Disallow resale at increased price

The first week I was in-world I paid something like L$100 for the couch and bed that are in new user inventory. I thought I was getting a deal, but really, I was just getting scammed. Earlier this year, someone new tried to sell me a vehicle - Motorcycle 3 - which is freely available. Isn't that something? There is also talk elsewhere of people who want to serve as "distributors" - basically buying objects in bulk and then reselling them for profit without the original creator knowing about it. So, I propose a solution which should be equitable to both original creators and "distributors."

Let us have a checkbox down by where you set the price so that we can decide whether an object can be resold at a higher price than it was bought for. That way, you drastically cut down on resellers scamming newbies and others on objects that they can get for less, or for FREE. If someone would like to run a distribution channel, they can either resell other objects without this flag set, or get in touch with the original creator. In this way, original creator's rights are preserved (including the right to use distributors if they choose - i.e. the proposed checkbox is left unchecked), end users can make back every cent they paid when they're done with an object, and consumers are not beguiled into paying too much for something that may even be available for free, or may be out-of-date.

You'd have to either sell your stuff no-modify, or go through and set the price and the disallow resale at increased price flag on every primitive. That way, no one could use relinking to defeat the protection.

The only problem I see with this (above the objections of grafters and scalpers) is that the seller could demand payment from the buyer in any amount and then transfer the item directly. However - and I can vouch for this from personal experience - direct personal selling is much more difficult and time-consuming than having an object up for sale that anyone can get 24x7 without human intervention.

Whine, whine, whine. You know that super-duper 15-dollar coffee you just drank? What if I told you it actually cost a few cents to make?
Most of the modern world's economy is all about reselling things at a higher price. Why should things be perfectly normal IRL and especially sinful in SL?
If you disallow resale, I can still build an exact replica of whatever you have made, and sell it.
Thing is, if I'm selling at a higher price, then people are most likely to buy the original. I think you should be more concerned about people selling your things at a LOWER price

Nothing you have said challenges what I've said regarding people gouging others - reselling Motorcycle 3, which is free, for example. That alone should be enough reason to implement this.

Regarding resale of objects that are not free, it ultimately hurts the end user. They can get the same thing from the original creator for almost zero additional effort, and for less money.

If you want to be a distributor for my stuff, you can either do it at zero profit, or you can ask my permission. If neither of these is acceptable, you can take your business elsewhere, or hire someone like Eggy Lippmann who apparently has a fetish for predatory market practises to build a replica and hand it out for free.

Ultimately, a creator has the option to backdoor their objects, as Tcoz has done. This is a much messier alternative than simply allowing us to cap the resale at the original price (which may be zero.) It allows the creator to choose whether or not to allow resale at increased price, so if a creator WANTS to allow distributors to charge increased prices they can. If the creator DOESN'T want to do this, it lets them rest easy, knowing that A) people aren't getting gouged for your stuff and B) what you give away freely does not make profit for an A-hole.

Regarding your last sentence, if you think you can make a better Slipstream from scratch, and you want to sell it for half what I charge, go ahead.

Because in SL, you dont pay for gas to power the tractor that harvests the beans, the wages of the people that drive the tractor, the gas to fly the beans to this country, the wages of the pilots, the gas to drive the beans to the factory that grinds them up, the wages of those drivers, the power to run the factory, the wages of the factory workers, the shipping from the factory to the coffee house, the wages of the truckdrivers doing that shipping, the rent on the coffee house, the wages of the college student selling the coffee to you, and a bajillion other expenses to factor in.

And you can't just fly down to columbia very easy and pick the beans yourself.

Both of which are a marked difference from how things work in SL.






Fine. Then you have at least done some actuall work, and the worst you can be accused of is being a rip-off artist.

And if you duplicate all my features, more power to you.

Of course, why not just make your own thing and sell it, if your going to go to all that work?



Problem is, as Huns hinted at, the people who most often do this are newbies who just dont know there is a cheaper alternative.



Wouldn't bother me much, other than that people are still buying my stuff with no warentee.

I dont have a fetish for anything, and in fact I've never sold a single item in this game IIRC. I'm against the excesses of capitalism myself, but if you want to fight capitalism SL is entirely the wrong place to do it and whining on the forums achieves nothing.
SL is a virtual world built by and for real people. People that are used to living in a capitalist system. Why impose them unrealistic restrictions? It's bad enough that in most of the world we can't say "shit" and "fuck" or take our clothes off for christ's sake, while in the real world, no matter where you live, you're free to go around your house perfectly naked and watch TV shows where every 5 minutes someone one says "shit" or "fuck".
Bottomline is, if you think "gouging" is fraud, then you need to go shopping more often, and see how furniture stores are selling bits of particle board and plastic for thousands of dollars.
As for the coffee example, the "few cents" number was indeed accounting for all those factors.

We are not fighting the excesses of capitalism. We are fighting against predatory business practices.

Also there is another issue regarding channel sales. If you come to me and you say, "I'd like to buy 10 of your L$500 objects," I may cut you a deal and sell them to you for L$400 apiece. Then you can sell them for L$450, which is less than I sell them for, and still clear L$50 on each sale. Or you can sell them for L$500, or even L$600 - it's all good, you have my explicit permission to do so, a courtesy in return for doing so much business - so the objects would not have the resale price limit flag set. I have forfeited L$100 on each object - trading short-term gains for long-term gains, perhaps to be able to participate in an auction the next day or something.

This is the way this usually works IRL. In the car modification scene, it is common for manufacturers to sell items from website storefronts at a high price. Shop around and you can buy it for less from a shop that just does distribution. It's also common for people on automotive forums to get together and set up group buys, in which 10 or 20 or more people agree to buy a certain part from a manufacturer all at the same time. I recently scored a set of underdrive pullies for US$230 that the manufacturer sells directly for close to US$400, all because of a group buy.

THAT'S value.

THAT is what happens when manufacturers and resellers work together. You get an alignment of interests resulting in a business transaction which is equitable to all parties, rather than benifiting only the middleman in an environment which is somewhat adversarial to the creator and omissive to the buyer.

And again, Eggy, you are equating sales in RL to sales in SL. It is not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination. I don't even begin to see how you can even say it is, other than the fact you like to disagree with everything

I endorse this product and/or feature. In fact, I would venture that there should additionally be a 'transfer for free only' option too.

In fact, I would venture that objects should have a ban list like land. I know a few people I wouldn't WANT to own my products.

Why I use a vending script, Kris. I can lock someone out from buying something.

I've never done so, but in theory, the option is there.

"Hey, if you give me L$500 I'll give you this cool motorcycle."

You can't circumvent that.

I'm really sorry if someone has said this already, I'm tired, I didn't sleep much.

Eh.. what if I, as the object creator and originator, make a comission above my original object price on resale of that object? If I charge you 500, and you charge 600 at resale, I get 50 back as my object origination fee, and you get 50 as your reseller fee. I mean, seriously, making objects ain't free. It takes my time, which is worth RL money, folks.

I think the only difference here is that, in the real world, people are brought up to know enough to not be taken in. They know what the price of something is supposed to be.

Now they enter SL, and are faced with a completely different currency and have no clue what something's worth. If I took a trip out to Portugal to visit Eggy, I could be easily taken in by someone trying to sell me something for local currency at a much higher price than it's worth. Only my knowledge of the current exchange rate and an innate need to "shop around" would protect me. Since I have to convert my dollars to escudo, I'll know what something's relative worth is.

In SL, players enter the game with know knowledge of what the exchange rate is. It's much easier to con them.

But on the other hand, new players don't start out with much, so there's not much to lose. They also KNOW they don't have much and aren't likely to spend it all until they know how to get more. If they are careless with money normally, or don't care since this is just "play money" then there's no way TO protect them.

Also, there is already a technical way to prevent the resale of your items for more than they are worth. OR less. Copy-OK/NO-Transfer.

I know... Half the people (who care) don't like Copy-OK/NO-Transfer, and half don't like NO-Copy/Transfer-OK. But if YOU, the seller, don't want people to be scammed with YOUR objects, you have a way to prevent it.

All this scamming is small potatoes anyway. If they have to buy an item from you each time they sell one to someone else, you are going to see all their purchases in your records and know something is up. Such scammers will sell anything and everything. With an added feature, all the pre-existing things in the game will be unprotected and therefore easy pickings for a scam artist. It's GONNA happen, no matter what.

So I can see both sides of the argument, but I think I gotta side on the "some people will get scammed no matter what" side and vote to not complicate an already confusing permissions system with more limitations and conditions. (Sorry, huns.)

*reads further postings since starting this reply*

Oh, and "transfer for free" is a dead horse already. There's nothing to stop the secondary exchange of cash for an item. It's a feature that would be trivial to circumvent.

No, but if I found out, I'd give 'em the frowning of a lifetime!

Caveat Emptor!

Buyer Beware!

There's an ass for every seat! (as we used to say in the car business)

Last time I looked out my window I lived in the USA and it's all about free enterprise and buying things for one price and reselling it for a higher price, that's what makes our world go around.

I've never resold anything I bought or got free, but I don't think it should be disallowed, as long as the creator allowed it to be resold.

This reminds me of the argument artists have been making for years about the practice of their work being sold years later for huge markups and then they want a piece of that profit. If you don't like that practice then don't put your work into the marketplace.

ps. I see stained glass windows that I sell new for $25. being resold used for $100. (by one of the wealthier individuals in SL) and that doesn't bother me one bit, I think it's funny.

You people are forgetting something very simple. If you BUY something then it is YOURS. You have the right to sell it, burn it, wipe your ass with it, and do whatever you want with it as long as you dont break the law.
Commerce works on a "buyer beware" basis. The burden of shopping around for the best price lies entirely on the consumer.
If you are "fooled" into paying $500 for something that is already in your inventory, then I'm sorry but you are a fool.
This world, in case you haven't noticed, works on the assumption that 90% of people are gullible idiots. You need only turn on your TV to watch slim, sexy babes touting the benefits of ABMASTER 9000[tm] and Aloe Vera flavored yoghurt with vitamin E and essential minerals, now with 50% less fat.
Guess what. It's all a lie. The very foundations of our society are lies, hypocrisy and deceit.
SL is no different. People have, from the dawn of time, sought plots of land close to welcome areas and classrooms because their best clients are clueless, easily exploitable noobs.
Should we worry about "protecting" them? God, no! I've had enough with people who want to be protected by a nanny-state who does everything, including thinking, for you.
Besides, most of those noobs will never "get" what SL is about and will probably never even register an account.
Bottomline is, if you want to exercise control over something, dont sell it. When you sell something you explicitly release control to the new owner. Deal with it.

Of course not, Kris.
In SL, you dont pay for any raw materials or maintenance. You make something once, and you can spend the rest of your life selling it at no added cost.
Plus, you dont really need to do anything in-game to make money, and you dont even need money in the first place.

I don't agree with Eggy, but I don't agree that we should prevent sale of objects at higher prices.

Instead, we should seperate the transfer and sale permissions.

You could, but it wouldn't make a lick of difference.

"Pay me $500 and I'll hand you this Transfer-OK/NO-Resale Motorcycle..." Or, if you want to go automated, someone could stick it in a vending machine.

As I said before in this thread, there's no sure-fire way to prevent the resale of purchased objects at higher than retail prices. None. All we can ask Linden Lab to do is muddle the whole thing up with additional rules, permissions, and restrictions... that won't, in the end, work.

And I'd hate to see that happen.

Remember, to sell a no-copy object for more than it's worth to a newbie, I first have to buy it from someone else. The first person in that chain will always be the creator. No matter what, they get what they asked for the item. If other people make some graft over the movement of that object from person to person, so be it.

Copy-OK/Transfer-OK items are a whole 'nother story, and someone making and selling those has no right to complain when someone starts selling copies.

(Well, you DO have a right to complain since you legally own copyright to the item if you created it, but it's still a silly thing to do.)

If you want to be non-invasive and help teach newbies a lesson, add a script to your object that detects when it changes owners and IMs the new owner telling them it's original purchase price, where it can get bought at that price, and ask them to report anyone that sold it for more than its worth. Then at least they KNOW they were taken, and will be more careful in the future.

(If someone wants it, I'll post such a script to the forums.)

[/B]

great idea! Please do post this to the script library. That'd be awesome. I don't know who owns the Good Neighbor package, but that's a good candidate for addition. Or maybe we need a "Good Karma" package that we can all pass around.

to make everything 'fair', why doesn't SL:

* Make a mandatory mentor for every newbie that joins SL
* This mentor will show the newbie the 'ropes' -
* what to buy & not to buy
* show them 'approved' purchases only - no detachable penises, no gaudy hats, no silly wings (who really needs them), nothing above $500L to purchase, free or cheap items because they are special 'newbies"
* teach them that nothing really belongs to them once they buy it because the creator has all sorts of rights that continue on and on after they sell an item and never to mess with them, oh those gods of creation.
* what to build & not to build
* a full set of community guidelines on what is an unappropriate build
* examples of unapproved builds like rotating signs, bright colors, non traditional buildings, things that defy real physics, colors not found in nature, basically anything that doesn't look like a house from RL.
* Teach them how to whine about everything being unfair to newbies and SL residents in general
* Upon completion the newbie will know what's good and what's bad in SL based on the community standards of that week, I mean day, oops, hour.....




** yes, this is all sarcasm

Damn, I hadn't considered the vendor hole. That could actually be fixed by preventing people from putting no-transfer stuff into an object's inventory. You already get blocked from putting no-transfer items in notecards, even if they're yours. (I think it shouldn't stop you if you created the thing and have rights to everything in it.) I could tolerate the IM-on-transfer idea I suppose.

And I would like to see either the option to set no copy/no transfer at the same time, or a flag to disallow sales at increased prices, in order to prevent people from leaving an item somewhere and waiting for a hapless n00b to come along and buy it at their leisure. The second option is more appealing to me since you can unload something transferrable when you get sick of it.

Yes, the "I'll give you this r33t motorcycle for L$300" problem will still exist, but like I said, personal selling has terrible yeilds compared to vendors and floor models, and if it IMs them when they rez it, the scam artist is going to get bitten.

'Course, if we don't get more control, we can resort to backdoors and license servers. Do you guys really want to force us into that? I mean, if you want, I can put together a paper on the architecture of such a system. Those of us who feel strongly about this ARE going to get satisfaction one way or the other. Ultimately I think it's better if we work together rather than doing all this Cloak and Dagger stuff.

I have a better idea. How about you people start playing SL for fun instead of profit?
If you want Linden bucks,then I'm sure you could get a lot more by applying your time to something productive IRL, then converting the resulting money into L$.
Even a McDonalds job pays better than what you can make in SL for crying out loud.

I have a better idea. How about you stop telling people how to 'play' their second lives?

This feature is not going to change your life one little bit, Eggy. You will never have to use it since you have never sold an item in world. But please, give the people who want it a break. What the hell does it matter to you if we have one more checkbox in perms?

I like you, Eggy, but man you piss me off with nearly every post these days.

I'll go one step further.

I like you, forums.secondlife.com, but man you piss me off with nearly every post these days.

More or less with Kris said, but with one additonal thing.

I don't sell my stuff to get rich. I actually don't charge as much as several people have said I 'should'. I don't undercut other vendors, but I don't charge the maximum the market will tollerate, either. I don't sell my money on GOM, either. This isn't an issue of "How much money could I make?", because, honestly, if it was all about money, I wouldn't give a damn if someone resold my stuff, because, as they have pointed out, thats still money in my pocket.

Me, Huns, and Cubey have all pointed out the problems in reselling vehicals. The people who want to be able to do it don't care, nor will they respond to our points other than with long winded arguements that basicly boil down to "I'm not hurting you any", which isn't even true, because they *do* cause a lot of hassle for us (Out of date versions floating around, no record of the sale to confirm updates/replacements, tech support for broken vehicals that have possibly been tampered with, potential bad reputation if *our* vehicals dont work after someone *else* has sold them (and possibly tampered with, or didn't include the readme, or something)).

The ethical issues of the problem have also been pointed out (That you are basicly taking advantage of the customers ignorance that the object can be bought cheaper, sometimes MUCH cheaper, sometimes even gotten for free, elsewhere). Again, dismissed with a long winded arguement about "giving the customer choice", which is again not true, because these resellers don't tell people that a 10-second teleport-and-fly will get them the item, supported, and the latest version, cheaper. That's not choice.

So blah. Until something is done, we will continue to take what steps we feel we have to.

I won't be buying anything in SL from Anyone who puts spyware in their merchandise.

If you don't want someone reselling it, set it so that it can't be resold.