Using "buy for $0" to transfer site-built content

Yes, really. If you put a no-copy item into a rezzer, it will rez once, and then disappear from the rezzer's contents, the same way it would disappear from your inventory while in-world. It may be that makers of certain rezzer packages have opted to put checks in place to prevent no-copy items from working in them, in order to safe guard against potential loss, but it doesn't have to be that way.


Yes, but what's wrong with that? Whether something's copyable or not, you generally remove it from the world while packaging.

You know, realistically, this changes exactly nothing for content creators trying to transfer a build. The builder still has to go through piece by piece and set the items to $0. Who it changes things for is the client on the receiving end who now no longer has the leisure to buy those $0 items at their own schedule. The client needs to be following the builder within a couple of hours at most to complete the transfer. So, worst case scenario is that transfering a build needs some closer coordination between builder and client on the schedule. No more leaving things for sale at $0 for days at a time to transfer.

Absolutely. This is just allowing a landowner to determine what can and cannot be done on the property they own.

The only practical way I can think of to transfer in-world objects would be to set the price to something stupidly high, with a repayment after transfer, and hope some random punk with a scanbot (ESC can't stop others from behaving how they want to with this technology) doesn't scan and buy your stuff while you're still setting the price and permissions.

There really is no point appealing to ESC to moderate their bot. They are not the only ones with this ability.

I posted this script in the resident's answers forum but I'll post a slightly updated one here.

This is my workaround for the lack of a sell object to specific avatar feature.

Basically you set the builder variable to your avatar name (get it right or the object WILL vanish!), and the customer varaible to the avatar name of your customer and drop this script into the object you want to sell/give to the new owner.

Whilst you, the builder, are the owner it will display a warning message that the item is for sale to a particular individual and should not be bought by others.

If it detects the owner has changed to be the customer it removes the message and the script itself,

If it detects the owner has changed and it neither the customer nor the builder, it self-destructs the containing object (so that someone can't a copy of your hard work for free).

It is not ideal - some may still get upset when an object they've bought vanishes even despite the warning message, and of course it assumes that the potential buyer can understand English. However, it is a stop gap I am using until LL puts in a proper sell to selected individual feature.

//
// Script for targetted reselling
// Matthew Dowd, April 2007
// Use at your own risk

string builder = "";
string customer = "";

checkOwner()
{
    if (builder == "") {
        // Not configured so do nothing
        llSetText("", <0.0,0.0,0.0>, 0.0);
        return;
    } else if (llToLower(llKey2Name(llGetOwner())) == llToLower(builder))
    {
        // Builder still owns the object so set the warning
        llSetText("WARNING\nThis object is for sale to " + customer + " only.\nOthers should not attempt to buy this item, as it may result in loss of the item.", <1.0,0.0,0.0>, 1.0);
        return;
    } else if (llToLower(llKey2Name(llGetOwner())) == llToLower(customer))
    {
        // Customer now owns the object so remove script and label
        llSetText("", <0.0,0.0,0.0>, 0.0);
        llRemoveInventory(llGetScriptName());
        return;
    } else {
        // Someone else owns the object so self destruct
        llDie();    
    }
}

default
{
    state_entry()
    {
        checkOwner();
    }

    on_rez(integer n)
    {
        checkOwner();
    }
    
    attach(key id)
    {
        checkOwner();
    }
    
    changed(integer type)
    {
        if (type == CHANGED_OWNER)
        {
            checkOwner();
        }
    }
}

It's pretty evil, I love it! I might even put it into buildings even if LL implements an llSellToTargetAvatar option, since it'd probably be bugged the first few months anyway

If the object is valuable and no copy, would this not destroy it if bought by someone else?

Err, yes, I should have been explicit, this is really for builders transferring their custom builds to the customer - as the creator of the custom build they would have full permissions and presumedly would keep a back up copy anyway.

It isn't suitable if there is a no-copy item in the build (if the builder was using third party animations or scripts for example to which they had limited permissions) or for designers laying out no-copy items.

Unfortunately there isn't a llIsADecentChap function for determining if the person who buys it would do the decent thing and return it (in which case you wouldn't want the object to autodestruct) or if they will just keep it (in which case you might want the object to autodestruct)


You also need mod permissions to put the script into the object in the first place.

So it isn't a universal solution and is definitely a stop gap but for certain purposes it may be useful.

Matthew

Chosen, thank you for making such a long and thoughtful post. While I disagree with you on some critical points, I respect you and I respect your opinions. Hopefully we can find a suitable middle ground that we can both be happy with, and that benefits all of SL's residents.

A search tool that is only capable of identifying a small fraction of what content creators actually offer for sale, and which far more often than not incorrectly identifies items as being intended for sale when that was NOT the owner's intent, is highly dubious as a valuable or functional service, in my mind. Will it ever be able to list the items for sale in a scripted vending device? You know, the kind or vendor that most merchants in SL use for the vast majority of what they sell? I think the answer to that is no. So, as a maker of goods for sale, ESC's search product is worthless to me as a means of getting better sales. It does not and can not list what I actually want to sell.

What it DOES do is facilitate those who seek to get "the very cheapest price", and who may have no regard for whether the item was intended to be for sale or not. Yes, there are valid uses for what it can find. There are valid uses for a locksmith's pick set, as well. But as it stands now, the ESC search engine is like a company selling lock pick sets, full instructions on how to use them, and a directory service listing residents in your town who have easily picked low-quality locks on their homes and easily stolen items in their garage or family room. The ESC search bot and website gives precise teleport coordinates of these 'bargain priced' items, enabling a less than honest person to TP in, obtain the item, and TP out before a security orb could eject them. And even if the parcel bans all access, it will still TP them to the edge of that parcel, with a beacon pointing precisely at the desired item, and they can stand there on the edge and 'buy' it in spite of any ban lines. It doesn't matter if it is your home, your private workshop, or a in skybox at 700 Meters with an active security orb and ban lines up. Their search bot merrily defeats that security, pointing them right at the supposed "bargain".

A company that sells lock picks to locksmiths is doing no wrong. A company that sells lock picks to any and all comers, and which gives them tips on which homes, labs and workshops are most easily burgled, is an accomplice to that theft. Even if they did not tell anyone to use the picks or the information that way.

So yes, ESC's service IS broken. It does not accurately locate or list the majority of what it purports to list. It enables others to crash through SL security measures and remove other people's property. It needs better safety measures before it is safe to operate, even as a public beta.

Rez-Foo and similar products are intended for distributing and positioning a single large build, like a house. It rapidly becomes useless when attempting to position anything more complex. For a moderately complex home, say 300 to 600 prims, it's a fine tool. But it can take an hour or so to pack a single home like that for use in a rez box. And it is not designed for rezzing it exactly in place.

Imagine this scenario. I try to follow your suggestion, and for the twenty homes in a sim-wide build, I pack each one, individually, with Rez-Foo. I note the coordinates of each one and add a custom script to each box that forces the rezzer box to go to the precise coordinates that I packed it at. 20 hours later, after getting it all packed, the sim looks like a tornado hit it - covered in empty foundation excavations. I hand that rez box to my client, along with 19 others, as a direct inventory transfer, and he pays me for them. So far, so good...

Now he goes to his sim. He drops a building rezzer out of his inventory. And... It promptly vanishes, because he didn't drop it where I packed it. The box is now on the other side of a mountain. As far as he is concerned, it destroyed itself...

He drops that one a few more times, and then tries all the others. One finally appears, 30 meters in front of him. He has no clue where the other 19 are. Time to hunt for them? Or time to be screaming at the builder and demanding a full refund?

And this still does not deal with the no-copy/no-mod content issue...

I guess you really must not get out much, Chosen. A Sexgen bed is a scripted piece of furniture, which generates pose balls on demand, for whatever you might imagine doing on or near a bed. And many things you probably wouldn't imagine... I have one that has 100 animation sets. It costs L$15,000. There are other scripted items that have similarly large price tags. Swimming pools, water slides, multimedia gear for clubs... It all requires precision placement and often it gets placed by a professional.

It is this category of item that is truly worrisome. Do I care all that much if someone makes off with a copy of an unscripted bungalo that I built and designed? Not particularly. I can rez another and go on. But a bed I paid L$15,000 for? A collection of 40 pose balls, positioned over 4 levels in a maze of caves? You bet I'll be worried about those things suddenly going missing.

Before this bot, I could set ban lines on the parcel, set up a security orb, and the land owner and I could take all day to transfer the items, if need be. Or I could set them up now, and he could buy them that afternoon. They are out of sight, in a ban-line protected parcel, with a security orb. What could go wrong?

Now? ESC's bot enables people to steal all of that, by alerting them to what they would not otherwise even suspect existed, and giving them the exact coordinates to 'buy' it. Security measures or not. That is what ESC's search engine changes. Unless I opt out. Which I have, but how about the millions of residents who to this day are still unaware the bot exists? They can't opt out of a 'service' that they remain unaware of.

Again, you can't opt out of a service you are unaware of. You can't protect yourself from risks that you are unaware of being possible.

So, what can, constructively, be done?

How about one point that you suggested: If the bot scans an item and it is listed for L$10 or less, it won't appear on the website until that item at that price has been verified by a second scan, 24 hours or more later? That would completely eliminate any items in transition, and would still allow listing of legitimate free offers.

There is a field in the Place listings for a parcel, where you can mark a parcel as "commercial". You can set that value even if you do not choose to list the parcel in Places. So if that field is commercial for the parcel, or if the parcel is listed in the Places listings or the Classified ads, wouldn't you say that is a fairly safe bet to be a place people intend to sell things? Restrict searches to such parcels, unless the parcel owner opts in.

I'm getting tired of the comparisons to Google...

I am a professional IT manager, working for a major corporation, maintaining their internal employee web portal. I also do freelance design, and have set sites up explicitly to hit the #1 search result in Google for that type of service in that city. I think I know a bit about web sites and web searches.

In the Internet, I can design a website with off-line tools. No one, no one at all, can see the web pages that I am designing on a computer that isn't even connected to the Internet, much less serving web pages to the public. I can design those pages without fear of a half-way filled out price list being seen by a client, and them demanding the merchandise at an incorrect price.

In SL, I can't work off-line. Not for anything that matters. I used to think that I was fairly safe working in a skybox at 700 Meters up, with my ban lines on and a security orb running. But ESC's bot has torn down those walls, for anyone that hasn't opted out.

The ESC search engine breaks existing security precautions, and renders them useless. You know this. The vast majority of SL Residents do not. So who has an ethical responbsibility to do something proactive about it? ESC. They caused the situation to get worse. They can choose to act responsibly, and can make it better.

{Edit note: I have corrected an error where I used "You" and "Your" in replying to Chosen Few, where my intent was to indicate ESC, the company which he is associated with as an artist. I did not mean to imply that Chosen himself was personally responsible for any action of this search bot. He is not part of the search team at ESC. }

I just received an E-mail from the head of the search engine team at ESC. As a temporary stopgap, all items marked as 'sell original' will be excluded from the listing. That should pretty much eliminate the problem we've been discussing. Of course, there are certainly sell-original items that should be visible, so this isn't a perfect long term solution by any means, but hopefully it will prevent the kinds of 'accidents' we've been talking about here.

For a more permanent solution, they are considering implementing my delay idea, but it might take a little while.

On a semi-personal note, Ceera, can you do me a small favor? Please refrain from calling it "your search engine" when you're talking to me. It's not "mine". I realize you mean "your company's search engine", but other people might not, and I don't want to confuse anyone. For the record, I have nothing to do with search or with any other aspect of the ESC's software division. I'm just an artist. The only reason I responded to this at all is because it happens to be on the Building forum, and I happen to know some of the people involved in the discussion, so the thread caught my eye. I thought I might be in a good position to understand all sides of the issue, and to be of some help to all concerned, so I took it upon myself to make sure the right people at ESC were aware of this thread, and I offered a couple of suggestions for potential solutions.

Technically, this is really none of my business. Please no one think I'm here as a representative of ESC in any way. I'm here simply as a concerned citizen, just like everybody else who's posted so far. That's it.

Thank you Chosen. I have corrected my previous post, replacing those instances where I said "you" or "your", where my intent was to indicate ESC, and not you personally. I did not mean to imply that Chosen Few was in any way personally responsible for the actions of the ESC search bot developers. I apologize for any ill will that that may have caused, for such was not my intent at all.

I think that stop-gap measure of ESC's bot not listing 'sell original' items will, in fact, save many people from grevious losses. ESC could, perhaps, allow "sell original" listings for those who intentionally have opted in to the search. Those individuals will be aware that any item they tag for sale is vulnerable to being listed publicly.

Chosen, I truly do appreciate the efforts that you have made in communicating our concerns to the staff at ESC. The rest of us here had been getting no positive responses at all. I had even e-mailed ESC directly, via the feedback mail drop for the search bot, and I got no indication that they even read it.

Simply enable a group-access list. You can't buy in banned land.

Wrong. It's been proven that a person can stand outside a parcel that they are banned from, and can send their camera in and can buy from vendors or can buy purchasable in-world items, despite the ban.

Not having "sell original" items in the directory will fix it. Result!

To be honest I imagine there's few people scanning the Search Engine for items called "Object" at 0 lindens. It's not like they're Sex-Gen Chandeliers.

I recently sold my first build, too big for a single linkset. Myself and the client just wandered around, me setting "sell" and her then buying. I'd been nervous about this sort of issue, but it went surprisingly smoothly.

We did consider me deeding it all to her group and then her buying it from the group back, but she convinced me that was needlessly intricate.

bwahaha! i can assure you with 100% certainty that esc doesn't want your used sex balls.

Cool script and idea. Do you happen to know what would happen if someone rezzed the object in an area that scripts were disabled (but building enabled)? Could they then go into the object's inventory and delete the script? As far as I know, you can delete things in an object's inventory if you're the owner, even if you don't have any mod permissions for the object.

If such an object was rezzed by a non-approved person in a no-script area, nothing would happen, and the script could be safely removed.

That script is only useful if the sell options are set to "buy original", and scripts are enabled for all people on the land where teh object is rezzed.

The process of transferring site-built content is tedious, dangerous, and time consuming. I have an idea that I would like to propose on JIRA for making content transfer quick, easy, and safe. My idea is to do the exact same thing that happens when a parcel is sold with contents, only without affecting parcel ownership. The feature would transfer ownership of all transferrable content in a parcel to another user, if they wish it.

The user experience for this feature would be that the content creator and content purchaser would both be present in the region. The creator would right-click on the ground of the parcel containing the content and chose a new option: Transfer Content. They would then get a dialog telling them how many objects they have on the parcel, broken down by transferrable and non-tranferrable. The objects themselves would be highlighted in white for transferrable and red for non-transferrable. The dialog would also have an avatar picker and a box for setting the L$ that the creator wants for the content.

When the creator selects an avatar and clicks on the 'Transfer' button then the purchaser would see the content receiver dialog telling them who is transferring objects to them, how many objects, and what they cost. The purchaser would see the objects highlighted in white. If the purchaser clicks on the 'Transfer' button then ownership of the objects is transferred and L$ are paid to the creator. The creator is then notified that transfer occurred. If the purchaser declines transfer, does not have enough L$, is not in the region, or leaves the region then the creator is notified that the transfer did not occur.

If the purchaser is in busy mode then they do not see a dialog and the creator is told that the purchaser is busy.

Love it! The idea will certainly get my vote! Post a link here once you have that in the JIRA, please.

Here it is: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/SVC-196

If the ESC bots ever proceed to automatically buy objects, I'll create a "generate random object" script that'll generate random multipe-prim objects, name them like "Rock", "Chair", "Sexgen bed", etc. and have them for sale for anything between L$100 and L$10000 each... Let their bot buy my useless prims and make me rich

Interesting suggestion, but only applies to transferring all content, only works for landholders, and other limitations. Admittedly, it would help the worst cases the most.

SL needs a solution to the general problem of transferring property to a specific person without having to take it into inventory. Let's fix the problem for everyone, not just for landholders.

Set for sale to named avatar would be fine. Only marginally more tedious than the traditional method.

The other option is still to set the price stupidly high and trust the creator to pay pack after each transfer. It'll do wonders for the economic statistics too

My proposal doesn't require that either the seller or the buyer own the land. All it requires is that the seller be willing to sell every transferable object on a particular parcel to the buyer. Site-specific content is tied to the land so it seems like a reasonable way to go. Where it falls down is in cases where the seller only wants to sell some of the content on a parcel. Maybe their could also be a way to click on an object and sell it in-situ to an avatar in the same region.

I don't think that we will see an object equivalent of sell-land-to-avatar any time soon because it adds additional state to every object. Also, the method may make content transfer safer but it will make it more tedious. Right now we can't select multiple items and modify their for-sale state. I don't anticipate this changing any time soon. So, not only will the seller have to tweak the for-sale state on every object, they will have to go through an avatar picker for each object.

The reason that I suggest doing content transfer on a parcel basis is that the code already exists. LL just needs to abstract the content transfer code to work with any pair of avatars and add a new UI floater to the viewer. My husband works for LL, so I have some idea for what kind of feature might exceed their laziness threshold (just kidding guys!).

Who the fuck are you to decide what's good for me or not?!
How would you like it if i decided for you that it's good for your wife (if you even have one) to be sexualy abused by as many men as possible? Hey, you might not like it but others sure would, meaning that shouldn't be stopped.....

BamBam, I stand corrected. However, I still think it's too limited a solution to a general problem. If it's a first step, fine. If it's a last step, not good.

Lucian, your hostility and obscenity are unwarranted and distract from your point, which seems to be "It's up to me to decide whether scans are of value on my own property."