer is set)? Or are they selling the "rights" to an actual "instance/copy" of a product? My legal insight into these question is highly limited at this time, though I am seriously interested in studying law and possibly becoming a lawyer. (I have a few too many interests for all of them to be practical, though.) Anyway this will be an important area of law in the near future, if it isn't already.

Shiryu

Quite simple, a yard sale is made normally to clean out your inventory, at very low prices and most of everything is a one shot thing.
A second hand shop is a regular business purposedly made to profit over someone else's creativity, time and effort.
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An item sold in such a way has already been bought from you or others so I honestly don't see the problem. You've had the sale so surely it's for the purchaser to do with it whatever they wish. Your creativity, time and effort has been paid for by the original purchaser.

Alexa

PS Excellent post Alexis

Prokofy is providing a valuable service for the money he earns, or people (including me) wouldn't be paying him. He takes on the risk and responsibility of owning land and paying tier, providing a level of support for tenants that is distinct from LL's offerings, and potentially is able to use his knowledge of SL (and the land he's amassed) to help people find property that is in their price range and meets their needs. Same with others who perform or could perform this function.

If there was no tier to pay, and/or if I had tons of money, I wouldn't need those services. But as long as my money is tight, renting provides me with an opportunity to pay less than I would have to if I owned land, and without a big initial investment.

As for monopolizing scarce resources: Large land owners take on the risk of owning land, and this is a valuable and legitimate service. New land is being added all the time, so there is a the opportunity for new competitors to get in on the game and potentially offer better deals to people. This potential for competition keeps prices down and service up.

It's an issue of consent, Alexis. I'm not arguing that people shouldn't be allowed to resell what they buy. I'm all for people doing that which is why all of my clothing is set to allow transfer and resale. The problem comes in when someone makes a business out of this without the consent of the creator whose work they are reselling. The creator is the one who will get asked for customer service by the purchaser so they may potentially end up providing customer service to several people when they were only compensated with one sale. We don't have sufficient tools for tracking sales. If the item was initially purchased more tha 30 days ago the creator has no way of knowing if the person coming to them for service bought it from them directly or purchased it from someone that they've already provided customer service to. I think reselling is a great idea as long as it's just to get rid of things you no longer use. If it's more than that and a person is doing it again and again with the same products then they should get the consent of the people whose items they're regularly reselling. If a particular content creator doesn't wish to have their items resold that way then their wishes should be respected.

I am beginning to wonder if this is so hard to understand.
A Second hand reseller Z earns money on an item made by content creator X by selling it to resident Y.
In most cases (expecially if X's quality is high enough and his prices are fair enough), without Z, Y would have gone to X's shop to buy a new copy of the item.
Effect: Z earned money at the expense of X that finds himself deprieved of one sale.
Now if it happens once of course the effect is minimal, but if it becomes a regular trend (and people bgin to regularly go to second hand shops BEFORE regular creators shops hoping to get items at a bargain price) the damage becomes quite noticeable.

Chip, I absolutely am not telling Shiryu what his position should be.

I'm only telling him that, depending on what his position is, it is his responisbility to match action to intent.

For some reason he wants things both ways; he wants to be able to sell his items with transfer permissions, but then is upset if someone uses those transfer permissions to sell them on.

If it is so important to him to prevent his items from showing up in secondhand shops, he has the very obvious option of selling his items without transfer permissions. It's easy. Very very easy. Instead of using the existing permissions system to enforce his intent, he'd rather disparage people for being impolite about profiting from his work when they do what he licensed them to do.

Also, I don't assume that it's very easy to keep sales/business records. I do assert that it's possible, however, and it's a businessperson's responsibility to do so, however, to a level that equals their interest in their business. If SL is just a game to you, and you create things that get sold on, then it probably wouldn't matter much to you. If it's a business/resume builder, then you are responsible for protecting your own interests. If you find your business becoming successful and therefore more difficult to keep records for, talk to Adam Zaius or Nexus Nash about a vendor system/webshop to sell your products through. For a reasonably small commission, they will help you keep your sales records in order, and automate your vendor updates.

Shiryu doesn't sell his things only to people by hand. He doesn't pick and choose who may purchase his outfits and who may not. He sells through websites and vendors, and that suggests that he's more concerned with making sales regardless who buys it. He sells to "an undefined person" rather than an individual who approaches him and is evaluated by him for character before sale. One person buys one item. If it is transferred onward, person A loses the object and person B acquires it. Shiryu has sold one item to one person. One person still has one item. He hasn't lost any money, but if he wanted to make a full sale on each new person who purchases his item, then he can and should make his items no-transfer, which will ensure that each new customer is forced to buy from him directly.

There seem to be three distinct issues about transfer and resale:

1) Extremely casual resale or giving a way of a transferable item. I get the sense this is accepted by everyone. (Otherwise, why mark it transfer?)

2) Organized buying and reselling of items in a second-hand store for profit, but most likely for less than the original purchase price. (Presumably, there wouldn't be huge numbers of any particular type of item going through such a store.) In this case, the store provides a valuable service for the person who wants to sell, as well as people who are looking to buy: a market. (Also: not all second-hand sales are a lost sale to the content creator: some buyers can't afford or are unwilling to pay the original price.)

3) Organized, bulk purchase for systematic retail mark-up (at some amount higher than paid). Especially if this is done heavily, it brings up some of the questions of dialogue between the reseller and content creator that Chip mentioned. Yeah, better tools are needed. The question of who a buyer should go to for support is an important one: potentially this could be a new field on items (and it could also say "no support / as is". Potentially the support contact could be the reseller, in which case part of the workload of managing after-sale interaction is taken off of the content creator. This is something many content creators would want to promote. In fact, in RL, this is the norm for manufacturers, who even provide "bulk discounts" and other incentives to large resellers.

Shiryu, I'm beginning to wonder when you are going to get it, too -- maybe not believe in it, but at least get it.

When Z finds a time, place, and manner to sell your product in a way you could not, he has added value to your product, not subtracted from you. He is able to bring your good to a market, represented by Y. Price is not the only issue, it is also time, place, and manner.

He's preserved your value, and enhanced it, by making your product valued first in his re-sale, then in its purchase. If he has knocked down the price, it's because that is required for him in his own business scheme of supplying the time, place, and manner for sales. Second-hand selling is an art, as anyone who gets past the biting fees level on ebay can tell you.

Saying that it is illegal or immoral to resell, and shouldn't be allowed, and making it seem like it takes away from you as the creator, comes across the Americans in a free economy as stodgy, suspicious, oppressive, and even cruel. Who are you to tell me what to do with MY Property??? You seem to think that just because you created it, you own it forever, and can reach into my life forever to tap me on the shoulder and tell me what to do with it. You seem to believe that ownership is something that you can only own, and not transfer -- I must be forever in your thrall, beholden to you merely because you create. That's what is medieval and unfree about it. You can't. It's not yours anymore. You worked, you made something, you put a price on it, and you sold it. Now it's mine, and I'm not a serf, I don't depend on you, and I'm going to resell it because it is MINE. You are having trouble accepting the modern notion of ownership in a free economy -- zoom out from your situation, and you see you are creating a corporate-type fascistic arrangement where creators are at the top of hierarchy, dictating ownership relations for the entire world -- the feted artisans of the Prince who provides the free prims and the $500/week to your and your customers. Sorry, but we don't want to live in that unfree world forever, that's why I fight it.

You seem willing to tolerate "a little of this" very grudgingly. But that's silly. If you find that scores of people are re-selling your objects and scores are buying it at a lower price, that should give you a cue, in a free market, that you have priced too high. You're also forgetting that you could have loss-leaders (items deliberately priced low to get people in the store) and have an attractive store with many paired, etc. objects that the second-hand dealer in the yard can't duplicate. And you're also forgetting that there is a natural equilibrium that is reached here. The original second-hand resellers, as a group, can't grow infinitely. There can't be 100 people who spent $100 on your objects, then re-sell them at $75 in their yard. That's not rational, because if they shelled out $100 for your pretty object in the first place, they value it, and they will hang on to it! It is only those that either have the resources to take losses, or who just want to have a yard sale to dump excess inventory that will take their loss. You're forgetting that anyone who sells your object for less doesn't take anything away from you, they take away from themselves! How long can people keep doing THAT lol? This is the crux of our argument here. And he is willing to take a loss if he has time, place, and manner working for him, or whatever pressing need, but it's not an infinitely expandable number.

This is why in the real world, wholesalers buy in bulk, and get discounts from suppliers. They re-sell, and this is the norm. They get a deal when they buy in bulk, and the creator doesn't get all whiney and stodgy on them and make them pay MORE for the "privilege" of reselling the object, he understands that he makes more money off his work when he can sell at a discount in bulk. Unless, of course he wants to be Special Engraved Limited Edition like the Franklin Mint. Then he will not get the sales he could.

Y doesn't go to your shop to buy a copy when he sees that Z has X's copy because a) he doesn't have the time b) he doesn't want to go the distance c) it's too expensive. You have lost Z to the marketplace of valuation of your goods in this fashion, however. He associates your item with excessive cost and forgets about you. Whereas if he becomes an owner of your property, and you have a landmark and notecard in the object, more often than not he is happy to come to your shop down the line.

Really, the hue and cry creators are putting up over this issue of resale of creations is really quite troublesome. They do not want SL to be free. They want to cling to their perceived position in it and refuse to realize the world is changing and filling up with new people, people who could become your happy customers if you let them be free. It's troublesome because it means when human beings make some pioneering new cool thing like the Internet and Second Life, all that happens is they recreate the same historical stages that mankind already passed through, and travel through them even more laboriously and painfully. Yes, that's why we slavery, paganism, violence, and exploitation are fashionable lifestyles, complete with suspicious medieval craftsmen, subsidized by the Medici-type Lindens, who refuse to part with their creations except by what amounts to barter -- I sell you my product and you don't get to resell it and I buy your product and I don't get to resell it.

A free economy cannot work in this fashion, and it will die.

In SL, things cannot become "second hand" in the true sense, can they? Because they are virtual and imperishable? Not on your life. Each new patch the Lindens think up breaks at least some scripts somewhere. Each new creator who comes in and makes a better thing positioning himself in a better climate (presumably) than previous patches you had to work under is a serious competition to you, he will build a better widget and have more capacity to sell (presumably, this needs research). Fashion also plays a role. Two months ago, a comfortable Tringo seat would have been an exoticism, now it is a necessity.

Wow, I wonder if your opinions about real-world economy are similiar. Presumably you picket outside of pawn shops, art auctions and videogame stores that sell used videogames.

Also:

-Creator X sold an item with transfer permissions. They authorized ANY FUTURE OWNER to give, transfer, resell the item. That's what tranfer means. It means, "May give or sell the item"

-Person Z may very well have gone to Creator X to buy a new copy of the item, if there weren't used copies available. Guess who has control over whether their products may be sold used or not? Go ahead, try.

-If Creator X wants to sell to each person and that person alone, they have a responsibility to enforce permissions of copy, no-mod, no-transfer.

And no one forces them to buy, nor they have an absolute need to own them if they are not willing to reward the creator as much as he asks.
Why should one be able to own an item if he is not even wanting to reward its creator?



in RL resellers are needed, here they are not.
And no matter from whom people buy an item, they will ALWAYS, consciously or not, hold the creator responsible for it.



LOL yeah sure. Expecially in a world where you can teleport to a creator's shop in a second. or in wich you can own easily 20 store outlets all around the world. The ONLY way a second hand shop owner sells a product in a way i can not is by UNDERCUTTING me.
This doesn't add any value to my product, it simply makes it CHEAP and subtracts a potential sale from me.



No we (or I in this case) simply want people to RESPECT effort and creativity.
And the rivers of big words you use, trying to make content creators show like some terrible bloodthirsty dictators only show me that you are looking at things completely out of perspective.



Yeah, sure. Too bad i still sell more than decent quantities of my very first creations, after months. This sale would be for sure damaged by an extensive second hand market. And even if an item cease to work due to a patch, i will STILL be held responsible by any potential customer about his malfunctioning, whether they buy it from me or from anyone else. It's the creator tag that matters, nothing else.
You should finally get an hold on the fact that this is NOT real life.

Agreed. I don't know of anyone who has an issue with that. Everyone should be able to gift or resell transferable items they no longer use.



I'm all for this too. I think a pawn shop type of deal where people can go to get discounted second hand items would be really cool, and a big benefit to people, as long as the items being sold there are being sold for the same reasons as your first example. The foreseeable problems would be similar to those surrounding pawn shops in real life... resale of ill gotten goods such as those obtained through object dupe bugs or permissions bugs.



I could potentially be fine with this also but it would depend on the distributor... do I know and trust them? Have they asked my consent? Are they representing my products in way that I'm satisified with? Are they providing a benefit to me that compensates for taking sales away from my own stores? Are they giving me more sales for less work or creating more work for me while reducing my compensation?

Rathe Underthorn used to have a great store called EMP. It worked with the use of scripted boxes that took a percentage of each sale. Creators were able to determine their own markup to compensate for the store's cut. The only problem I had with it is that the system was buggy. I would often get IMs from people requesting to exchange an item or seeking a refund for an item that I didn't have a record of and wasn't compensated for. Had I not gotten those IMs I'd have never known that sometimes my items were being sold without me being compensated at all. It wasn't due to any deliberate actions on the part of the store. It was caused by the system due to lag most likely. I wouldn't be opposed to selling that way again in the future but I would need better accountability.

It would be nice if LL would give us the ability to easily do split sales where proceeds are divided between two people according to percentages we're able to set. It would also be nice if we had better sales tracking that went back more than 30 days and that was easily searchable. The downloadable .xl files are a great start but since they don't list the names of items sold they aren't particularly useful.

Well, only the person changes. So, you might be held responsible by the second buyer, who bought it, but then, the first one no more has the item, so you won't be bugged by him.

If I buy a few months old microwave from someone in RL and it craps, but still has the warranty, I think in RL I will get a replacement. So there's your support. The shop doesn't care who bought it, as long as you can prove that it was bought there (by anyone) and you have the warranty papers, they'll fix it.

Yes zonax, and since i will be held responsible about the good functioning and quality of my items, i require at least that people buy them from me.
It's too easy for a reseller to get the money from a sale, without having undergone the effort of creating theitem and without any kind of responsibility about it.

A real life microwave manufacturer has tools and infrastructure to track and maintain sales and warranties. In SL our tools are woefully inadequate for the task. When it comes to skins, since I provide updates and mods for the life of the product (which is infinite), I already spend 25-50% of my time providing customer service. This involves copying sales from the account history to a notecard by hand, looking up what someone bought all the way back to the first skin I sold a year and a half ago, maintaining copies of every mod I've ever done for everyone who owns one of my skins (several hundred people, any one of which may have a dozen versions of their skin), replacing skins that become defective with whatever modified version they were using, negotiating with makeup and tattoo artists to secure assets for a customer who requests them, and so on. That's just one example of one product. There are tons of products sold in SL that are also a service, and that place heavy ongoing demand for the creator's time. My point is that this isn't a black and white issue and there are plenty of legitimate reasons a creator might be opposed to having their products sold through a secondary market, a big part of which is that that they'd rather be creating than doing paperwork... especially additional paperwork that didn't come from an additional sale.

In RL I think this is what is meant by a "licensed dealer" who has contracted specifically with the manufacturer (content creator) to be able to use their logo and say that they are approved by the manufacturer.



Better tools for accounting including what you're asking for and other cases (such as for the purposes of letting investors see the status of the businesses they've invested in) are important for the further development of the SL economy. Such tools could also enable problems with permissions bugs to be better tracked. (One way to do this would be to give each instance of an item its own unique seriel number id key, such as is done with RFID tags: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFID)



The workload of doing these customer service tasks are precisely something that gives resellers a purpose, if the resellers are set up to provide support for the items. This is a major reason why retailers are so common in RL, and manufacturers tend not to sell directly to consumers. Better accouting/management tools would allow content creators to more easily outsource or subcontract the support aspect either to resellers, or some type of support organization. This is a potentiall valuable role that will most likely come to SL soon. In RL, the equivalent of content creators who sell many instances of their products tend to be found in businesses that have dedicated customer service departments or rely on resellers to provide support to end-users.



The fact that creators would often rather be creating than doing paperwork and large amounts of support is a really important point. Again, I see this as being something that gives there a specific reason for there to be other agents involved in the sales/support process than the creator, at least in cases where there is high volume. This will especially be the case as SL grows and some creators will have extremely high sales and support volumes.

I've been following this thread as both a prospective shop-owner and content creator. I'm thinking the issue of resell buyers coming back to the original creator could be addressed by the creation of no-transfer receipts that are provided buy the content creator's vendor at the point of sale? That way the original buyer has a "proof of purchase" of a sort, showing they bought it directly from the creator. A reseller would be unable to offer such a receipt because the receipt would show them as the creator, not the original creator of the object. No receipt, no return, no warrenty. Just like RL. The receipt could be just a simple notecard set to no-transfer, bearing the name of the object sold.

This way the onus is on the buyer to keep their receipts, a relatively easy task I'm thinking, not the seller to keep books of all their sales.

Also returns the value of buying direct from the creator, because the creator can then offer warranty and upgrades that the reseller can't...unless the reseller is "licensed" by the creator to provide valid receipts that the creator will honor.


Thoughts?

One solution to this would be to allow an organization/group be listed as the Creator, and for such organizations to set up customer service functions that would allow support queries to be directed to relevant people (such as actual technical support or customer service specialists). This is how RL content creators (even of software or other intellectual property) usually work. People don't call the author of a textbook if its binding is defective: they go to the store they bought it from or the publisher. In the same way, with software, if there is a bug, one doesn't typically look up the lead programmer and call them for tech support. Companies develop roles to deal with these aspects of business when their market is large enough to demand it.

SL _is_ a subset of real life. Especially the commerce aspects have a lot in common with RL commerce. Objects have value to people, they pay currency that has value to them for it, and there is a real economy and market.

chip, if your skins are no transfer, as they should be, is it possible to write a vendor script that adds buyers to a list and when you create an update you could activate another script that sends a copy of that new skin to everyone on the list. just an idea to make your book keeping much easier...

anyway, i don't think it's fair to expect anyone to sympathize about the time content creator spend doing what they do. it's the creators responsibility to figure in the cost of administration of whatever services they offer, including factoring in dealing with belligerent fool customers. if someone creates content to make money, the should develop a good model for their business.

still haven't had anyone approach me to help develop a Second Hand Junkyard. did you get scared off the idea heather?

With many types of RL products (including software), buyers are asked to "register" their purchase by submitting contact info to the manufacturer (often including a unique serial number that came with the product) in order to be able to get support and product updates. Better tools on SL are needed to automate such a process, but sellers could distribute a unique serial number in the contents, and/or in a receipt like Alexin suggested. A web-based (or maybe SL script-based) database could be used to manage all this information, distribute updates, and automate the support process.

I wasn't looking for sympathy Jauani. I'm trying to explain why with certain products part of creating a good business model might include not wanting those products sold through secondary markets. You're illustrating the problem I see with a lot of the arguments in this thread... they're based on assumptions that don't take into account anyone's unique business model or specific concerns. There's no "one size fits all" here. It's up to each creator to decide what works best for them.

All great points Alexis. I think we're currently limited by the tools at our disposal. A business that requires heavy customer service and record keeping will hit a critical mass where it starts to break down because it grows beyond its ability to maintain the level of service required. Subcontracting will become vital, but right now it's not something I'd consider lightly. We don't have enforceable contracts, and to pass off the customer service/modification portion of a business more often than not would mean having to trust them with all of the assets that make up their products. It's not cut and dried if the savings in time are worth the incurred risk. The bottom line for me is that we need better tools. Whether those tools are the product of development by other SL residents or they're in the form of better infrastructure in SL itself I don't know Another side of it is that most creators, myself included, do what they do because they enjoy creating. Becoming a corporation with subcontractors and employees to manage isn't what they're in it for. As SL grows, and in world business grows with it, we're going to start seeing a conflict between people expecting the level of service they'd get from a real world large business and creators who are just trying to make a few bucks off their hobby in their spare time. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. There's no clear cut right or wrong answer to any of this.

Yes indeed Chip. To hell with those pathetic creatures dispensing Tsunami relief -- they should be doing something worthwhile, creating little virtual outfits in Photoshop.