Jennifer Boyle

However, I think the seller would be properly respecting the buyer's rights if a no copy version were offered, and the buyer chose a no transfer one instead.

Thanks.

Now, I have looked at my Marketplace order history. It says that I bought 42 items yesterday and that all were delivered. I also looked at Marketplace help, and could see no obvious information about what to do about large numbers of undelivered items. Is there anything to do except contact each merchant individually? That's hardly worth the time and trouble.

Darrius Gothly wrote: The reason it cannot be reasonably applied to Virtual Goods sales is .. Virtual Goods do not age, wear or break over time. That is a good point. However, you ignore the fact that people, in RL and SL, buy new things mostly because they want something new, not because what they have is worn out. The reason they want something new may be that it is more fashionable, that it is superior in some way, or simply that it is new. I have over 17,000 items in my inventory and a lot stored in prims, mostly clothing, which is, as you point out, in pristine condition. Yet I keep buying more. Why? Because I like to shop, and when I shop I see clothing I want, and I buy it. While things don't wear out in the virtual world, they do become obsolescent. As I mentioned before, the further development of the platform continues, and will continue indefinitely, to make more possible, and better products will naturally follow. We now have flexiprims and sculpties and a tattoo layer, each of which made new, improved products possible. LSL continues to be expanded. We're about to have mesh. I never wear the high-quality hair and skin I bought four years ago because better ones are available now.

You are right. I apologize for not reading more carefully. Thank you for your help.

I did that, as the OP made clear,

Sammantha Koppel wrote: Creators could give the customers the option of buying either a copy version or a trans version. Many times they do for clothing and other items that one cannot effectively use more than one copy of at a time. It's not very feasible to do that with items such that mutiple copies can be used at once.

Peewee Musytari wrote: Why on earth would any creator want to spend hours, days, even weeks of their time creating an item & then selling it full perms, so that someone can come along and buy it and then start selling it at half the price making back the money they paid for it and then profitting off of a product that they put in zero effort to produce at the creators expense? I didn't say "full perm." I said "no copy." I thought I made it crystal clear that I have no objection to making items non-copyable, and if they cannot be copied, what you describe cannot happen. To reiterate briefly, it's fine for sellers to prohibit copying, because they are enforcing legitimate IP rights when they do, but when they restrict modification and transfer, they are exceeding their rights and infringing purchasers' IP rights.

Today, I bought 14 items on Marketplace, some as long as eight hours ago. None have been delivered. The transactions are shown in my transaction history, though, because of the cryptic way they are listed, I cannot tell what each item was. What can/should I do?

Can someone refer me to something I can read to understand what the alpha channel is? Thanks.

I have thought for a long time that having the absolute "no transfer" permission was unfair to consumers. All "property" in SL is virtual and is intellectual property (IP), so it should be governed by the same rules as IP in general. The "no copy" permission is fine, since it enforces a right that the seller has to prohibit copying of her work. "No transfer" overreaches because it enforces a right that the seller does not have. Under the First Sale Doctrine of US law, a copyright holder gives up control of a particular copy of a work when she sells it. If I buy a picture, or dress, in RL, I am free to resell it or give it away, even if I have altered or defaced it or cut it into pieces, and if the copyright holder takes me to court, the case will be thrown out. The "no modify" permission also is abusive of consumers' IP rights. Under US law, I have the right to modify a piece of IP that I bought to my heart's content. I can write in a book, tear pages out, paste a picture on the cover, and even substitute pages of my writings for original pages of the particular copy or copies that I bought, and then sell them. By using "no modify," sellers are enforcing a right that they do not have. I have heard two arguments as to why the limitation is needed: people will think my stuff is poor quality because customers will mess it up, and buyers will mess things up and then want help or replacements. One can easily find the solutions to these objections in RL. No one will give me warranty service or replacement when I damage something by trying to modify it , so just say "No!" As to the second, it's pretty obvious that if everything is modifiable, all products may differ from what the creator originally made. Even if these arguments were valid, they would not change the fact that "no modify" violates consumers' IP rights. Obviously, enforcing IP rights that one does not possess infringes the legitimate IP rights of others. What would be wrong with just making "no copy" be the only permission that could be restricted? I am sure that there are sellers who will whine that such a system would put them out of business because the market will be flooded with used merchandise. I have two answers to that. One is, "Innovate! Make better stuff that is more desirable than your old stuff." That should be easy enough, since the platform keeps improving and making more possible. The second is that real world commerce is surviving with only "no copy" permissions on IP, even though they have to be enforced by legal action instead of technical limitation. From the consumer's point of view, the upside of such a change is obviously enormous. Not only would it solve the OP's problem, but we could loan or give friends things, sell them when we no longer needed them, etc. We also could not be victimized by sellers who lie about the permissions of their products, as I have been. There are only two reasons I can think of that I would miss being able to copy things I bought. One is that I like to keep backups in a prim in world. The second is that it's nice to be able to make a backup copy before modifying expensive items. Both of these needs could be met by allowing a copy to be made, but making it impossible to rez both or transfer either until one was deleted, so that only one could be used at a time, which is really the limitation that is needed to protect sellers' rights. Finally, why does the spell checker here not know words like OP and rez?

There are many. Paint.net is an excellent, free image editor. It can be downloaded from getpaint.net.

Thanks! That was it.

I have an object in my inventory in the Lost and Found Folder that is one prim that I created. I has a texture on it that I did not create, but for which I have full permissions. It is "no modify." How can that be, that I, the creator, do not have full permissions? Thanks.

@Cerise, thanks for the very useful tip.

Thanks, Venus. I have read that the effects of the same setting are much different in the LL viewer and Phoenix. One of my biggest issues is figuring out exactly what the definitions of the terms are. You would think LL would publish some documentation that would, at least, have definitions of menu terms, but they don't Grrrr. I have figured gravity out. It's a misnomer. Sag would be more descriptive of what it does. Interestingly, it seems to reach its maximum effect with a setting of 10.

What, exactly, happens when you try to logon?

I loved it when outfits were introduced. They saved me soooo much time dressing. I no longer had to search through my inventory every time to get just the right combination. After I had used them for a while, I discovered that they are hard to manage because there is no built-in way to organize them---there is only one level on the outfit tab. SL will not allow one outfit folder to be placed within another. However, it will permit a regular folder to be created within an outfit folder. Disappointingly, when one does that and then places an outfit folder within the regular folder, the outfit tab displays the contents of the lower level outfit folder in the first level outfit, and does not display the lower outfit folder within the regular folder. One workaround is to forgo using the outfit tab and use the inventory tab to manipulate outfits, but it's less convenient. Recently, I discovered that outfit folders can be moved to regular inventory folders outside of the My Outfits folder. They still work perfectly well, but they do not show on the outfit tab. I was able to get rid of a lot of clutter on the outfit tab by storing my winter outfits in another folder, where I also have the convenience of sorting them as much as I want. For example, I have a Holiday folder with subfolders for each holiday; when that holiday nears, I can easily drag the outfits back to the My Outfits folder. Another workaround to organize the Outfits tab is to name the outfits so that they are order in groups, e.g.., make "Dress" the first word for all dresses, etc. Another shortcoming of outfits is that the only way to make one is to wear everything in it and then save the new outfit, so that it contains not only clothing and all attachments, but skin, shape, etc. It becomes a real problem when one has dozens of outfits and decides to start wearing a new skin or shape. I think I have found the best workaround. I have one Nude Avatar outfit (One could have as many as one wanted.) containing skin, shape, eyes, bald head, tattoo layers I always wear, physics layer, AAA, and other attachments I always wear. I have a few other outfits containing only attachments that I wear in certain situations. I am removing the items that are in these outfits from all of my actual clothing outfits. I can first replace my outfit with the Nude Avatar outfit, then add the appropriate attachment outfit for the occasion, and finally add the clothing outfit. When I decide to change my skin or get a new AO, I'll only have to change the nude outfit. Right now, I have the physics layer in the Nude Avatar outfit, but I'm thinking that it may need to be in the individual clothing outfits because different clothing may require different physics settings once I learn to use physics properly. I'm posting this both to share with others what it has taken me months to learn and to stimulate discussion of how outfits can be used best. Others may have found valuable ways to use them better that I have not. Tell us your tricks!

@Torley: Thanks so much for that very useful tip. I had no idea those settings were there. It will save me hours, since I'll no longer have to keep panning the camera to see my front. @Chelsea: If you right click on the name of the physics layer on the My Outfits tab on the Outfits tab and then click on Edit Outfit, you can edit the Physics Layer without going into appearnance mode. You can change a setting and leave the edit window open while you test the effect. It sometimes helps to have a looping animation that you can just leave running.

I just tried it on a dance pole, and physics definitely worked. I wonder if the best thing might be to have different physics layers for different activities.

My primary reason for having a premium membership is to get support, which I really need once a year or so. If you have an annual membership, the net cost is nil. It costs $72 per year, but you get a L$300 per week stipend, equal to about $62 per year. If you don't use the 512 sq m land tier that comes with it, you can rent it out for L$0.15 per sq m per week, equal to about L$75 per week and about $15 per year. Yes, you do have to front the $72, but there is no continuing cost, and occasional problems arise that one really needs Linden support to solve.

When a similar thing happened to me, I used chat support to ask for help, and the Lindens fixed it for me in 20 minutes or so. If I remember correctly, a Linden came to my land. That was a couple of years ago.

If you catch me in world, I can probably help you figure it out.

In Vista, chat logs are located in C:\Users\yourusername\Appdata\Local, unless you have changed it. I don't know, but I expect it's the same in Windows 7.

I have been above 500,000 meters.I was using a flight feather, and left my avatar ascending for a few hours while I went about my RL business. I didn't try runing any scripts, except the fight feather.