Content Creator Re-sale Commission
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Wrom Morrison
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Join date: 15 Apr 2006
Posts: 462
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08-20-2006 22:33
This is a formal proposal for the introduction of a feature into each object that can be sold, that enables the rightful original creator to gain a commission from re-selling of that object.In current implementation of SL, as of August 2006, a content creator does not have much control over how a copy/transfer enabled product could be re-sold. A copy/transfer enabled product is often sold to another resident with world of mouth trust (that the resident would not compete nor under-sell the content creator). This trust has often been broken, and thus the intellectual rights of the creator violated. This proposal honors a feature that would end word-of-mouth trust and rightfully reward the content creators from resale of their intellectual property. Case StudiesCase 1: Animator A creates a special type of animation that is need by Builder B (who makes furniture), the animations are sold to Builder B with the agreement that B would not re-sell the animations or compete with A. But since this is not currently enforceable (as being a word of mouth agreement), and B seeing a profit in competing with A, decides to under-sell A. Animator A is not happy with this and leaves the game. Case 2: Builder C makes beautiful houses that she likes to give free. Her philosophy is that everything she creates should be free and everyone should be able to get it and enjoy it. In comes Entrepreneur D, who notices C making beautiful houses, that are copyable and transferable. Regardless of what philosophy was behind giving the houses free, D takes them and resells them at a very considerable profit. Newbies E who have not heard of C, mistakenly buy these houses. When E finds out that these house are free, both newbie E and builder C are not happy. E feels cheated and ripped off, C likewise feels the same, there is nothing either could do to stop D from selling these houses. ImplementationA method is to be implemented through the use of a toggle-able "Content Creator Commission" field within each object (includes scripts, animations, textures and so on), where the original creator can set a percentage based (as given in the example below) and or a Linden dollar value (not shown in example), that would send a commission to the original creator when the object is resold by another resident. Example: Example Case Studies after implementation of CCC fieldCase 1: Animator A sets a resell commission of 10% on his animations which is then sold to builder B. On each successful sale by B, A would get a 10% sales commission from B. Example: B sells a bed for $500 L, when it's sold Animator A gets a commission of $50 L. Case 2: Builder C would set a resell commission of 100% on her house. She would of course give it free or sell it for 0L. There would be no case where an Entrepreneur D could make a profit out of this, since every time he tries to re-sell the house at a different Linden value, the full commission from the re-sale would be going back to C. This benefits both the newbie E and builder C. In conclusionDue to the many instances of freebies being resold and the original creator not being honored, and due to the many instances of reseller ripping off copy/transfer items and underselling the original creator, a new re-sell method such as given above is needed. As this would honor and safeguard the intellectual property rights of the content creator. Thus, it is the humble request of this author and many other residents that this or a similar system be implemented as soon as possible. Vote for feature here : http://secondlife.com/vote/vote.php?get_id=1826
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Wrom Morrison
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Join date: 15 Apr 2006
Posts: 462
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08-21-2006 09:16
Concern 1 Following concern was aired by a resident and hope be considered if this proposal was to be implemented.
When a re-seller sells an item that has more than one object with the CCC field set, make sure the implementation notifies this clearly to the re-seller through a fool proof dialog with a break down of percentages, clearly labled and newbie proof.
Re-seller A is selling an item for 500L, the item contains one CCC enabled animation with a re-sell % of 10% and another CCC enabled texture with a 5% resell.
When the object is placed for sale, clearly label how much each individual would get with a fool proof dialog and breakdown.
Eg:
You are about to set an item for Sale for $500L. Your item contains one animation at 10% CCC, by Mr. Animations = - $50L Your item contains one texture at 5% CCC, by Ms. Texturer = -25L Your total profit from selling this item = $425L.
This also has the added benifit of not having newbies scammed by someone who might set the CCC at 100% and try to put one of their objects into something the newbie is selling.
Concern 2 A malicious re-seller may inject an item (at 100% CCC) into object that was for sale with a pre-existing animation at 10% CCC. LL implementation should be aware of this type of exploit and work for an implementation that would go around such intent.
Example workaround:
Add all CCC commissions percentages on object for sale, if total CCC % is greater than 100% then fail.
Concern 3 A builder puts a CCC enabled script in one of the doors of his houses. The scripter has set the CCC at 5%. Builder decides to sell the door seperately, either free or for a small value to go around from paying the scripter 5% CCC on the full house.
Example workaround:
Implement a base low-threshold $L CCC value for the scripter. For example the scripter might in this case put 25L as the lowest commision he can get from the sale of any product with his script. Any commisions that go below 25L based on the CCC % sale should fail.
For instance if the builder sells the door by itself for 100L. At 5% CCC, the scripter would be getting only 5L. But due to the threshold given above (at 25L), this item would fail to be set at 100L for sale. Only an item of over 500L would be sold with a base threshold set to 25L.
Concern 4 Just spoke a texture maker who suggested the implementation of a bulk toggle as well. The way this works is, if say a builder is selling a house with a texture that's CCC'ed used multiple times within the house, with the bulk setting set only one piece of this texture would be charged CCC on each sale, instead of every single instance of the use of this texture.
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Danni Dooley
Registered User
Join date: 15 Aug 2006
Posts: 6
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08-21-2006 17:15
Rather than than a commision flag what about a an undersell limiter. Meaning the creators can set a base price that a redistributor could not undercut. The item beingn sold / resold would take the highest limiter flag in the the content and match that against the sale price.
Say a builder has used an animation and several textures as well as a a couple scripts.
The animation creator has set an undersell flag of $500L. All of the other undersell limiters are less than the $500L limiter and are ignored. This means the reseller can not sell the item for less than $500L. This protects all the content creators. Even if the reseller tried to sell the items separately. If that were the case then each content creator would be protected by their on undersell limiter.
I just not do not a need to have a commision. the creators have already been paid for their work and have a agreed to allow a transfer of their work by a builder. I do feel that those creators should be allowed to protect themselves from undercutting though.
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Wrom Morrison
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Join date: 15 Apr 2006
Posts: 462
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08-21-2006 20:14
From: Danni Dooley Rather than than a commision flag what about a an undersell limiter. Meaning the creators can set a base price that a redistributor could not undercut. The item beingn sold / resold would take the highest limiter flag in the the content and match that against the sale price.
Say a builder has used an animation and several textures as well as a a couple scripts.
The animation creator has set an undersell flag of $500L. All of the other undersell limiters are less than the $500L limiter and are ignored. This means the reseller can not sell the item for less than $500L. This protects all the content creators. Even if the reseller tried to sell the items separately. If that were the case then each content creator would be protected by their on undersell limiter.
I just not do not a need to have a commision. the creators have already been paid for their work and have a agreed to allow a transfer of their work by a builder. I do feel that those creators should be allowed to protect themselves from undercutting though. Danni, Concern 3, of this feature request suggests a base selling value. It's quite possible for the working implementation to enable both the CCC based base threashold and an undersell value as you have stated simply by adjusting CCC % to 0. A clause in the working implemenation would thus read this as a sign to regard the threshold as a undersell limiter. The issue we have here is thus: Say for example an animator creates an animation that he sells to end-users for 100L (no-copy). He also makes a builder version of the same animation, this builder version has copy but is often 10 times more than the end-user version. The animator now has to place implicit trust (implicit in the fact there is no Linden lab backing on this) with the builder and assume the builder would be trust worthy enough not to undersell, not to trade to an alt and do all sorts of magic on his animation. Sadly, and more frequently lately, products thus trusted have been appearing at yard sales and other random locations and being sold at much lower value, either rebranded or otherwise. The Linden Lab policy on this has been to ask the content creator to file a DMCA take down notice. But often the average content creator in SL would not be able to do such a thing due to the many loops you have to jump just to get the take down out. Content creators like freebie makers have too come under such things, often to their horror finding products they made for free being rebranded and sold. Thus, the CCC approach as given above. This disables the need to have an implicit trust between the content creator and the re-seller. It enforces a fool-proof system by which both parties could be happy. How? Well, say for instance the case of the animator who had a builder version for 1000L. He would no longer need to sell it at this price. Rather, he could sell the builder version for the price of the end-user version 100L with a content creator commision of say 10%. Now how does this help the builder? The builder would not have to spend a lot of money on animations, he would even buy many more different types of animations. And lets say he's a furniture makers, in this case, he would just set these animations up in his furniture and sell them, and based on how well they sell, the content creator would be getting a commision. This is helpful for both the reselling newbie builder and seasoned ones. I should give a bit of history at this point. When this system was first conceived way back in March, I spent many hours debating this with a scripter who wished to use this system in her scripts. She argued for a sunset clause in the CCC. Through the use of a decaying CCC. Her idea was thus: Her scripts would follow the CCC given above, but instead have a binary decay on the CCC %, based on how many unique people it's resold to. At that time her idea sounded resonsable. Back then it was usually easy to trust people, and there was very less chaos. Fastforward to June 06 2006, we now have unlimited number of accounts. A malicious person need only create a few accounts to override her sunset clause. The word of mouth trust that used to work, now doesn't feel that great, we even see competing content creators ripping off others using alts and underselling in order to drive them out of the market. It's become a very dirty market. Last week I was approached by the same scripter. Her customers needed builder versions of her units, but she was hesistant to give them copy/transfer. She was curious as to where this idea had gone. I asked her about the sunset cause and she was not very happy with that. Her thoughts run along my initial plan, ie, the one given above. What I wanted to do was kill two birds with one stone, and at the same time come up with a system that would be easy to build. As you understand this is a feature, an addition to SL, there would be no negating of existing features, the CCC field by itself is described to be a toggleable feature. It has to be turned on by purpose by a content creator with the agreement of a re-seller. The other bird that this kills is that of those people who take freebies, price them and sell them at amazingly ridiculous prices, many newbies fall to these to those people and many people get hurt in the end. Both the content creator who made these items free and the newbies. If you looked at the forum there are tons of threads on this alone. The idea here was to make a simple, do-able feature that would make both the content creator and re-seller happy.
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Content creators, please check this feature proposal. The aim of this proposal is to end re-sale rip-offs. (Also benefits freebie makers). 
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Argent Stonecutter
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Join date: 20 Sep 2005
Posts: 20,263
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I've suggested something similar...
08-22-2006 07:33
My own idea was much simpler... you'd be able, as creator, to set an object's "royalty price". When the object was sold or transferred by anyone but you (so you could still give it away free) it would have to sell for a certain minimum price, and THAT money would go to the creator... not the owner. If an object contained multiple royalty-priced elements, each would be separately applied and the money sent to the appropriate creator. PS: I wonder what happened to the "wrappers" concept, which would work well with this... you could put the commission on the object, but wrap it in a wrapper that was "no copy, transfer" with no charge, so someone could still give something like this as a gift, and the recipient could "break the wrapper" and make it "copy/trans/royalty". /20/fd/25069/1.htmlWhich seems to have fallen off the table. (I independently came up with wrappers... even gave them the same name... so I'd really like to see them actually implemented) /13/45/74418/1.html#post777604
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Clubside Granville
Registered Bonehead
Join date: 13 Apr 2006
Posts: 478
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08-22-2006 18:33
There is a lot of solid information and ideas here Wrom and everyone else, well beyond my interests as a developer. There's a layer of complexity here that I certainly wouldn't discourage if people wanted it, but my ideas related to permissions I believe to be both easier to implement and more analogous to real-world software arrangements.
When I buy texture collections in the real world, I buy royalty free collections that I can use as often as I like, I just can't resell the texture itself. Pricing for this type of use in reselling and additional permissions would be both easier to implement programatically and easier to understand for the end-user (builder). Since textures and animations cannot be actively "grabbed" in-world from objects that contain them, I would hope most providers of these building materials would be more interested in simply protecting their rights from direct re-sale. What is being discussed here is licensed building which is less likely to be adopted in the world of Second Life. If you've ever browsed non-royalty-free images you're sure to have seen much higher prices, often because their ultimate use is in print, and the need for higher resolutions and exclusivity play a role. What I hope to see is a robust permissions system and cascading rights derived from these settings to ensure how IP rights are protected. Developing a licensed building/profit sharing system obviously has its proponents, but I would hope a system such as that would be built upon a stronger basic permissions foundation.
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Danni Dooley
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Join date: 15 Aug 2006
Posts: 6
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08-22-2006 20:20
Worm, Ok good stuff and I understand a bit better after reading follow up  hehe Forgive my newbiness  I am just starting to look at building for myself but I browse the forums alot to get a feel of what is goign on and problems that will be faced as a creator. I may be blonde but ... heh nevermind  Seriously though your follwo up was great and i woudl vote for something like that.
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Zen Zeddmore
3dprinter Enthusiast
Join date: 31 Jul 2006
Posts: 604
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My thoughts on CCC
08-31-2006 06:19
As a content creator wannabe, perrussing the prospects of renumeration for CC, most CCers would look upon the current situation in SL with disdain! The effect the enactment of this propsal would have apon most of SL behavior, would be enormous. Just for starters, take the common situation where B buys X(nc,nm) from A ; C observes B(not nessesarily present) using X. The CCC proposal radicaly alters the customary failure, ie. How do I reach A to get a copy of X for myself? (I know, "X's profile of Creator=> I.M. A for sales inquiry) herky jerky slow and clutzy (especially if A has permanently left SL)! Except for instances of someone wanting to assure an objects' uniqueness or rarity, CCC says "Everything is for sale ALL the Time!" The random object or article you happen apon anywhere under any circumstances, is for sale right then and there. This is such a different paradigm for SOP, that carefull concideration is exquisitly in order. First, I see no call for people to "re-sell" other people's things. Period! There's no "Value added, shipping, or anything done by an Owner that merits any renumeration. Am I missing something? As for the mechanics of distribution to multiple creators of an object, I initially thought "... equall shares of the selling price". Unless you restrict it to split evenly to UNIQUE creators, this is all too easily hacked by inserting thousands of textures @ visiblity=0 (creators A,B,C get 3/1000 of the selling price, Boo). In addition, the share of any creator who has left SL could either be split between the remaining creators, or alternatly donated to newbie firstcash, or something else entirely. Does this make sense at all? I'm fairly new to SL and I'd rather not come across as a raving rant, but i'm not bashfull to admit I'm extreemly enthusiastic about the future of SL as an experiment(which it is) and as a sortof first instance of what will be the mainstay in people's lives. LL&P \\// ps I gave ten votes to the proposal.
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Argent Stonecutter
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Join date: 20 Sep 2005
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08-31-2006 07:36
From: Zen Zeddmore First, I see no call for people to "re-sell" other people's things. Period! There's no "Value added, shipping, or anything done by an Owner that merits any renumeration. Am I missing something? Marketing has value. I would happily sell my products with a "royalty price" so my customers could act as salespeople. This works best with a fixed price, so that I could set my "resale royalty" on a L$150 hologram generator to L$100 and the salesman would sell it for whatever he wanted over that.
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Ordinal Malaprop
really very ordinary
Join date: 9 Sep 2005
Posts: 4,607
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08-31-2006 08:29
I'd be interested to hear how this would be expected to work with vendors, which are always the problem with this sort of thing. I can think of ways to enforce a flat minimum resale fee (have llGiveInventory return a transaction key, which needs to be validated by a payment of the correct amount to the original creator before the object is transferred) but not a % fee since there is no way to tell what the item has cost.
Actually this is always the case, even avatars can say "okay give me L$500 and I will sell you this for L$1".
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Argent Stonecutter
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08-31-2006 15:22
I was thinking of something even simpler than a transaction token when I originally suggested a fixed L$ royalty on the object rather than a percent-of-sale, and indeed vendors were one of the reasons for that. If the royalty is a fixed amount, then you can treat transfer as a sale for L$0 for the purpose of this problem, so of course it would fail. The object would have to actually be sold... or be something that the owner didn't have copy permission on: giving away a "no copy" object doesn't involve creating a new copy, so no royalty would be paid. For vendors, I suppose, a new "llGiveInventoryAndPayRoyalty()" call would be needed. It would require PERMISSION_DEBIT and would debit the seller the royalty on all the copies in the item being transferred. For people just giving the object to someone, you'd get a dialog letting them know a L$whatever royalty was required to create the copy, and asking if you wanted to pay it or cancel the transfer. The ideal solution would probably involve something like this: [x] This object may be transferred for a payment of [xxx] L$, or sold for an [xxx] % royalty, whichever is greater.
This option would be greyed out unless the object was "No Transfer".
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Zen Zeddmore
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Join date: 31 Jul 2006
Posts: 604
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09-03-2006 01:01
I'm fairly certain what I'm proposing can be implimented as a self modifying script in objects that are (copy no modify no resell) i'm no sure about the 'no transfer' bit though. It would go something like this: owner make a copy placed wherever, person sees the object takes copy. Apon inventory in new owner get debit permission from new owner, failing that delete the object from the inventory and trash, otherwise, debit listed price, distribute L$ to listed creators, (does creator exist? I haven't noticed a function call for that yet but then I wasn't specificly looking for it) Post distribution: write who it's new owner is ( so when someone new takes a copy it can see that it's been placed in the inventory of the new new owner. I think all these things can be done, and I'll certainly do the leg work to find out, and keep y'all posted.
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Argent Stonecutter
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Join date: 20 Sep 2005
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09-03-2006 05:02
From: Zen Zeddmore I'm fairly certain what I'm proposing can be implimented as a self modifying script in objects that are (copy no modify no resell) i'm no sure about the 'no transfer' bit though. Can't run scripts in inventory, can't run scripts on no-script land, can't delete item from inventory. And if you could do these things I don't think I'd be buying any scripted objects any more. 
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Zen Zeddmore
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Join date: 31 Jul 2006
Posts: 604
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09-03-2006 19:56
A.S. You raise some salient points. Even as I was writing the above I was thinking" If these things are possible then LSL is too powerfull and insecure. It did motive me to take a very close look at LSL with an eye toward possible malfeasence.
Allow me to detail some reasons I have such enthusiasm for this proposal... Contrary to ones who'd call SL 'a failed experiment', I feel strongly that a greater number of SL'ers would gravitate toward CC in all its forms (Object,Texture,Script) if CC renumeration was elevated above content sales as a priority. I came to SL initially via a query about rapid prototyping, 3dprinters,etc. So i see in SL a plausable venue for CCers to..
1.) Actualize their SL creations in RL (with limitations,of course). 2.) Distribute their designs globally. 3.) Optionally Profit from their work.
As regarding SL permissions and practices, CC renumeration garrentees would electrify some latent talent lurking behind sufficeint motivation. That's my two cents for what it's worth.
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Joshua Nightshade
Registered dragon
Join date: 12 Oct 2004
Posts: 1,337
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09-04-2006 16:03
From: Clubside Granville There is a lot of solid information and ideas here Wrom and everyone else, well beyond my interests as a developer. There's a layer of complexity here that I certainly wouldn't discourage if people wanted it, but my ideas related to permissions I believe to be both easier to implement and more analogous to real-world software arrangements.
When I buy texture collections in the real world, I buy royalty free collections that I can use as often as I like, I just can't resell the texture itself. Pricing for this type of use in reselling and additional permissions would be both easier to implement programatically and easier to understand for the end-user (builder). Since textures and animations cannot be actively "grabbed" in-world from objects that contain them, I would hope most providers of these building materials would be more interested in simply protecting their rights from direct re-sale. What is being discussed here is licensed building which is less likely to be adopted in the world of Second Life. If you've ever browsed non-royalty-free images you're sure to have seen much higher prices, often because their ultimate use is in print, and the need for higher resolutions and exclusivity play a role. What I hope to see is a robust permissions system and cascading rights derived from these settings to ensure how IP rights are protected. Developing a licensed building/profit sharing system obviously has its proponents, but I would hope a system such as that would be built upon a stronger basic permissions foundation. I fully agree. The concept of licensing would drive prices up tremendously and I don't think one person who makes one texture should be set for the life of that objects' sale unless they work that out with the person selling the objects directly. Plus it's way too complicated. It's an awesome idea though, but I think energy would be better spent ensuring when an object is NO COPY/NO MODIFY/NO TRANSFER it stays that way.
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Draco18s Majestic
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Join date: 19 Sep 2005
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09-04-2006 17:56
From: Joshua Nightshade It's an awesome idea though, but I think energy would be better spent ensuring when an object is NO COPY/NO MODIFY/NO TRANSFER it stays that way. You can't have no copy and no transfer at the same time. There was a bug that created no-perm objects though, but it's been fixed.
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Zen Zeddmore
3dprinter Enthusiast
Join date: 31 Jul 2006
Posts: 604
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09-08-2006 00:29
I've been reading that peoples' stuff will occasionally disappear from in world with no other possible reason than that an SL upgrade lost it! ...yet another reason for one to retain a copy in inventory(for recreation of the item).
How about this possibility?
You take a copy of an item you want. It's in your inventory. The objects properties (in your inventory) state the original creator, and the previous owner. The first time you rez the object, it compares the owners name to your name. If the names do not match, initiate pay for object proceedures. Depending on whether you pay or not, the object either writes you in as the new owner (so no future rezzings of a copy of this modified object will initiate 're-payment') or if not ( i don't know, can on abject de-rez itself?)
Just trying to see if we can do this without having to rely on the Lindens to do it for us.
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Argent Stonecutter
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09-08-2006 05:08
From: Draco18s Majestic You can't have no copy and no transfer at the same time. There was a bug that created no-perm objects though, but it's been fixed. Put a no-transfer script in the inventory of a no-copy no-mod object and you've got a no-perms object... You can't even pull the script out any more. It *shouts* about how you're molesting it!
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Draco18s Majestic
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09-08-2006 21:53
Didn't think about that one.
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Argent Stonecutter
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09-09-2006 10:10
I'm thinking that if you create an object with "next owner" permissions such that it can't be either copied or transferred, you shouldn't be able to transfer it until that's fixed.
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