an I learn to make things in sl???

[rebel Sieberi]

I want to learn how to make things to earn L$.I have ideas in my head but, to share with someone would mean they could claim them as there own.Can anyone teach me how to get started???

[steph Arnott]

Make things like what? Build, script, animations etc. 

[Madelaine McMasters]

Welcome to Second Life, rebel!

There's a lot to learn about building here, and there are plenty of ways to learn. Helping Haven, Builders Brewery,New Citizens Incorportated (NCI), Caledon Oxbridge University and others offer courses covering all aspects of creation in SL, from beginning to advanced. You'll also find video tutorials on YouTube and written tutorials all around the web.

I understand that you treasure your ideas, but at some point you may have to share some of your vision with others to get the help you need. Second Life, like First, is full of good people.

Have fun!

[Lindal Kidd]

Content creation is a HUGE topic.  Here are just a few more clues to get you started.

Tutorials on building with pirms:  The Ivory Tower Library of Primitives

Tutorials on scripting: College of Scripting Music and Science

If you want to learn to make Mesh objects, download and install the free Blender 3D modeling software, then look for Blender tutorials on the web.

If you have Adobe Photoshop, learn to use it.  There are tons of tutorials out there, many of them free.  If you don't have Photoshop, download and install the free GIMP software, and look for tutorials on how to use that.

And regarding your intellectual property concerns:  "Ideas" are the subject of patents, and there are no patents in Second Life.  You're right, if you tell someone else your idea, and they create something based on it, then you have no protection.  However, I would not worry about this.  Most people are not willing to put in the huge amount of time required to turn an "idea' into an actual creation, unless it's their own idea.  That's YOUR job!

Second Life does protect your actual creations.  Your rights in your original creations is called "copyright", which is a whole different legal area from patents.  While you can register your creations with the Copyright Office, I don't know of very many Second Life creators who do this.  It generally will cost more money than you can expect to make by selling the creations.  Instead, we use the Permissions system to protect our rights, setting things as either No Copy or No Transfer to prevent unlimited distribution.  This is not an airtight system, but it works most of the time.

A lot of creators are also worried about the intellectual property clauses Linden Lab put into the Terms of Service last August.  They give a very broad license to Linden Lab for anything you create or upload.  So far, LL has not exercised this license in such a way as to incense anyone, but people are nervous, and some creators have left SL or stopped creating products as a result of the TOS changes.  However, once again, I think that as an aspiring new creator, this should not be of great concern to you...time enough to worry about it when your sales are supporting you in Real Life.