Permissions explained

Take a look in the archives of the Texture Tips forum. This topic comes up often there. Basically, the answer is that you can't do much to make your textures useful to the next person AND keep them from being copied, modified, and transferred. If a builder uses a texture that wasn't offered with full permissions, that puts restrictions on the level of permissions the builder can attach to his/her own work. A lot of people won't buy a texture unless it comes with full permissions, therefore. It's frustrating, because that means here's really no good way to protect your textures from being used unscrupulously. Personally, I avoid the whole mess by making most of my own textures and not worrying about what happens to them after I use them in a build or an article of clothing. .... but I'm not in the business of creating textures for sale, either.

I'm having issues with unchecking Resell/Give away.. If I have Copy checked, I can uncheck Resell/Give away, but once I uncheck Copy it rechecks and Greys out Resell/Give away..

How do I know what they're getting? How do I know if they get a Transferrable, that isn't also Copy? And how do I take Transferrable away on a No-Copy object? I made the pose, but can't seem to control the permissions.. lol.

Been like this for days, and decided to ask.. Happens on all my items.

The base permission on any item will always be either copy or transfer, you can't have a NC/NT base permission.

If you uncheck copy the next owner permission will be transfer, if you uncheck transfer the next owner permission will be copy.

I have some items that have no permissions though..

Hmm.. Funky. Maybe it's due to something else in them, then.

Thank you! =)

That's effective (or folded if you want to use the proper term) permissions which only comes into play with prims which have inventory where the permissions differ from the prim's base permission.

If you put a C/NT animation into a NC/T prim then you get something that will behave as NC/NT but all the base permissions on everything are still either copy or transfer. You can copy out the animation to inventory and leave it inside the prim and reuse it (it's still no transfer, but it is copy in this example) or you can take it out of the prim altogether and turn the prim back into NC/T, etc.

Oh wow.. Gonna take me a bit there to sort that one out in my brain, lol. Think I pretty much get what you're saying though.

The best way is still to just go ahead and try it .

Create some linksets, drop things inside and set different permissions, stop to think about what you think the endresult will be and then drop it on an alt to see if you it right.

By far the most important thing - when it comes to permissions - is to only ever change permissions on prims when (and only when) they're rezzed, not in your inventory or a prim's inventory or you'll see some possibly very counter-intuitive permissions.

And even if you do understand everything, it's always a good idea to have an alt buy things when you put them out for sale and check that everything has the permission it should be .

Hi Kitty, I was well aware of what your saying here, but recently I built a house and however I changed the permissions while it was rezzed it kept reverting back to no mod, no copy and the transfer checked but grayed out, I spent a couple of days trying to make it mod/copy no transfer, a 105 prims delinked and checked carefully even the content to see if a texture had got into one accidently, double checked all scripts, everything was right for mod/copy no transfer. Linked it all again and still no mod/no copy transfer, in desperation I opened permissions in inventory selected the permissions I wanted and it then worked perfectly, the very opposite to what I would expect and I think you would too?

This has happened a few times lately to stuff I've built that's been rezzed in world (like large unscripted sections of a half sim build!), and a couple of friends have mentioned the problem too. I wouldn't have expected to be able to correct the perms in inventory, so thanks for pointing that out. On the flip side, I own quite a few objects that show no perms at all in inventory, but when rezzed in world the perms are fine - no scripts in those either.

Hard to comment on it without peeking at the actual build .

"Never set permissions on prims when they're in inventory" has a silent "unless you understand how permissions work and properly test it with an alt/friend" at the end of it, but it looks kind of condescending to type it out like that .

In most cases it will just work the way you expect it to, but it's also entirely possible to - deliberately or accidentally - create a disconnect between permissions in inventory and permissions when rezzed and those are the ones you avoid by setting permissions when it's rezzed because permissions "bake" in when you 'take' something to inventory.

You can for instance:
* wrap "no transfer for next owner" items inside a "transfer for next owner" container which is great for a gift box (person buys it, what they have in inventory is transfer so they can give it to someone else but when that person rezzes the box to unwrap it the contents are copy/no transfer the way you wanted it)

* create a copy *and* transfer container that contains C/NT items: good for freebies, people can pass the box around, but it can't be sold since the contents are no transfer. On the flip side if you do this one accidentally on something you sell you just released it as a - somewhat limited since it needs profile-dropping transferring - freebie

* create something that looks like it's C/NT in inventory but turns NC/T when it's rezzed. Again if it's something you sell anyone who buys it can create an infinite number of *transferable* copies which is definitely not what you wanted

* one that can freak content creators out: next owner permissions take effect on rez only if the previous owner is different from the current owner. If I buy something from you that's NC/T or C/NT and I never rez it and I return it to you it'll look like it's NC/T or C/NT in inventory but if you rez it it'll turn full permission again because I never rezzed it and the owner hasn't changed since it was last rezzed/taken so next owner permissions are never applied (except in inventory which is different).

Those aren't bugs though, it's how permissions are supposed to work but a lot of people think permissions are just straightforward without realizing that "'baked' only on rez/take" creates some seemingly odd/wrong behaviour. The "edge cases" can be extremely useful when used on purpose, but can be a disaster if they happen by accident and explaining permissions in detail to someone who's already unsure of the basic concepts ends up confusing more than providing clarity so "don't change permissions on prims when they're in inventory somewhere" is a good way to prevent accidents (especially on days like today where I'm not sure anything I said above makes much sense ).

The last twohouse builds I have made have become no transfer for no apparent reason. All textures are full perm, all scripts full perm....All prims are created by me...any ideas? This is driving me crazy!

Not an expert but have you by any chance put them in a rex faux box or anything? if not that, then I have no idea, sorry

Sometimes my creations get messed up if I lose connection with one of the servers. The items sometimes disappear entirely, like they were never made. Don't even go into lost and found.
I also had problems with group permissions once. Had to completely rebuild a building because after I finished it, I couldn't edit it.

I find it interesting that the original post was made back in 2003 and now nearly 5 years later and 5 pages of discussions the original poster or another LL representative have not seen fit to reply to some of the legit concerns voiced by previous posters and really addressed very well.

The *game* has evolved a LOT over this time and the permissions issue/s still seem to confuse and confound many people.

I would like to see this matter clarified once and for all in terms anyone can clearly understand with all scenarios addressed.

Just my 2c's worth.

Hi. I have my first house finished, of which I plan to sell with Modify/copy/NO transfer rights.

I was very careful to build the house with all transferable items/scrpts/textures etc.

It is a large house with 450 Prims, so I have a few link sets.

I need to return them to my inventory and drop them into my Builders Buddy rezbox.
I hope to give/sell the finished, ready to go rezbox to others.

These are my settings before sending the linked items to inventory in Build>>General:

Creator: Zerock Parx
Owner: Zerock Parx
Goup: None

All these permissions are left unchecked:
Share with group, Allow anyone to move, Allow anyone to copy, Show in search

Next owner can:
Modify (Checked)
Copy (Checked)
Resell/give away (Unchecked)

Looks good to me, but when I return to inventory it says (N0 Modify)(No Transfer).

I can not give the items away : Only get the red slash circle. If I drop them into my rezbox it's still No Modify/No Transfer, so I can't give/sell the rexbox either.

Any ideas?
Thanks in advance

1. If you always choose "take" then instead choose "take copy," or choose "take" if you've been using "take copy." I don't know if it will make a difference (in theory it shouldn't), but I like to try every possible alternative when I have a wierd glitch. If nothing else, you may get an error message or find out some little tidbit of information that you didn't see before so that you can file a jira.

2. Have you tried to give it to someone to see what happens?

3. Rez it all on the ground in an open area, open edit, use your mouse to draw a box around it all, and then set the permissions again in case you missed a prim.

4. Shift-drag a copy, remove all the textures, and take it back into your inventory to check for permissions issues on textures. (I would remove textures on the one that's left behind after you shift-drag because that is the real copy.)

I have a prim. I need other avatars to add notecards to this prim. I am able to do this. But other avatars unable to add notecards to the prim. Can you help

you need to add an allow drop script, a simple one would be just to put in state_entry() even llAllowDrop(TRUE)... but that lets them put anything in it.. you may want a more complex one that deletes anything but notecards added.

Thank you for the reply.

How do I identify only Notecards

Basically, you'll need a script that when it detects a change in ALLOW_DROP_INVENTORY, that goes through the whole inventory looking for anything but a notecard (and a script, you can't drop scripts into objects this way) and if it finds one that isn't a notecard, you delete it from the inventory.

default
{
state_entry()
{
llAllowInventoryDrop(TRUE);
}
changed(integer change)
{
if(change & CHANGED_ALLOW_DROP)
{
integer inventoryNum = llGetInventoryNumber();
integer index;
for(index = inventoryNum - 1; index > -1; index--)
{
string inventoryName = llGetInventoryName(INVENTORY_ALL, index);
if(llGetScriptName() != inventoryName)
{
if(llGetInventoryType(inventoryName) != INVENTORY_NOTECARD)
{
llRemoveInventory(inventoryName);
}
}
}
}
}


This is not tested, so there may be some errors, but I believe the concept is right. This will get rid of everything in the inventory but notecards and this script.

Thank you for the code . Script work when I changed the following line
integer inventoryNum = llGetInventoryNumber(INVENTORY_OBJECT);


after changing the above line the script look like this
default
{
state_entry()
{
llAllowInventoryDrop(TRUE);
}
changed(integer change)
{
if(change & CHANGED_ALLOW_DROP)
{
integer inventoryNum = llGetInventoryNumber(INVENTORY_OBJECT);
integer index;
for(index = inventoryNum - 1; index > -1; index--)
{
string inventoryName = llGetInventoryName(INVENTORY_ALL, index);
if(llGetScriptName() != inventoryName)
{
if(llGetInventoryType(inventoryName) != INVENTORY_NOTECARD)
{
llRemoveInventory(inventoryName);
}
}
}
}
}

oops, my bad, should be llGetInventoryNumber(INVENTORY_ALL) having it as the way you do, it'll only read the objects, so if someone drops in a texture or clothing, it won't register them as being in the prim.

Something i was wondering about since ive been able to semi-modify a no modify avatar. What changes can you make to something that is labelled no modify? Can you re-texture or color it, move it around a bit?

First of all there is a different between "true" no-modify and "apparant" no-modify (look at just the inventory permissions you can't tell one apart from the other).

"True" modify would be where the prims that make up an attachment were marked as "no modify for next owner". You can attach them (to different point), you can move the attachment relative to the attach point and you can rotate it and that's as much as you can do with it (for clothing layers your only option is "Wear".

You also can't put anything new into the contents of any prim or the linkset, or delete something from it for that matter. The catch with the last is that you *can* move items from inside a no-mod prim's contents into your inventory and if the item you're moving is no-copy it will indeed be "deleted" from the contents (if the item is at least copy then there's no way to get rid of it).

"Apparant" modify happens when the prims themselves are modify for you, but there is something inside one of the prims that is "no modify". Since the permissions that show in inventory are the "folded permissions" (not actually true until you rezzed it and took it back into inventory once) they describe the whole object.

Or simpler: a modify AO with a no-mod animation inside of it will appear in inventory as (no modify) even though you can still manipulate the actual prims however you like.

In practice the easiest way would be attach something and then right-click and Edit it and look for a check in the "Modify" box (or simple hold down Ctrl-Shift and if you see the resize markers then the prims are mod, if you don't see anything then it's no-mod).

I hope that made sense and didn't just confuse you even more .

I remember having to deal with an irate customer one time over a Jacuzi I made. He claimed it to be no-copy. So I rez one in my inventory, and look at every prim and script, every one being copy/mod. I send it to him, and he claims that the Jacuzi is still no-copy. I check again, and I had one animation that was no-copy, which in turn made the whole Jacuzi no-copy.