Refund Lindens from a store with false advertisment

[Kaiser Metaller]

Well I don't know if this should be here or not didn't saw a proper section but my Issues is that I bought a mesh avatar advertised that you could change hair,clothing and the such to even fit with mesh or prim hair/clothing.

The catch is that it's not possible to do it,the textures of the hair are attached to the chest and face all 4 textures in one place and they cannot be selected as a single thing,so even "select face" doesn't work,and I sent a message to the owner about how the hair and etc could be changed as advertised since no instructions at all, but no reply since days, plus that the avatar has some transparent spots below the arms that couldn't be seen in the pictures nor they have a solution with the shape that comes with the avatar

So what should I do?,send a ticket to LL and expect a refund or is my money lost into this?

This is the advertisement of it:

This Avatar comes with:

♠ Character Mesh Body!

♠ Animation Overrider!

♠ Editable and customisable!

♠ All parts seperated and can be swapped out with any of your current prim or mesh hair/clothing!

♠ Removeable Clothing such as : Wings, Cape, Body and Eyes!

♠ Perfect Shape!

♠ Perfect for Role play

[Czari Zenovka]

Suggestions:

*You mentioned contacting the merchant.  Did you check to see on their profile if they have a preferred method of being contacted?  Some merchants specify IMs or note cards or some even have mailboxes in their stores to submit questions/problems.  Mentioning this because some people do not turn on their IMs to email so if they don't come online for a few days and/or their IMs cap, they might not receive your message if you sent it via IM.

*Some merchants also specify in their profiles what to do if you have a problem - I've seen some merchant profiles that advise going to their website where questions are answered or contacting someone on their staff.

*The profile may also tell during what time span to expect a reply.  On my business profile, for example, I advise if a customer has not received a reply from me within 48 hours to please resend using BOTH IM and note card as that means I didn't receive the first contact.

LL will not refund your money since this is considered a resident to resident issue.

Your best bet is to contact the merchant and do so in a polite manner.  You said you hadn't received a reply "since days" - how many days is that?  Depending on the merchant, several days isn't necessarily a long time, plus being in the holiday season some people may be busier RL and/or out of town - which is sometimes noted on the merchant's profile.

If you have done all the above and don't receive a reply in a reasonable amount of time, you can leave a review (if you purchased the item on the MP) stating the issues.

[Kaiser Metaller]

Yeah I did check on those but it doesn't state any special way of contact,group or time delay and as days I'm saying 48+ hours,It only says that to suggest a new avatar to IM her and now that I check more into her profile I get to see thishttp://gyazo.com/d0f9cdaf04ba0fb93ac050776ff608ea (this is what people posted on her Web profile,so I must guess im not the 1st one either.),so linden labs don't deal with money scams nor copyrighted content being sold at the store? this avatar was said "inspired by" but some others are rigs straight out from games

[Incoherendt Randt]

LL doesn't do refunds if you buy junk from other users, so you got an expensive lesson. At least it wasn't super expensive.

I know what happened from that description, and some other people who bought those, and they felt ripped off too.

So you see avatars for sale and they look like they could have walked right out of a video game. That's because 99.999999% of the time they did, even if they say "inspired by". They won't have any removable parts that didn't need to be that way in the games they were ripped from, and they have textures optimized for that too, not good for dressing up an avatar in SL. And SL didn't have materials until a little while ago so most of these won't even look right.

So what can you do? Not a lot, but maybe you can help stop more people from getting scammed. If the avatar is on the marketplace you can flag it as not as advertised. LL might pull the listing, maybe not.

If it's a character from a game or something, you can contact the company that made it, and give them links to the marketplace and inworld locations so they can do the DMCA thing. They might step in and complain, they might not.

You can warn other people about the seller (just not here, naming names is against the forum rules).

 

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

Only the owner of the copyright for the characters can file a DMCA and have them removed.  Contact the owners of the games she  has ripped characters from and give them a link to her MP store so they can file take down orders for copyright violations.  Even if she reproduced them herself and didn't rip them from a game, they are still a violation.  If they choose to, they can also sue her in RL court.

You won't get your money back but will have the satisfaction that you did the right thing.

[Pussycat Catnap]

Good chance that every item sold by that 'merchant' will someday suddenly go 'poof' and dissapear right out of the inventories of the buyers...

And frankly... I've no sympathy for that person or their customers.

 

Look at what's sold there - it takes about 1 second to realize its stolen video game goods. If you buy it, its on you when it gets taken.

 

[rockerX0X0X]

Mesh is a risky thing to begin with always demo demo demo cause its really hard to fit in mesh unless your shape was specifically made for it

[Pamela Galli]

I put this phrase in Google:  

 

♠ All parts seperated and can be swapped out with any of your current prim or mesh hair/clothing!

 

Wow there are a lot of products with that phrase.

[Perrie Juran]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

I put this phrase in Google:  

 

♠ 

All parts seperated and can be swapped out with any of your current prim or mesh hair/clothing!

 

Wow there are a lot of products with that phrase.

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Many being described as "fan art."

I know nothing about these characters but I do smell a possible copyright infringement.

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

please remove that link its trying to install an exe file on my omputer when I clicked.

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Kaiser Metaller wrote:

Yeah I did check on those but it doesn't state any special way of contact,group or time delay and as days I'm saying 48+ hours,It only says that to suggest a new avatar to IM her and now that I check more into her profile I get to see this

http://gOOOOOOyazo.com/d0f9cdaf04ba0fb93ac050776ff608ea

 (this is what people posted on her Web profile,so I must guess im not the 1st one either.)

,so linden labs don't deal with money scams nor copyrighted content being sold at the store? this avatar was said "inspired by" but some others are rigs straight out from games

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[Incoherendt Randt]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

Only the owner of the copyright for the characters can file a DMCA and have them removed.

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Not really, and there is a good business opportunity in there for somebody. There is a little industry of DMCA "bounty hunters" who make deals with IP owners up front, to act as their authorized agents to send in takedown notices. They contract to get a bounty for the takedowns. There are little firms that make full time efforts on places like Google, but SL doesn't get much attention. Someone oughtta grab that.

 

[Kaiser Metaller]

The link is a screenshot when you get the .exe that's gyazo's screenshot program asking if you want it installed,it even asks you if you want to download it or reject,nothing fishy about it. lol

Back on topic yeah,I guess I made the big mistake of buying that trusting the MP but at least it wasn't those 3 to 8k "custom work" that she advertises or some massive 4k ship

[Amethyst Jetaime]

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Incoherendt Randt wrote:

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

Only the owner of the copyright for the characters can file a DMCA and have them removed.

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Not really, and there is a good business opportunity in there for somebody. There is a little industry of DMCA "bounty hunters" who make deals with IP owners up front, to act as their authorized agents to send in takedown notices. They contract to get a bounty for the takedowns. There are little firms that make full time efforts on places like Google, but SL doesn't get much attention. Someone oughtta grab that.

 

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If owners of copyrights hire others to search for and take action against copyright violators, those people are acting as agents.  Agency is a legal concept where the agent acts on behalf of the owner.  They must act within the authority given to them by their agency agreement.  They have no authority to act independently. 

If there are bounty hunters, the bounty hunter has no authority to file a DMCA unless they have a power of attorney to do so.  They would have to notify the owner.

In either case the agent or bounty hunter must have a legal power of attorney to sign and execute a DMCA.   The law considers an attorney in fact the legally the same as the owner acting.

That is entirely different from me filing a take down order on say a DIsney product.  So I stand by my statement that only the owner can act and must be the one notified.  They then have the option of hiring someone to act on their behalf if they so wish.

 

[Incoherendt Randt]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

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Incoherendt Randt wrote:

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

Only the owner of the copyright for the characters can file a DMCA and have them removed.

---

Not really, and there is a good business opportunity in there for somebody. There is a little industry of DMCA "bounty hunters" who make deals with IP owners up front, to act as their authorized agents to send in takedown notices. They contract to get a bounty for the takedowns. There are little firms that make full time efforts on places like Google, but SL doesn't get much attention. Someone oughtta grab that.

 

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If owners of copyrights hire others to search for and take action against copyright violators, those people are acting as agents.  Agency is a legal concept where the agent acts on behalf of the owner.  They must act within the authority given to them by their agency agreement.  They have no authority to act independently. 

If there are bounty hunters, the bounty hunter has no authority to file a DMCA unless they have a power of attorney to do so.  They would have to notify the owner.

In either case the agent or bounty hunter must have a legal power of attorney to sign and execute a DMCA.   The law considers an attorney in fact the legally the same as the owner acting.

That is entirely different from me filing a take down order on say a DIsney product.  So I stand by my statement that only the owner can act and must be the one notified.  They then have the option of hiring someone to act on their behalf if they so wish.

 

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Do you use some kind of chatbot to generate your posts? You ought to read what you posted, it's funny, because it sounds like you are trying to make a rebuttal to something, but you really just said the same thing in more words. It's really easy to set up the authorized agent status and yeah, you could even do it for Disney if they want to work with you. It's the same thing Digimark, Markmonitor, Dtec, Muso and lots of smaller guys do. Really most DMCA action happens this way, it's a common kind of business to get into now.

 

 

[Amethyst Jetaime]

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Incoherendt Randt wrote:

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

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Incoherendt Randt wrote:

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

Only the owner of the copyright for the characters can file a DMCA and have them removed.

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Not really, and there is a good business opportunity in there for somebody. There is a little industry of DMCA "bounty hunters" who make deals with IP owners up front, to act as their authorized agents to send in takedown notices. They contract to get a bounty for the takedowns. There are little firms that make full time efforts on places like Google, but SL doesn't get much attention. Someone oughtta grab that.

 

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If owners of copyrights hire others to search for and take action against copyright violators, those people are acting as agents.  Agency is a legal concept where the agent acts on behalf of the owner.  They must act within the authority given to them by their agency agreement.  They have no authority to act independently. 

If there are bounty hunters, the bounty hunter has no authority to file a DMCA unless they have a power of attorney to do so.  They would have to notify the owner.

In either case the agent or bounty hunter must have a legal power of attorney to sign and execute a DMCA.   The law considers an attorney in fact the legally the same as the owner acting.

That is entirely different from me filing a take down order on say a DIsney product.  So I stand by my statement that only the owner can act and must be the one notified.  They then have the option of hiring someone to act on their behalf if they so wish.

 

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Do you use some kind of chatbot to generate your posts? You ought to read what you posted, it's funny, because it sounds like you are trying to make a rebuttal to something, but you really just said the same thing in more words. It's really easy to set up the authorized agent status and yeah, you could even do it for Disney if they want to work with you. It's the same thing Digimark, Markmonitor, Dtec, Muso and lots of smaller guys do. Really most DMCA action happens this way, it's a common kind of business to get into now.

 

 

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I responded to your contention the owners weren't the only ones that could file a DMCA when you said "not really".  Someone with power of attorney that executes a DMCA is the same legally as the owner.  Bounty hunters can not file a DMCA unless they have the copyright owners power of attorney to do so.  All they can do is notify the owner.

SL residents who see IP violations STILL have to notify the owner.  Your bringing up bounty hunters was irrelevant to my advice to the OP to notify the game owners.