RipleyVonD Posted June 21, 2014 Share Posted June 21, 2014 Something I've wondered for a while now is whether the permissions system in SL would get an update at some point in the future. Something I would like to see implemented is having control of starting price and royalties earned if someone were to purchase a full perm item from my store. It seems like a simple fix, but maybe not Im just guessing. Has anyone heard of updates relating to the permissions system in SL? P.S. I just thought this probably dosent go here, if a mod can help thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rolig Loon Posted June 21, 2014 Share Posted June 21, 2014 There are changes coming in the permissions system at some point, but not of the sort you are asking about. I can't even begin to imagine the headache of trying to keep track of limits on how much the next owner can sell your product for, and who gets a cut of the sale price once your product is on the secondary market. Don't bet on that ever happening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amethyst Jetaime Posted June 21, 2014 Share Posted June 21, 2014 I haven't heard any rumblings about the permission system and I doubt you will ever see price controls/royalties happen. Its a feature that only full perm content creators would want and that's a small percentage. The TOS makes it pretty clear that it isn't up to LL to protect your rights. Full perm means just that and it is up to you to have a more restrictive license with your terms if you want but if you do it is solely your responsibility to enforce it. I don't mind paying a fair price for a full perm item, but i wouldn't ever buy one that requires royalties. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RipleyVonD Posted June 21, 2014 Author Share Posted June 21, 2014 Yes it seems like a bum deal buying a full perm item that requires royalties, but a system like this in place would allow selling full perm items for free and earn income with royalties. A scenario i had in mind was encouraging some one that is interested in modding full perm items and starting without investing money upfront, money they probably don't have to get started. I thought this would also encourage people to get familiar with modding textures for models and might find that they actually enjoy doing so. Then later with some gained confidence and experience in texturing and some earned lindens they could buy more advanced full perm content that's a bit more pricey and does not require royalties. I wasn't hoping to have more control over the content I would make because I am greedy or anything, sorry if I gave that impression. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cathy Foil Posted June 21, 2014 Share Posted June 21, 2014 Hi Ripley! Every time I see one of your posts I can't help but notice your avatar appears to be from IMVU. If it is then your stance on SL's permissions system and the changes you like to see makes sense. I got a few things up for sale in IMVU and I too wish SL could have a royalty and permission system like IMVU. IMVU system encourages creativity and at the same time protects the original content creator and keeps someone from buying full permission items and then undercutting prices. Which I have seen happen numerous times in SL on the MarketPlace. Here's is what I have seen happen time and time again. Content Creator (A) creates a new product which starts to sell well at a pretty profitable price. Content Creator (B) creates a similar product which is about 50 to 70% as good as (A's) and sells it Full Permission for ten times the price. Lot's of people by the full perm item and put very little effort or creativity into the product and sell it for substantially less than (A's) original product. More and more people buy the full perm item and the price keeps dropping as they all undercut each other. Content Creator (A) sales go in the toilet as the market is now flooded. Thus begins the cycle of undercutting and devaluing of content not sold as Full Perm. The ironic thing is eventually Full Perm items, who's initial price of ten times was only viable because (A's) content was selling well at a decent price, have to lower their prices because now everything is being undercut devaluing (A's) product. The way IMVU is set up it keeps this from happening. Now don't get me wrong IMVU over all sucks compared to SL but they do do a good number of things I wish SL would consider adopting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RipleyVonD Posted June 21, 2014 Author Share Posted June 21, 2014 Hey Cathy. Yeah he's from IMVU, I needed a quick avatar to represent my online self. I've been meaning to recreate him, or something very similar so it can be my avatar in SL but my real life job keeps me pretty busy. I work five days a week, after work I'm tired, and on my days off there's always something to do or go to, its an endless cycle. lol I managed to learn SL's marketplace system which was a great investment of time, and also took the time to learn Linden Scripting and HUD building. Currently I'm waiting for materials scripting functions to be finalized so that I can start creating more stuff for my store that includes an HUD with Materials functionality. From what I can see the code for a similar system on the SL Marketplace is already partially implemented. I noticed you can set royalties for products, products that are created by yourself and another creator. It seems with some tweaking and testing a partially working royalties system could be up and running in no time, but again I'm only guessing since I have no actual experience with how the Marketplace works internally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drake1 Nightfire Posted June 22, 2014 Share Posted June 22, 2014 RipleyVonD wrote: Something I've wondered for a while now is whether the permissions system in SL would get an update at some point in the future. Something I would like to see implemented is having control of starting price and royalties earned if someone were to purchase a full perm item from my store. It seems like a simple fix, but maybe not Im just guessing. Has anyone heard of updates relating to the permissions system in SL? P.S. I just thought this probably dosent go here, if a mod can help thanks. 1. You can not dictate a selling price for your full perm items. It is against Federal US law. you can suggest a price it be sold at but no matter what your personal TOS says you can not dictate a minimum selling price. 2. I wouldn't think anyone would be open to buying a full perm item if they had to give the creator a cut from each sale as well as paying for it initialy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amethyst Jetaime Posted June 22, 2014 Share Posted June 22, 2014 What you refer to as a Royalty system on the Marketplace, is called profit sharing here. MP tech i very different than the tech that drives SL and to change the permissions system to allow for royalties would take a lot of work. Many merchants use scripted vendors too to sell their products, not the sales option in the build box, which would make any royalty system they come up with useless and easy to get around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amethyst Jetaime Posted June 22, 2014 Share Posted June 22, 2014 Cathy Foil wrote: Hi Ripley! Every time I see one of your posts I can't help but notice your avatar appears to be from IMVU. If it is then your stance on SL's permissions system and the changes you like to see makes sense. I got a few things up for sale in IMVU and I too wish SL could have a royalty and permission system like IMVU. IMVU system encourages creativity and at the same time protects the original content creator and keeps someone from buying full permission items and then undercutting prices. Which I have seen happen numerous times in SL on the MarketPlace. Here's is what I have seen happen time and time again. Content Creator (A) creates a new product which starts to sell well at a pretty profitable price. Content Creator (B) creates a similar product which is about 50 to 70% as good as (A's) and sells it Full Permission for ten times the price. Lot's of people by the full perm item and put very little effort or creativity into the product and sell it for substantially less than (A's) original product. More and more people buy the full perm item and the price keeps dropping as they all undercut each other. Content Creator (A) sales go in the toilet as the market is now flooded. Thus begins the cycle of undercutting and devaluing of content not sold as Full Perm. The ironic thing is eventually Full Perm items, who's initial price of ten times was only viable because (A's) content was selling well at a decent price, have to lower their prices because now everything is being undercut devaluing (A's) product. The way IMVU is set up it keeps this from happening. Now don't get me wrong IMVU over all sucks compared to SL but they do do a good number of things I wish SL would consider adopting. SL is not IMVU. SL operates on a free market system. Anyone can sell for any price they choose. Personally I wouldn't want SL be like IMVU in this regard. This is what happens in a free market where supply and demand dictate what sells at what price point. If you want to avoid this, then learn to create you own original mesh so you don't have competition from other merchants for that particular item. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cathy Foil Posted June 22, 2014 Share Posted June 22, 2014 Amethyst Jetaime wrote: SL is not IMVU. SL operates on a free market system. Anyone can sell for any price they choose. Personally I wouldn't want SL be like IMVU in this regard. This is what happens in a free market where supply and demand dictate what sells at what price point. If you want to avoid this, then learn to create you own original mesh so you don't have competition from other merchants for that particular item. Yes I am quite aware that SL is not IMVU. IMVU is also a free market just that some of the rules are different and pricing is set in a different way. You may say that IMVU is not a completely free market but then again neither is SL's MarketPlace. LL has some rules which make it not a completely free market like not being allowed to sell in world for less than you sell an item on the MarketPlace. In SL the free market does not quite work the same as in the real world. In SL supply is unlimited and costs nothing once an item is created an unlimited number of copies can be sold. I do create my own items from scratch. This does not stop others from creating similar products and selling them with full permission. I was the first person in SL to create a prim foot from sculpties and put it in a sculptie high heel shoe about six months before Stiletto Moody came out with their first pair. A few month later someone came out with a full perm version and within 6 to 8 months there were hundreds of shoes selling on the MarketPlace from the full perm version. I watched how the first ones sold for a fairly high price but as more and more people started selling basically the same shoe with just a few modifications, such as color changes, the price just kept plummeting. With the influx of so many shoes watering down the market I saw my sales vanish. Yes this is a free market and you can't copyright an idea. I was not able to copyright the idea of using a prim foot inside a high heel shoe nor is it considered intellectual property. But I have seen and experienced what full perm items can do to a market and I understand how LL has set up SL and how full perm items don't necessarily encourage creativity and how having no way to set a minimum price items created from full perm items ends up pushing those content creators who do create their own items out of business and out of SL. The way IMVU does it is full perm items are basically sold for very little and when resold the minimum price is the same as the initial price of the full perm item. The original content creator gets the same amount for every item that is sold. So lets take a pair of full perm shoes that sells for L$ 300. Someone buys the shoes and then adds their own creative touch to the shoe. They then sell the shoes for L$ 400. For every pair that is sold the original content creator gets L$ 300 and the person who bought the original full perm shoe gets L$ 100. The more work or creativity the buyer of the full perm shoe puts into the shoe the more they will be able to sell it for on the market place. This encourages creativity. This keeps the price stable and stops undercutting. This protects the original content creator an assures them that they will always get their fair share. Full perm prices are low which means those who like to buy full perm items and add their own touches don't have to pay an arm and a leg. This also means that original content creators who don't want to sell their items with full perm can and not have to worry about under cutting from others who but little or no added extra work or value into full perm items they bought. You and I Amethyst will just have to agree to disagree with which system is better in this regard. I believe IMVU does it better and you believe SL does. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kyrah Abattoir Posted June 22, 2014 Share Posted June 22, 2014 The permission system was not designed with "retailers" in mind, but merely user to user content ownership/ Wether the content can be further altered. Wether the content can be duplicated. Wether the content can be transfered. Which basically mimic the UNIX permissions system. It doesn't care wether an object is given or sold, the business aspect of SL is completely separate from the permission system. It doesn't need "fixing". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amethyst Jetaime Posted June 23, 2014 Share Posted June 23, 2014 Supply and demand still works in SL. Supply is the number of products offered by various different merchants based on the same or similar models and demand is how many customers like that style of shoe and will buy it. For example, a simple platform mule you create and sell as full perm could be bought by 100 people who then apply their textures etc.. The consumer then has a choice of 100 shoes to choose from (we won't go into the multiple variations of color or patterns one merchant may offer for simplicity) , many of them the same colors all selling for whatever minimum you set plus a variable profit. Then a second mesher creates a similar shoe, and sells it for lower than you do with no minimum price and 200 people buy that shoe and sell it for a lot less. Now we have a supply of 300 platform mules. Your merchant customers see their market vanish because the second mesher sells for less and therefore the merchants that buy that model can sell for less with no minimum. You would see your market vanish too as people shy away from your products due to the minimum price. Most everyone loves to buy as low as they can unless they are slaves to designer labels, So unless your mesh shoes are a good deal superior than similar models AND the purchaser applies a superior texture/color then most people are going to buy the shoes based on another meshers similar model. The only way your being able to set a minimum price would help you and your merchant customers is if all mesh shoe makers agree to set the same minimum price for similar shoes and that is price fixing and illegal under US Law. Actually setting a minimum price is price fixing too and also illegal under US law and therefore you couldn't enforce that under a DMCA suit in a court of law. US law applies here because LL is a US company and also because that is what you agreed to in the TOS. I'm not sure how IMVU gets away with their way of price fixing other than no one has taken them to court - yet. LL won't go for this anyway as it is to their advantage to keep prices low as it attracts and retains more SL customers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pierre Ceriano Posted June 26, 2014 Share Posted June 26, 2014 Hello Rolig You write "There are changes coming in the permissions system at some point" What are these changes and do you have a source to link us to ? Thank you Pierre Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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