Business adjustments?

This is an honest resident question, not a veiled point-making attempt or anything.

What will be done about copying, and when (if ever), is a separate topic. I'm specifically interested in how to survive in this brave new world.


So....

What should the reasonable maker of no-mod, no-copy items do? I'm thinking: I can assign multiple-buy estimates and copy-risk estimates to pricing, and just go mod/copy/no-transfer with everything?

What are others with this issue going to do? There should be some reasonable course between "closing shop" -vs- "business as usual" as both don't seem to be a very good course of action.


Bracing for noobish-modded, pimped-out leopardskin disco-Victorian antiques...

Well, this is a depressing topic but you may have a point about simply letting go of the no mod/no copy permissions, in the end. But at this point I would wait and see. I'm opening my first little store soon and I will have the benefit of a few weeks to see how this all plays out, though. And our objects will rely on scripts, although those can be replaced, I suppose but if they are willing to do that they would probably make it themselves anyway. Creators of furniture or shoes or hair and such really are in a nasty position here. Especially since this thing can rip the textures, too.

Increasing the price due to theft may not work even in the short term because it may only increase demand for the cheap rip offs.

I dunno.

*sigh*

I plan on keeping prices and permissions as-is, raising prices to compensate for the perceived risk of theft (with no solid quantification possible) would only punish the honest customer; as for the no-mod on certain items, I'm not doing that out of belief that it would be a silver bullet against content theft, but rather to discourage those technically challenged, who would manually copy by numbers. Anyway, a good builder will almost always be capable of copying by sight only - but they will never be able to steal my creativity.

So, business as usual - a bit more emphasis on advertising, sponsorships, more personal contact to the customers - become more creative with marketing (quite the challenge!) - maybe, very maybe some limited editions or other means to ensure exclusivity should the market be diluted by copies ... (which I don't expect but hey, you never know).



Nothing wrong with (fake) leopardskin!

9 out of every 10 cats say their owners prefer it!

Seriously, no-copy is a big turn off for me as I'm a huge fan of the 'make outfit' button and like to keep a copy of all clothing in one folder.

I have my favorite designers. I'm sure they know who they are since they get a message each time I buy from them, which is sometimes several outfits at a time. If they jack their prices up due to this no copy no mod thing, I won't be able to buy from them anymore.

And I won't be the only one. Jacking your prices up only encourages usage of this copybot thing. I like to pay for quality products and hard work and I recognize it when I see it. But I will noto pay for overpriced products no matter how good they are. I'll just stick with the lower quality, lower priced stuff if this occurs. Others will copy their products and offer them up for sale in their own shops. No, if I know they are reproductions, I won't buy them. I rarely go into other shops right now as it is. I'm happy with the designers I have chosen.

Bottom line is, the designers have their loyal customers which will buy only from them and not obtain these copies, no matter how good or cheap the copies are. So, we, as shoppers, should continue to support our favorite designers and continue to buy from them so that they don't see the need to raise their prices.

Creators, get with the scripters in game. Reverse engineer this copybot program. Then code your products to be able to ignore it. See if the scripters can create some sort of tag for your designs as well. With all of the things able to be done in SL, this can be done guys.

And to those that released this program, I urge you to be on the teams that design scripts and programs that disable this thing from working.

You guys panicked. Now it's time to stop panicking and do something about it. Get together and fight back! Don't shut your doors, scared of illegal competition. Get rid of the competition completely. If they were able to design this program then YOU are able to design one that combats it.

Alas, your last sentence Graciella nullifies all before it. Reading Strifes Sticky says it: anything can be reverse engineered. Anything in the way of copy protection created in-game can be undone.
This has got to come from LL.

My new business plan is pretty simple. I will no longer sell or create anything for the commercal consumer-level market. I will no longer design and sell clothes, homes, furniture, or any other consumer item that is mostly prims and textures, and that can easily be ripped off and resold to the majority of SL residents, no matter WHAT I do to set copy protections. I will not feed the content thieves, or provide them with any more of my efforts. CopyBot makes it far too easy for thieves to present my work as their own. The risk does not justify the effort.

My textures will continue to be available to other content creators, because textures have always had to be full perms, and are useless to most people if they are not content creators themselves. The market for stolen textures is small, as most content creators recognize that content thieves are a threat to them as well.

My services as a builder, scripter and content creator will only be offered to major build contracts, like whole sim builds, where the scale of the project means I can charge a reasonable fee for that one-time effort, and that I do not need to rely on future sales of a product to make back my time and monetary investment. Builds of a quarter sim or more are too big for an IP Thief to steal a significant portion of it, or to profit from the theft. In most cases, such builds inclure terraforming, parcel subdividing, and other services that they can't rip off.

If, at some time in the future, LL makes realistic tools available to protect IP rights on consumer goods, and IF they develop a track record for stringently enforcing TOS violations and IP Theft cases when thieves are caught, I may re-evaluate my plan to abandon the consumer market. But I am not holding my breath.