Not For Resale Permission

Of course, this ultimatly comes down to what objects in SL are considered legaly, which despite grand statements by many parties on the issue, has never really been proven legally to my knowledge (IE, in a court of law)... All the "I am sure they are X", or "I *know* they are Y", don't mean jack until there is legal precident to back it up.

Are they a thing (IE, akin to a physical chair), Software (Almost assuredly some *are* software, given the scripts in them, but is the software part and parcel of the thing?), or Documents (IE, text, or a digital image)?

If you buy a chair and repaint it and sell it, your fine, legally.

If you buy Microsoft Windows, make some changes, then start selling copies of it, you most assuredly are *not* fine legally, even going beyond the fact you are selling 'pirate' copies of it.

If you buy the latest Harry Potter book, but decide it doesnt have enough sex in it, so you resell an 'updated' copy of it with more steamy sex scenes, again, you are definetly in the wrong legally (Though it is fine for you to posess this book for yourself).

It is my personal belief that SL objects fall in the latter two catagories, not the former. They have no physicality, cannot exist outside of the realm of SL. Therefor they are not "things". They are ideas given semi-tangible form, much like a book, or a computer program.

My view is ...

You can buy *a thing*, then update it, paint it, whatever, and sell it... and your fine, whatever price you charge.

What you can NOT do, or shouldn't be able to, is buy a single instance then sell it n times where n > 1. You want to buy a chair, paint it pink and sell 100 then by damn, pay me for 100. That's the difference between commerce and copyright theft.

What else you can't do, in my opinion is take a freebie, then sell it for anything more than $1. Cos sometimes you can't set it to sell for $0 and sometimes there's convenience. However, since you can fall off a telehub and land outside Mochastyle, the convenience arguement doesn't apply to freebies obtained here.

My view I guess is tempered by having to deal with people who bought my vehicles or such before I made the decision to sell them copy/no trans...

Often times they no longer worked (Previous owner had tried to alter them somehow, it broke them, so they pawned them off on someon eelse), and the customer expected me to fix someone else' screwup.

Or, like someone else had above, demand "their money back", which is quite often more than the original buyer paid for it, and I'm expected to pay that much back? As some are so quick to point out, it's illogical to demand your money back from Coke if your coke was flat when you bought it, you ask the store for your money back because they kept it on shelf too long.... But people do anyhow. And in game,this is even worse, because most of the people who *do* this are not established members of the community, but fly-by-night nearly-newbs who may or may not ever be online again, and normally selling to *other* new players, who likely dont remember who they bought it from anyhow.

*edit*

That said, however, I don't really care too much about a no-resale flag at this point. I'm happy enough with the draconian no-transfer. Its up to my customers now what they want.

I do still offer methods of obtaining no copy/trans vehicles, or directly sending a copy/no trans to someone as a gift, depending on the buyers wishes. So as far as I'm concerned, the issue is closed.

Agreed... in principle at least...
Oviously it depends what you're selling.

Perhaps we could develop a receipt system, to give with the item, no copy/no mod and with the buyer's name in it.

Then they'd need to show this to get a refund.

WHich is of course the exact opposite of why I endorse this idea -- I like derivative works.. I like this idea because things such as licensing such as GPL style licences aren't working, education isn't working.. If someone took something I was actually CHARGING for and resold it, I wouldn't care less.

However when it comes to free items and such, I do care.

1. Because I contribute to programs so people can enjoy without being ripped off -- using my contributions to rip others off is a slap in my face.. I don't enjoy that.

2. Ever had someone in IM's for an hour and a half demanding you fix something you never gave sold them - that they paid 500 bucks for, and now doesn't work because someone ELSE messed it up? It doesn't end there there though, when you give them the *free* version that does work - you are then abused for ripping them off, and they demand you refund them 500 bucks..
.. and this gets better yet - get negged when you refuse..

Just a couple of the probs out there atm. I support this idea not to get rid of garage sales, or even reselling of junk in your inv. I would like it to promote a common library of things available to all people to learn from and share...

Siggy.