SL economy in trouble?!

I think most sane people will try to make as much as they can, but
let's add the REAL possibilty of someone else in-world (like Crystalshard
has done with the TV) seeing your item and wanting to do that themselves.
They put in 6 weeks of their own, but then either give an infinite number
of copies away, or sell it for half the price that you do. People who shop
around would probably choose the half-priced version of a product as long
as all (or most) things are equal... we see this in FL all the time.

Your business then drops off... perhaps WELL before you've re-couped
your US$4,500 in "time spent".. and as the way Free Market systems
work... you reduce your price to be competive (no taking twice as long
or longer to recover). This price war could keep going lower and lower
until finally $0, because ultimately there are people like Crystalshard
who might not really care about money as much as you, and since
it costs nothing to make a million copies, they do.

If Crystalshard was required to buy a gallon of liq-prim for every prim
in his TV, he might think twice about giving a million away for free,
while you would just add that in to your cost of doing business.

Im very curious why its always people who have been here for 1 month who come up with the "revolutionary" economic theories.

No your idea doesnt solve this problem.

If your idea was in place, I could buy an item from some creator and open up a factory and churn out copies just as easily as the content creator.

All id have to do is harvest prim juice or whatever.

I'm not an economist. I don't claim to be very smart in general either,
so I might be pretty far off base when I say that I think a heathy
economy is one where there is good circulation of money.

I think that if money is stagnated, or only held by a limited few,
then things become unheathly.



I think this can happen in-world as it is right now. In fact I DID recently
acquire an item I thought was cool and duplicated it (after 6 hours of work).
Now I can make infinite number of copies for free at no extra cost.

You're right.. my idea would not stop someone from taking an
item, making a replica and mass producing it. However, with the
item I made, I would not be able to give away an infinite number
of copies for free... I'd need to go harvest or buy prim juice.
This would severely limit me from flooding the market with free
items.. and cause people to have to pay for more things. To pay
for more things they would need to get a job and be a productive
member of society.. even if it's harvesting prim-juice, or they would
need to buy $L on GOM or something if they really don't want to "work"
or be creative.

What you suggest is not a bad thing. It's doen in FL right now
as well... some company creates a product... another can buy it
and make a replica.. perhaps tweaking and giving their own
value-add... and then they mass produce their own, similar items.

There's nothing wrong with that.. I'm not trying to stop that.

BUT, what WOULD be different is that each in-world company
now has continued production costs. This would help circulate
money around more... More people will need money to buy
these items in-world.. and so it's true there will be less freeloading.
These people will need to get a source of income, and then money
will change through more hands.

If I am correct, then this is good for economies, right?

Gabrielle

Socks aren't infinitely copyable. Bytes are.

my understanding of your idea was that copy permissiosn would remain intact Now and youd use prim juice to control production - thus you wouldnt be making an inferior copies.

inferior copies are a different story - since they are inferior they are less of an issue

I'm suggesting that when you buy 1 plane, you get 1 plane.
You can have a single rezzed "copy" of that plane at any given time.
If you want 2 rezzed planes, you need to buy 2 planes.
You can do anything you'd like (or accident) to your rezzed copy,
but not affect the "real" plane in your inventory....

I am allowed to make as many "links" to the single plane as many
times as I'd like in my inventory. So, if I want to put a link/entry
of it in 3 different folders, I can... but all links are pointing to the
single plane I own.

...

Since I am suggesting the "copy" permission be removed, then it
means I am not able to make a 2nd separate and detached copy
of the computer, or plane I bought... and if that item is part
of what I'm trying to sell, then I'll need to go buy another of
Cubey's planes, make my modification again, and resell that.

This opens the doors for whole new resale markets and manufacturing
markets, while keeping content designers in business.

For example... if we have a house-frame designer, home-security
system designer, interior decorator, etc... each running their
own businesses, then someone could in, find the creators they
want to work with, buy products from each of them and put them
together in a single "complete home package" for resale.

There seems to be a problem with the "modify" permission in that
if someone can modify your item, then they can use special scripts
to break it down in to it's parts and (because of the no-labor-costs)
in rezzing new prims, they can instantly have a duplicate at no charge
defeating the setting of "no copy".

But I think things SHOULD be able to be modified by the owner
either so they can lean how things are made, and make new/better
things, or so they can adjust their item to their own tastes, as we
have that ability in FL, we should have it in SL.

As one of the people who make vehicles, I would love to see a system that's both safer for the end user and flexible enough to allow transfers. However, under the current system, it's impossible to simply remove the Copy permission because rezzed items can go missing so easily. I'd estimate that at least 10% of the flights I make are cut short by a bad sim border or a hostile security script -- of course, that number is much lower in vehicle-friendly places like the vehicle park south of Oak Grove.

The point is, I have a choice between Copy/No-Transfer and No-Copy/Transfer (can't do both or people would buy 1 copy and freely distribute/sell it). To protect my customers from that 1 in 10 chance of losing their vehicle, I must sell as Copy/No-Transfer. There's really no other reasonable option.


Only if you want to control your IP until death do you part... Even in RL there are four primary IP rights: (1) copy/distribute, (2) perform publicly, (3) display, and (4) modify. We lose so much in SL because of the pig-headed contention by creators' that they must own/control derivative works. Why don't you price a creation to include derivative works on the front end? Why do you have to control distribution? Why can't after-market sales and service participate in the SL economy similar to RL? What is the ethical or moral basis for eliminating service-oriented middlemen?



Possibly. It also opens the doors for unscrupulous resellers who prey on unsuspecting newbies. I doubt we'd see much of what you describe. We'd more likely see people buying a stock of items and simply reselling them at double the price. How does that help anyone but the reseller? There's no benefit to the buyer -- they could just as easily buy from the object's creator. In fact, I suspect the buyer would be pretty angry when they find out how much extra they paid when they could have just teleported to the creator's shop, or gone to one of the web shops.



Isn't this the way the Land market works in SL presently? Why shouldn't everyone, by the same example, pay the same price for prims? What if the Land (prim) market were to set to work the same way - copy/no-transfer? We would all be cursing the Lindens! Why should we accept this argument from designers in SL?


I have sometimes allowed modification so that buyers can retexture. But recently, someone showed me how he duplicated one of my models exactly, including my textures. While it's not possible outside of hacking SL to steal the scripts inside a vehicle, it bothers me that someone can get copies of the model and have copies of my custom textures in their inventory. I put a lot of work into designing those, and now this person has full-permission versions with his name as the creator. Somehow that doen't seem fair. No-mod is one way to prevent at least the "borrowing" of textures.

One mistake I think you're making is to compare selling SL goods to selling RL goods. SL objects digital and, unlike RL objects, they can be copied infinitely. We're really creating and selling software, not objects. For that reason, we need to look at security issues from the same perspective, with this question in mind: how can we get compensated for our software 1) without allowing copies to be freely taken and distributed, and 2) without burdening the buyer with undue restrictions or risk?


There is no basis for vertical integration in SL just because the goods are digital - quite the opposite is true in fact. A stronger digital rights management (DRM) system would enable royalties, which is what I think we're really talking about. In the mean time why don't creators simply offer two prices - one for products sold "as is", and another with full mod/transfer that assume a royalty perpetuity? The royalty perpetuity is simple enough to calculate - for instance, if you assume a royalty rate of 20% on every modified good sold/transferred then it would be Retail Price (no-mod, no-trans) divided by the royalty rate, or $L retail/.20 = distribution price with a royalty perpetuity.



Our choice of permissions is simple: either no-copy/transfer or copy/no-transfer. Banning copy/no-transfer items means that the end user is saddled with a non-copyable item that's risky to own -- easy to lose. So you can see why it's not possible under the current permission system to simply remove the Copy option.

Pricing for distribution using a royalty perpetuity calculation makes removing the no-Copy selection easy and a good idea for everyone in SL!

Lets say you come to my shop, and buy one of my vehicles. Right now you pay $500. You fly it around a lot, and say a week later you get caught in a bad sim crossing and get tossed, and the vehicle goes into the bit bucket.

I'm not an economist. I don't claim to be very smart in general either,
so I might be pretty far off base when I say that I think a heathy
economy is one where there is good circulation of money.

I think that if money is stagnated, or only held by a limited few,
then things become unheathly.



I think this can happen in-world as it is right now. In fact I DID recently
acquire an item I thought was cool and duplicated it (after 6 hours of work).
Now I can make infinite number of copies for free at no extra cost.

You're right.. my idea would not stop someone from taking an
item, making a replica and mass producing it. However, with the
item I made, I would not be able to give away an infinite number
of copies for free... I'd need to go harvest or buy prim juice.
This would severely limit me from flooding the market with free
items.. and cause people to have to pay for more things. To pay
for more things they would need to get a job and be a productive
member of society.. even if it's harvesting prim-juice, or they would
need to buy $L on GOM or something if they really don't want to "work"
or be creative.

What you suggest is not a bad thing. It's doen in FL right now
as well... some company creates a product... another can buy it
and make a replica.. perhaps tweaking and giving their own
value-add... and then they mass produce their own, similar items.

There's nothing wrong with that.. I'm not trying to stop that.

BUT, what WOULD be different is that each in-world company
now has continued production costs. This would help circulate
money around more... More people will need money to buy
these items in-world.. and so it's true there will be less freeloading.
These people will need to get a source of income, and then money
will change through more hands.

If I am correct, then this is good for economies, right?

Gabrielle