Um... taking free, full perm items and selling them for $$$ and few to no perms???

[mrzeus7]

I'm wondering if its generally accpetable to do this?  It astounds me that people take this *AWESOME* boxed Iron Man avatar and resell it.  It's not like they take it and customize it themselves, they just flat out sell it for L while usually taking away permissions.  I guess this is more of a rant than anything.  I feel bad because the creator of this avatar obviously spent a lot of time and they gave it as a gift to the community (According to http://www.flickr.com/photos/torley/2478081691/, it's made by Johnny Dusk originally).  Personally, I have been customizing this for over a week to make it fit me more, I'm just saddened by people passing it off as their own and trying to make money off of it.  Does this kind of thing happen often?

[Deson Bowenford]

Technically it's not against the rules,   however there are people whom will take advantage any way that they can of anyone they can with little conscience.  If it's any thought, anyone doing this is shooting themselves in the foot as far as getting customers from those who do know. 

[mrzeus7]

Yeah, it didn't seem like it would be outright against the rules.  If only I remembered where I picked my copy of it up... If I did, I'd go to the "fake" (for lack of a better word) item places on the Marketplace and post the free link.  Still looking for it though, I'd love to ruin these guys' day!

[Darrius Gothly]

Reselling someone else's creation is still technically a violation of the creator's copyrights. The creator can (if they wish) file a DMCA Notice with Linden Lab to have the offending products removed (what's called a "takedown"). Even if the originals were freebies, anyone else distributing the same product without permission is in violation of the copyright laws thus they can have their stolen products removed and, if they are abusive enough, their accounts closed.

Contact the original creator (if you can) and supply them with the URL or in-world location of the offending items. If you are in a helpful mood, you can also give them the URL to LL's DMCA info page:

DMCA: Digital Millenium Copyright Act

[Ishtara Rothschild]

It's not allowed (by copyright law, which SL's permission system cannot override) to duplicate and resell anything without having the permission or license of the original creator to do so. Freebie or not, it is a potential copyright infringement.

In this case, the original is a trademark violation to boot. Media companies tend to overlook these minor infringements if they are free fan art without a commercial interest, but reselling this freebie for a profit does certainly violate the trademark of the Marvel Entertainment Group (which is now owned by Disney).

[Hintswen Guardian]

I have asked LL about reselling other people's creations in the past.

What they have told me is if I have the transfer permission, then I can sell it.

[Josh Susanto]

it has happened to me, but not for a long time as far as i know

the best thing to do is simply subject the seller to open ridicule, which is also not against the rules if done correctly

OTOH, i consider that if someone has added some kind of value to one of my products before reselling it, they are selling something i didn't really create, so the price and permissions are really not any of my concern

[Josh Susanto]

moreover...

please DO modify and resell my items

there's nothing ridiculous about good product development