Why the rush to sell Lindens?

Ummm LL has never made a profit, just wanted to point out that hole in your drama, I mean theory.

Because with full-perm copies, you'll think your supporting JoeyTehCopybotUser because "he's such a great artist and makes the best stuff, even IF he's unregistered and only been here a week". Meanwhile the real artist doesn't even get the satisfaction of knowing his stuff is appreciated.

The difference is the level of accountability. In real life there's always the chance (however slim) that you'll get caught, and have to face some serious consequences. In SL, where a large percentage of users have no verifible data on record, the fear of consequence is removed.

In real life we have laws to help keep the less honest members amoung our societies honest. In SL...we do not.

Average piracy rates across the world is ~35%, ranging from 20-odd in U.S to 80-something in countries which don't focus on education and prevention of copyright infringements.

Since SL governing body has no interest nor manpower to educate and police, you can expect it naturally gravitate towards that 'less educated' end of the spectrum, especially when taking content is made as easy as right-click->save as on picture in your web browser (which hardly anyone considers copyright infringement even if often it is)

Call me a cynic, but while i do recognize the 'honesty etc' as important and valid factor, i believe at least equal part of what makes people actually pay for stuff is fear of getting caught and either getting punished or getting one's reputation soiled. Something to large degree removed in the anonymity of 'net and with strong signal from people running the "platform" that they have no interest in playing the cop.


I think there's no need to go for hyperbole here. There is natural threshold of honesty and self-interest in everyone, and it's obviously different from person to person. There is no need for "all" to be "thieving trash", one's business is still going to suffer even when 'just' _some_ people find it that the extra easiness in getting free content pushes them over that personal line between "i should pay" and into "well it's okay if i copy it for myself, it's just worthless pixels on screen i wouldn't want if i couldn't get them for free" justification.

Or to put it simpler: while you may know that you personally would pay for everything no matter how easy was it to steal, do you have enough faith in humanity to guarantee here, cross your heart, than no one ever in same circumstances would act any different..?

Well, so the artist should get known, get a reputation and a style. When one sees either a copy or the real thing, people should say "oh that's a Dana Hickman" or whoever, and already know where to go to buy it. Get a nice store somewhere in an established mall location. People will always buy Gucci ripoffs, but they generally know they're buying ripoffs when they do.

And yes, perhaps sales suffer (or perhaps not so much, if the copies are effectively advertising, this is what happens with music copying), but it doesn't make it impossible to continue to make money making content.

Copying music? Apart from the RIAA suing soccer moms, it doesn't happen. Certainly not to pirates sufficiently outside the USA.

This isn't the issue. Of course people will copy, and were doing so before copybot. The issue is if the advent of copying technology (which is inevitable) will destroy the market and make it impossible to earn money making content. I don't see that happening.

I'm not really sure about that. Education comes naturally the older someone gets (in-world age) and while it's more unlikely that you know someone in RL who directly creates and sells something, it's very unlikely that you don't know someone who does in-world.

You might be right that deep down all of us prefer to pay less or nothing at all for something (I know I'll come running if I hear someone go "I'm giving away free......." ) but that's not quite the same as being willing to drop down to stealing to do it.
Additionally there's a much greater risk being the one that actually does the stealing (perceived or real risk) than someone who (knowingly) benefits from what someone else stole. Lots of people might download an as yet unreleased DVD, but I doubt even few of those would be willing to steal the physical copy out of the factory.

Verification always creates a rather big mental barrier because once anyone knows they can be held accountable they'll be less likely to do anything "bad". By the same token, anyone who has bought any significant amount of things in-world has a lot to loose by potentially having their account closed. I couldn't even begin to place a US$ value on my inventory, even putting aside things that can't be replaced, and I can't really imagine anything in SL that would be worth potentially losing everything.

On yet another side, buying from a thief might save you a few L$, but in the long run you loose out because there's less incentive for the original designer to make anything new.

Not that no one will ever steal, but that wasn't really the point . Some are going to steal, whether it's textures, some prim copying script, exploit, copybot or whatever else. Depending on the tool the barrier might be low, or it might be high. But overall, I will guarantee that there are enough honest people around to keep anyone in business . That might include cutting off a portion of the residents who simply won't buy L$ and who would naturally have a lower threshold to do what you did first suggest, if only because they have very little to nothing to loose by doing so.
I also never argued that profit couldn't go down from potential copying, or that LL shouldn't be coming down harder on it, but I certainly don't see it as a big cloud of impending doom that's going to end SL.

I think the issue is more, how large impact the extra ability to copy is going to have on the market. It can't be entirely destroyed, that's for sure. Question is rather, how many of existing and potential creators are going to fall victims to increased easiness of copying followed by increase of copying itself. When business becomes unprofitable, it ceases to exist. And frankly, i don't see anyone from the "it was always possible to steal, deal" crowd manage to come up with viable substitute for present business model that's being seriously affected by these recent developments.

I think this is a good thing. All of the people who came to SL just to turn a buck will leave, and those who are here to build somthing meaningful will stay. Copybot only makes it slightly easier to do what anyone with building skills can already do, copy the look of an object. If it copied the scripts and contents, I might be concerned, but it doesn't. To all of those talking about leaving, buh bye!

Why would you be concerned if it could copy scripts and content? After all "anyone with scripting skills who sees a script at work can just rebuild the functionality by hand" just like with prim based creations... isn't it the same broken logic that makes it just fine to be given much easier way to clone exact prim duplicates?

As for the "all people who came to SL just to turn a buck being free to leave"... try to be less narrow minded for a second. Lot of people who currently contribute content can do it because the money they make on the side allow them to stay in SL and maintain their sim or whatever, rather than go and look for full time RL job to support themselves and their families. If you take this ability from them, they'll be forced to leave even though they didn't come to just make money here. The world is hardly as white and black as convenience and mental laziness would want to paint it.

Contract work. If someone wants something specific made, copybot is irrelevant. And until there are any hard numbers in, the jury is out on "seriously affected".

What Joannah Cramer said!

We can't all do contract work.

Hey if your fake world and your fake currency is in, your mind, in deep voo-doo and your precious fake existance is in jeapordy and you wish to bail.....well,that is youir doing.I see in these forums ppl speaking as if the "real" world is on the verge of total economic collaspe.One has to remember that even in the "real" world there are slight and even massive swings in economies...currencies being de-valued because of inflation and even hyper inflation....stock markets rising and falling...people losing billions of real dollars.....and yet here in our tiny little fake world,some people act as if they are ready to jump out of a "real" window and end their lives based upon a fake world game..
Now having said that.....these copy bots,these talentless script kiddies that have nothing else better to do then to copy an existing item....let us remember a saying from centuries and centuries ago...."let the buyer beware",for just as you can buy a real rolex watch in a fine mens jewerly store,there will always be some greasy dude down a dark foul smelling alley who will try to con you into buying a rolex as well.....
Now having said that....In the real world,there are spread across this big planet of ours people who make and sell items,things....Can there be,"is" there anyone in this whole fake world game, anyone that can clearly state that the item they made is, without a doubt, an orgional and not a copy???....can anyone state that they haven't seen and slightly altered a style or just copied it out right??...can anyone state they haven't seen and slightly altered or just copied a texture??....can anyone state beyond a shadow of a doubt that their item is so orgional that no where on the " real" planet earth does such an item or object exists??......

More on topic - I think rushing to sell off Lindens in this case is a really bad idea, and is essentially creating a real problem based upon the assumption of future damages.

It's the very definition of kneejerk, and you're taking others down with you when you do this.

Wow, that's amazing. I'm guessing your only skill is scripting because then it would be a threat, if you do have a skill.

I'm sure you realize that it takes 200 a month to just KEEP UP a sim (let's not even think about the upfront 1200+). Not including all the time invested to create, make, etc what's on the island. Whether it be a club or a beautiful place of waterfalls and fairies.

Along with this comes price hikes of 1600+ for a sim and 300 a month to keep up. That's quite a bit hit to ANYONE who runs ANYTHING in SL. Let alone the fact that someone could come in and take their content from them, regardless if it's a labor of love, lust or greed.

So basically, you are saying that people who were making even enough before just to break even, are leaving because of the money. Why should they have to pay to keep YOU entertained? Nothing is free in the RW... why are people such money mongrels in SL? I just don't get it.

What percentage of shoes, clothes, cars and every little thing out there sold every day is contract work? How many items did you personally obtain as result of specific contract work in last say, 10 years?

Right. So who wants to step up and pay L$30,000 for a designer dress, a one of a kind original, that will get copied and given away for free as soon as you wear it in public? No one? Really? I wonder why?

Clothing designers can afford to spend days or even weeks making a new dress design, and can still sell it for just L$300, about a dollar in real money, because they have at least SOME assurance that over time, they may well sell 100 copies or more of that one dress.

One-off originals don't offer that. You have to get your full payment from the single sale. This is why almost NO ONE takes commissions for one-of-a-kind work, for anything less than a major build that takes up a quarter of a sim or more.

I can not POSSIBLY hope to design a custom-built house for you, a one-of a kind original, that I can sell ONLY to you, and manage to price it at anything you would even dream of as being fair. And even if I did, how happy will you be when 3 days after you paid thousands of L$ for your custom designed house, 5 noobs with CopyBot have their own free copies of the whole house? Right next to yours. So much for your designer original.

When you start getting up to a quarter sim or larger build, the parcel owner or sim owner is investing enough money in the land or the sim that the added cost of hiring a pro to custom-design EXACTLY what they want is reasonable, even though the price is far beyond what the average consumer will pay. Compared to $1650 USD to buy a sim, a bill of $300 USD, or roughly L$90,000, is not that bad, to make your whole sim match your dreams. And a build on that scale is worthless to copy, because no one but another sim owner has enough land to rez it, and a sim owner will want his own look, not a copy of someone else's dream build. A build on that scale also includes terraforming, parcel layout and subdividing, and other things that CopyBot can't touch.

Quite honestly, building custom sims and large estates is the market I expect will continue to pay my own bills. But a noob trying to get started now won't be able to build up the necesary experience to command those kinds of prices for the quality of their work. The low end of the market will be so saturated with cheap and stolen copies that they won't stand a chance.

Yes, I will agree, no one knows, yet, how bad it will get. But with the Linden's track record of hiding their heads in the sand and looking the other way whenever there is trouble? The thieves have open season. Blue Linden repeatedly hid behind claims today that CopyBot might have some legitimate 'fair use' applications, and therefore they could not and WILL NOT cast a blanket ban on the persons who created, sell or use it. That does not bode well at all.

Our only recourse is to AR or file a DMCA after we catch someone using CopyBot to duplicate our own content. Good luck, when that is almost certainly an unverified alt, created explicitly so the thief could use CopyBot. Who do you AR, when the copy of your house says "Theifbot27 BOT" as the 'Creator's name', on what is a perfect copy of your house design?

Wake up, content creators. LL will do NOTHING to protect you until AFTER the crime is committed, and even then, you'll never know if your AR did the least bit of good. The fact that they destroy the value of your goods by flooding the market with other people's stolen goods means nothing. The fact that there is NO legitimate excuse for using a tool that makes a 100% copy of your prims and textures and wipes off your creator attribution and copy protections is irrellevant, in the eyes of LL's official spokespersons.

Welcome to Thieves World.
The criminals have won, and LL has given them the keys to the kingdom.

I appreciate you're stance, and you're right. I wanted to point out tho that there's hard edge for newly released products, and especially for people like me who are just opening up to SL. A new style from a reputable creator wont be recognized as theirs right away, and if copies hit the masses around the same time as the originals do, who's gonna know?
I can see you have a good point, but it seems to only apply to items that've been around a while and people know them... new stuff is a different story tho.

You asked for a viable substitute business model and I gave one. I wasn't claiming that everything should be contract work. You are of course correct that it can't replace the consumer market, but some people may wish to move towards more contract work and less goods production for sale in shops.

Well, so get the name out there with the cool new style, before the copiers have noticed you, and there you go. It does become more important to maintain your brand, but that is presumably important anyway.

y'all had me worried, i thought there was actually a rush to sell lindens or something
just went and checked and i can sell for the same price it's been for months. no change...at all. c'mon people

It did have a run up to about 292 per USD at one point, but seems to be settling back down

I think we could all use a lil humour, no?

lawl