What Justification Is There For No Mod Permissions?

[Cristiano Midnight]

What is the purpose for making items no mod? I understand it with scripts or configuration notecards, but beyond that, why are so many items made no mod that don't need to be? A good example are animations. I own a lot of poses and like to rename them to include a keyword in them so I can filter by stand, sit, etc.. If an animation is no mod, it cannot be renamed. WHY? I appreciate when furniture and decor items are mod so they can be scaled to match the environment they are in. The only other category I can think of that makes sense potentially to be no mod is rigged mesh, but even then, why? I try to avoid no mod items where I can, but they are pretty prevalent. The whole no-mod thing just feels anti-consumer.

An example I can think of that seems particularly nasty is a skybox that the paint on the walls is no mod, but conveniently, the creator sells paint huds for 500L in different collections of colors. That is just lame.

Edited April 16 by Cristiano Midnight

[Luna Bliss]

7 minutes ago, Cristiano Midnight said:

What is the purpose for making items no mod? I understand it with scripts or configuration notecards, but beyond that, why are so many items made no mod that don't need to be? A good example are animations. I own a lot of poses and like to rename them to include a keyword in them so I can filter by stand, sit, etc.. If an animation is no mod, it cannot be renamed. WHY? I appreciate when furniture and decor items are mod so they can be scaled to match the environment they are in. The only other category I can think of that makes sense potentially to be no mod is rigged mesh, but even then, why? I try to avoid no mod items where I can, but they are pretty prevalent. The whole no-mod thing just feels anti-consumer.

An example I can think of that seems particularly nasty is a skybox that the paint on the walls is no mod, but conveniently, the creator sells paint huds for 500L in different collections of colors. That is just lame.

Yeah no-mod stuff can be a pain.  I can't say I understand the reasons they make things no-mod fully though -- it might be important for their particular type of business in some cases.

I'm so irritated by these no-mod particles I purchased (not the script...I get why that's no mod) where I can't even choose a different name for each type of particle so I can organize them better and find them quickly in my inventory for performances.

Edited April 16 by Luna Bliss

[Istelathis]

I've wondered if it might have something to do with not wanting to be bothered with customers who want help modding the objects, or alternatively not fixing the mistakes their customers have made. I usually stay away from furniture or buildings that are no mod, because I like to use rezzers for different scenes and my favorite rezzer requires the object to be renamed.  

 

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

15 minutes ago, Istelathis said:

I've wondered if it might have something to do with not wanting to be bothered with customers who want help modding the objects, or alternatively not fixing the mistakes their customers have made.

Alternatively, since it probably gets lonely standing around all day creating things, maybe they just do it in the hope that one of their customers will IM them asking for modifiable versions and then they'll have someone to talk to? 🤔

[Kathlen Onyx]

Maybe they don't want people messing with their creations with their name as the creator on it. If I made a box and colored it red I would hate that someone could just color it neon green and my name as the creator would still be on it. I HATE neon green!

[Extrude Ragu]

because they consider their own interests more important than yours

[Shining Sun]

39 minutes ago, Kathlen Onyx said:

Maybe they don't want people messing with their creations with their name as the creator on it. If I made a box and colored it red I would hate that someone could just color it neon green and my name as the creator would still be on it. I HATE neon green!

Good point ^^^

[Shining Sun]

They secretly want to annoy their customers.  Turning to revenge!

[Love Zhaoying]

54 minutes ago, Shining Sun said:

They secretly want to annoy their customers.  Turning to revenge!

Worst business model!

[Rick Nightingale]

You are absolutely right @Cristiano Midnight; no-mod is completely anti-consumer. There is little reasonable justification for most items to be no-mod. Greed, control, paranoia, selfishness, ego, ignorance, assuming the customers are either thieves or incompetent... none of those are reasonable but cover most of the reasons. A rare exception is when a NC is used as a 'signed' agreement or similar. I would accept genuine, one-off works of art that the artist wants to preserve as-is in SL as an exception.

By the way, a no-mod notecard can be read by a script you can write. I've done that many times to change the animations in furniture for instance, when the maker has been silly and made the NC no-mod in furniture that is mod.

Even rigged mesh has no excuse to be no-mod. It can be tinted, retextured (maybe with some effort), have scripts added to change/increase functionality, be linked to other rigged or non-rigged items to save attachment slots, have its animations changed if its animesh, even changed from rigged to animesh* and vice versa. Again, no reasonable excuse for no-mod perms.

*Something I did to a set of rigged wings so I could make them animesh and move the attachment position for a smaller avatar.

What such sellers seem incapable of realising is that they would make more money if they made their stuff modifiable.

There's a big (pun not intended) reason that the Aesthetic body is still my favourite after all these years; it's had mod perms from the start and being able to rez it out and modify it is golden.

Edit just to clarify that I don't include scripts in the above. Those are often proprietary, and obviously easily stolen, so need to be no mod.

Edited April 17 by Rick Nightingale

[Clem Marques]

18 minutes ago, Rick Nightingale said:

Greed, control, paranoia, selfishness, ego, ignorance, assuming the customers are either thieves or incompetent

I understand that it can be very frustrating to buy something that can't be modified.

However, creators who use full perm components on their products often have Terms of Service that they agreed to when they purchased those items, and sometimes it's listed as one of the conditions that the item can only be resold as a finished product with NO MODIFY permissions. So it's not always just about selfishness, paranoia, ego, etc. even though that might be the case for some creators. Sometimes a merchant has no choice but to offer the item in a no modify state.

As long as it's clearly shown in the Marketplace listing that the product is no modify, there is nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. Then it's up to the customer to buy the item or not, based on their needs and expectations.

Edited April 16 by Clem Marques

[Eddy Vortex]

Paranoia of hoomins wrecking their artistic vision if they allow mod perms.  The furry market doesn't suffer from this.

[Stephanie Misfit]

7 minutes ago, Clem Marques said:

I understand that it can be very frustrating to buy something that can't be modified.

However, creators who use full perm components on their products often have Terms of Service that they agreed to when they purchased those items, and sometimes it's listed as one of the conditions that the item can only be resold as a finished product with NO MODIFY permissions. So it's not always just about selfishness, paranoia, ego, etc. even though that might be the case for some creators. Sometimes a merchant has no choice but to offer the item in a no modify state.

As long as it's clearly shown in the Marketplace listing that the product is no modify, there is nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. Then it's up to the customer to buy the item or not, based on their needs and expectations.

I have never seen this request by full perm creators that items be set no mod, and I am familiar with most of those sellers. They just don't want things to be set both copy and transfer. So I don't think this is the reason for no mod permissions in final products, in most cases.

[Rick Nightingale]

15 minutes ago, Clem Marques said:

However, creators who use full perm components on their products...

I've never seen no-mod being insisted on either, and I've bought a fair bit of full perm stuff (mostly clothing because I hate skinning clothes; life's too short).

In my own full perm stuff I actually have some where my terms say the resold items must have mod perms! Others, I encourage it.

Edited April 16 by Rick Nightingale

[Clem Marques]

6 minutes ago, Stephanie Misfit said:

I have never seen this request by full perm creators that items be set no mod, and I am familiar with most of those sellers. They just don't want things to be set both copy and transfer. So I don't think this is the reason for no mod permissions in final products, in most cases.

It's not that common, and I agree that it's not why items are no mod in most cases, especially when it comes to furniture. But it does happen occasionally when it comes to full perm rigged clothing items. I buy those quite often and I know 2 fairly popular creators that have that listed as a condition in their licenses. I have also bought full perm mesh droplets before that had "no modify, no transfer" as a condition in the terms of use, which is why the finished product I created using those had to be no modify, even though I personally wanted the customers to have modify permissions on it.

Edited April 16 by Clem Marques

[Rick Nightingale]

3 minutes ago, Clem Marques said:

But it does happen occasionally when it comes to full perm rigged clothing items.

Fair point then. If you are relying on reselling them, then there's not much you can do if the only items available have that stipulation. Personally I would avoid the sellers like the plague (but I have that luxury), like the ones who are still including an NC telling buyers they need to use debug to set the viewer LOD to 5-10 to see the mesh 'as intended'.

[Clem Marques]

3 hours ago, Kathlen Onyx said:

Maybe they don't want people messing with their creations with their name as the creator on it. If I made a box and colored it red I would hate that someone could just color it neon green and my name as the creator would still be on it. I HATE neon green!

This is something to consider as well. If someone has an item created by you with modify permissions enabled, they can link pretty much anything to it, and as long as your item is the root prim, it would show you as the creator when someone checked it using the "edit" tab. This could potentially result in some shady/unpleasant situations. Even though I am not personally concerned with that, and give modify permissions on my products whenever possible, I would understand it if someone else were worried.

Edited April 16 by Clem Marques

[Clem Marques]

4 minutes ago, Rick Nightingale said:

like the ones who are still including an NC telling buyers they need to use debug to set the viewer LOD to 5-10 to see the mesh 'as intended'.

I hate that, and avoid those products as well. Changing the LOD settings on one's viewer should NEVER be a requirement to use an item.

Edited April 16 by Clem Marques

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

Almost ten years ago there was a big SL panic that 'mod' allowed people, most likely furries and other degenerates like people who prefer neon green prims, to use copy-bot tech to steal your stuff.

It weren't true then, it ain't any truer now.

But folks is stupid anyway.

 

Edited April 16 by UnilWay SpiritWeaver

[Charlotte Bartlett]

3 hours ago, Kathlen Onyx said:

Maybe they don't want people messing with their creations with their name as the creator on it. If I made a box and colored it red I would hate that someone could just color it neon green and my name as the creator would still be on it. I HATE neon green!

After purchase, they would Rez on their own land.   So how would you even know it's neon green?  I can't imagine having a non mod house or furniture - it makes zero sense.   On the opposite end of the scale I have seen mods on my products that are amazing (so much so) I will then go and create that version for the rest of my customers based on that customer's permission.

Non Mod creators probably lose about large % of the market by default and most I have ever spoke to are Non Mod due to lack of education and understanding of the platform.

I have only ever seen a few decent user cases for it but @Cristiano Midnight for animations it is frustrating as I also rename them.  I have a bunch of good animator stores I use who are mod if you want any recommendations.

iQuit.

 

Edited April 17 by Charlotte Bartlett

[Paul Hexem]

Except for a select few cases involving scripts or scripted objects, the answer is always ignorance or anti-consumerism. Every time.

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

42 minutes ago, Clem Marques said:

I understand that it can be very frustrating to buy something that can't be modified.

However, creators who use full perm components on their products often have Terms of Service that they agreed to when they purchased those items, and sometimes it's listed as one of the conditions that . . .

People put some crazy stuff in those 'Terms'.

If I ever become a full-perms seller I'm going to have to put a Term in there that you must own a cat named 'George' and all products have to be set to have 'RuPaul' in the description.

Why? Why not.

But yeah. I buy a lot of full perms stuff and while rare, I have seen the 'no mod' callout in the terms at least once, if not twice.

 

Edited April 17 by UnilWay SpiritWeaver

[UnilWay SpiritWeaver]

2 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

Except for a select few cases involving scripts or scripted objects, the answer is always ignorance or anti-consumerism. Every time.

Yep. scripts that are NOT meant to be full-perms teaching aids are maybe the one exception. If a script is full perm, you can read the code. And if you can read the code you can fix it so it actually works right. And we couldn't have any of that nonsense.

But yeah - if you're selling a complex script you need no-mod or you're just selling someone words on a page that can copy into their own page and hand around.

So many times I've wanted to edit someone's script to change it a little to my preference, but this is the one case where I get their concern. It's the one example where mod does mean stealable. I guess you could say the same for shape sellers. But for most of what people buy these days - no-mod is just a nuisance.

As long as your product is also copy, the support answer to "I edited it and broke it" can be just "rez / wear / grab out a new copy" and your CSRs could just have a note that says "we only support un-modded copies."

Furries have been doing this since before non-furries even knew you could trade things in SL, let alone sell them.

 

[Rick Nightingale]

Yes, scripts are the exception, but one thing I really wish makers would do is reveal the HUD channels and commands for things. It's not like that's a security risk or gives away anything secret or proprietary in most cases. Any script should be checking the source of what it hears first so no-one can make an object which interferes with someone else's. Some products are different of course, where items need to communicate with those owned by others or reprogramming with a different chat source might give an unfair advantage (competitive HUDs, some RP items etc.).

A few makers do this; furry types again particularly.

Edit: that's straying off topic though.

 

Edited April 17 by Rick Nightingale

[Midnoot]

None. I haven't read any of this .

 

If I can't modify the colors or change the textures of the product manually , to anything i want , just like I can if i purchase a real life item, EVEN THOUGH THAT IS AN OPTION IN SECOND LIFE, you've become a plague to me and anyone else who refuses to buy a fat pack of nasty pre made colors that can't be customized to the level that we want.