Madeliefste Oh

I don't mind you discussing RL politics or economy, but please start another thread for it. It has nothing to do with this residents / business survey that this thread was started for.

So translated to money this means you only get about 363 usd for your 100.000 L$ on Virwox. And Virwox is taking 27 usd more to cash out then Linden Lab. I knew there was a difference, but would not have thought it is so big.

When you sell for example 100.000 L$, from the Linden you get (after paying exchange fee) to your account US$ 390.18 What amount do you get selling the same sum at Virwox?

Toysoldier Thor wrote: I really wished medhues ultra right wing political ramblings would stop as it falls far outside this thread and it borders on the edge of ensighting political debate on a virtual world commerce thread. I agree. I think it makes no sense at all to use the frame of the rl economy as a matrix to look at the SL economy. Avatars are immortals, they don't need water of food to survive, food is just for playing. They don't need a house to shelter of a bed to sleep, and when they have it's just for playing. Prims are free and endless available, other then production materials in rl. A golden ring in rl has at least the value of the gold it is made of. In SL the price of gold or silver or tin is exactly the same: 10L upload costs for the texture. In rl things are running out, not in SL. The number of copies you can sell is endless, and the total number of available goods keeps growing and growing. And besides that all you are not in a construction where people have equal right to vote who rules the world. We, residents are in relation to Linden Lab, as the people are to the gods. The concept of the world in their hands and you depend on them for very single cube you rez. You could not vote for Linden X who planned to change in world search, or Linden Y who was against. The gods just reshape the world to the format that fits them the best, and you just have to deal with it. No matter how much you pray or beg or turn your back against the gods, their will be done. Say 'Amen' or leave, alternatives are not invented yet.

Toysoldier Thor wrote: That was exactly my thought. I would like to include that his map get removed even though he proved he paid for my pack since he violated the terms of my agreement. But I am not sure how to provide instructions to the DCMA to LL that would only remove my maps from his inventory and not my maps entirely from the asset db. I also agree with your reasons why I should still file. I would not have contacted him at all, but send a DMCA directly. He did not contact you either for the use of your product outside your terms of use. What you discribe from his reaction he seems reasonable, but next time you might catch someone who is less reasonable. By contacting this person you alarm him. It takes time before your DMCA is handled by the Lab, time he can use to bring your maps over to an alt, or a friend, or to his computer or to another grid outside SL, or put them as freebies for sale in a sandbox, or whatever comes to his mind. Another argument not to contact is you destroy your own prove. When he has stopped selling the item both on marketplace and in world, the abuse has stopped before your DMCA arrived. I'm not sure they still will take actions when the abuse is no longer going on. You just should file following the format that LL gives. You can ask them to do this or that or such or so, but they will just follow the standard procedure. The content will be removed only from the suspected avatar, from his inventory, from his marketplace shop and from the place in world where it is rezzed or sold with him as owner.

Trinity Yazimoto wrote: I dont sell full perms items, neither my templates, but i think there is here a real lack of security for this kind of business. I dont have any answer to bring here, but its hard for me to accept that there is no way to prevent that things like this happen. Im really admirative when i think to full perms items merchants. Because really; for me its a risky business and they still do because we need full perms items. It needs a lot of courage. And i do respect this a looooot ! i sometimes use some full perms contents that i include into my creations. For me its more than obviousness that they cant be used as they are sold to me. I never understood where is the point to use them as they are sold full perm except maybe the only purpose of money... But well, i dont have this mindset lol. It could be prevented with a different permission system. For example there could be a second creator layer and an end user layer. The original creator could set full perms in the second creator layer, but restrict to mod/copy or mod/trans in the end user layer. Other system are possible as well, but I don't have any hope this is ever going to change. I doubted pretty much before I decided to take the step and become a full perms seller. In the past I made products in cooperation with others, because I believe in joining talents. There are only a very few people who are good in every field of creating in SL, often people have one passion or maybe two: or scripting, or texturing, or animating, or sculpting, or blogging, etc. To make products that have the 'wow' factor you need the best talent from every field that is involved int the specific product. Then one day I came to the insight that what you can do on micro level (working with 2 or 3 people for one product), can also be done on meta level. It is much more anymous and abstract, but for me providing full perms items is driven by the idea that working together leads to more interesting products then working on your own. I do my best to offer a good base, that is easy for people to work with. I don't mind when people use my product 'as it is' in a larger build, but I get excited when people really add something from their own talent to make my base a better product. This possibility of joining talents on larger scale is what pushed me into the field of full perms. All disadavantages and risks that come with it, are they worth it? Yes, for me they are. I can realize my vision and develop my skills while it brings in money at the same time.

Darrius Gothly wrote: ! I think I have a new profile picture now. I did not realise the ambition to win that contest was so serious :matte-motes-wink-tongue:

Darrius Gothly wrote: Mind you, the chances of getting the Marketplace Dev Team to do any work on the site is IMO less likely than me winning the Miss Universe contest, but let's examine things anyway. Never tried is lost on forehand. The chance is small, but still not ruled out.

Drake1 Nightfire wrote: According to the TOS , technically they don't have to convert $L to USD.. ever. "You acknowledge that Linden dollars are not real currency or any type of financial instrument and are not redeemable for any sum of money from Linden Lab at any time." However you can sell them for a sum of money to other residents, on LL's Lindex Echange, or any third party exchange you trust. They just are saying the LL never will buy or refund L$ to residents, in order to cover themselves for various possible scenarios.

Gaia replied to this question in this thread

The bot owner claims to make 40.000 L$ a day with this practice. See interview

Heavenly Villa wrote: We want to help you to grow your business in SL and for that to happen we need your feedback. Please take a few minutes to complete the survey. Your feedback will help us to help you and the SL economy, to help improve those things in SL we all know are frustrating or not going well. Thanks for bringing this survey, and thanks for your efforts to help us all. Though I'm very cynical about the actual influence you can have on is LL, I admire the attempt and I'm interested to see the results.

Perrie Juran wrote: Banning would still be at Linden Labs discretion. I'm too lazy to look up the pertinent statement in the TOS right now, but the Lab states repeat offenders are subject to having their accounts cancelled by LL. The question is though what does LL consider to be a repeat offender? How many time do have to repeat before you are banned? And how many fresh alts can you use? Another question is: How many land must you own to get away with it? (I know about a repeative infringer, who uses an alt to sell his illegal content in world. The main avatar pays for two sims, both main avatar and alt are still around in SL. Banning this person seems not an option for LL.)

Toysoldier Thor wrote: My question to all of you that have gone through the DCMA process with LL is: Once its established that his listing is an IP violation by LL, can I ask LL to provide me a record of all sales this listing has made under this account? Further yet can I get LL to have him pay me a fair value for all sales he has made from my content? He sells my content for $25L - I sell my legit content for $850L. If its proven he made 100 sales from this listing, can I ask LL directly from his account a fair value of lets say $500L per sale? Or is this something that I would have to file a small claims court on against him directly? If so, I would guess that makes it not feasible. I just curious since the sad thing about this is that even when I go through all this work to shut this dude down, the only punishment he gets is that he has to remove the listing. He is rewarded to keep all the sales he has made in MP as I would guess LL would not even give me all his sales in the past. Thoughts? When you send in an accurate DMCA report (per post or per fax) LL is going to deleted the item from the marketplace and from his inventory. There is nothing more you have to expect from LL. When you are looking for financial compensation you have to go to court. It would be very much in your advantage when you have your copyright for the product registered.

When the marketplace was develloped the assumption was: 1 merchant = 1 shop. This was not conform how commerce had devellop in world, merchants can have several shops or several brands. Not only merchants with mulptiple brands don't fit in this concept, but also for shops who are run by more then 1 merchant the is current marketplace not accurate. In the time Grant and Brodsky Linden were working on the marking place, Grant promised the possibility to have several shops on the marketplace would be a future feature. When we had to redo all our listings for the new marketplace I had to choose to use several alts to make it possible to have my brands per brand in one shop, or to list everything with my main avatar. With Grants promise in mind, I choose the latest, because it seemed only a matter of time before I was able to devide my merchandise per brand on the marketplace. This is two and a half years ago now. Still nothing is done to make it possible for one merchant to catagorise products in several shops or devide shops to list for several brands. Any change that money motivates you to work on this long time need? What if merchants pay to have one or more extra shop for their main avatar on the marketplace?

I'm bringing up my concerns not to flame you or discourage you, but to help you with the further development of your project. I can imagen that you have spent your time and thoughts mainly on the programming of your tool, To make it happen that it all works flawless, which in itself is admirable. But the succes of your business does not only depend on how well the coding is done. You offer a service in which you work with other peoples copyrighted content. Your customers need to get permission from these IP right owners to be able to profit from your tool. As an IP right owner I bring up my concerns to challenge you to find solutions for my concerns. Because the succes of your business depends also on willingness of IP right owners to give permission to their buyers for the use of your tool. When people start using your tool without these permissions from the IP right owners, the result will be that DMCA's are filed against the meshes generated by your tool. Linden Lab does act on DMCA's and when the uploader (your customer) cannot come up with a counter DMCA in which he states he is the legit copyright holder, the result is that Linden Lab is going to delete the meshes uploaded by your customers. I think you really have good reasons to try to prevent that such is going to happen. The whole IP right issue might give you more head crushing spreads than you had expected, but that does not mean it is unsolvable. The succes of your business depends partly on how well you will adress the concerns brought up in this thread. Profit from it for the further development of your product, and please don't consider it to be an attack.

Casper Priestman wrote: The market would most likely be limited, so I would think carefully about how much effort you plan to invest, unless of course it's a proof of concept and the reward is in the experience gained by it. Indeed, it is not a uncomplicated project at all your are investing in. I do see a potential market for your service, but my fear would be that it not a growing market, but a market that will slowly but steadily starve off. A lot of sculpty makers stopped with sculpties and concentrate on mesh now. So the supply of sculpties is strongly declining. What I experience in my own business is that I have three types of customers: mesh fans, sculpty die hards and mix-and-matchers. The mesh fans were in the beginning early adaptors who stopped buying sculpty maps as soons a mesh arrived, but this group is rapidly growing. Well layout uv maps are much more handy for texture artists to work with then textures for sculpty maps. People who experience this tend to choose more often for meshes then for sculpties. For mix and matchers it is not such a big deal if an object is made as mesh or as sculpty. When they have in mind they need a table with six legs for a project they will buy the best looking, prim lowest, most affordable table with six legs, no matter if it is mesh or sculpt. The sculpty die hards is the smallest group. They refuse to use mesh, it can be because they have an older computer that is not capable of running a mesh viewer, or it can be that they have dediced to dedicate their brand to customers who run sl on older computers. Or they just hate mesh for whatever vague reason. I get a lot of request for costum builds and such. Notable is that during last year I was asked about 20 times if I was willing to make a sculpty version of this or that mesh of mine. But not a single costumer asked me if I wanted to make a mesh version of one of my sculpties. I would have expected to be the other way around. So I'm always curious why people ask for a sculpt version, when there is a mesh version available. And 95% of the times it is: old computers cannot run mesh viewers. I don't hope to discourage you, but think indeed that the market is limited and expect that it will shrink more and more when time passes.

emSynth wrote: However the good news is that we can protect your IP in several ways. We can delete the files automatically and immediately after use. This will significanly lower the window of opportunity for theft. We can perform cross checks between the LSL token and the server scripts, comparing things like owner name, file name, and possibly do something with the sculpt map data itself such as show the user a big randomly selected pixel in SL and on the web page and asking them if they are the same color or what color it is, as a sort of captcha thing maybe. Also we can pay extra for a dedicated security router to be installed at the server site and install security software as well. What does it help me that you delete the files, while you spread the mesh files among your customers? We already have to deal with a lot in SL with people who are not aware of copyright issues, who think like 'full perms' means I can do with it what I want, or who think SL tos overrules the merchants tos, or who think that content is not copyrighted when there is no copyright sign on it, and so on and so on. Most people are not aware that they do not own the sculpty map they have bought, but that what they bought is actually a license to make use of the sculpt map within SL. I also do have customers who are perfectly aware of copyright issues and act accordingly to it. But in general you cannot say the awareness about IP rights is very high. That is the context where you are going to send my work to peoples computers. Since the content is no longer only in SL but available on peoples computers, my IP right is as risk, in a much larger world then just SL. It is very well possible that people think they can do whatever they want with my work, since they paid me for the sculpt map and paid your business to make a mesh out of it. They simple feel it is their own mesh. And a percentage of them will do with it whatever they want because they are not aware of IP right, or because they just don't care at all. And that is my concern. Obj files or a dae files based on my sculpt maps stored on peoples computers opens the whole world for possible abuse. And the world is simply too big for me as a small business to control and defend my rights in. Also, my partner in this venture mentions that it is unlikely that someone will attempt to hack a server to steal a product that they can either copy bot or more easily just purchase with the intention of violating the agreement that you specify. You just need one drama queen as unsatisfied customer, give her not enough attention to or react not tactful enough to her complaints, and a boyfriend who likes to show his hacking powers, to make it happen.

Something in that direction could be a workable model for your business But even above the reward aspect I would like a business like yours to minimize my risks. For example when you choose to work with a system where you send out .dae files to thousands of individual computers of your customers, the risk for me that my work is spread illegally is much higher, then when your customers do not get the file itself in hands. When there is a system behind where the file is stored at your server and only is accessable for uploading to SL with the SL viewer (or third party viewers that are on the SL Viewer list), this would be a much more attractive situation for me to give permission, then in the first case. And the safety of your system? What do you do to protect my work from hackers for example?

emSynth wrote: Regarding the accepted practice in the event a creator cannot be contacted, what is it then? Then it is impossible for the buyer of the sculpt map to purchase additional licenses or rights. He has to stick to the license / eula / terms of use that came with the item at the moment he bought it. You bring up a very interesting point with the creator name being assigned to that of the uploadIng party. That would imply that only the creator of the sculpt map could use our tool, which would be fine with me. If I recall correctly, however, according to the ten question upload test, one only needs permission from the IP owner to do an upload. And upon mentioning that, I have just realized that the creator and the IP owner may be separate people. So, sigh, it gets complicated. When you look at it from commercial point of view, the target group 'creators of sculpty maps' is not very interesting for your tool. People who can make sculpts maps, can also make meshes. Your tool would maybe saves them a bit of time, but it is work that can be done by hand easily. And when you do so by hand you can as well improve the mesh in the way you want it to be. So frankly I doubt you will sell your tool a lot when you aim for this target group. It's a small group with a high "I invent my own wheel" - attitude. In my opinion the ideal target group for your tool is 'second creators'; the people who buy sculpts map to make their own creations with them. These are the people who cannot make sculpts or meshes themselves, so an extra tool for 'meshing sculpties' could be very handy in some cases. This is also a much larger group then sculpt creators, so you can expect more customers then when you aim for 'sculpt creators'. It is very rarely in case of sculpty maps that the creator is not the IP right owner. Sculpty maps are products that only can be used in SL (and clone grids of SL). Cases in which creators sell IP rights for sculpty maps to a third party in SL hardly happen. But it still can happen, mainly in cases where a sculpty creator is hired by an RL compagny and copyrights are turned over by contract. SL tos says this about uploading content: You agree that you will not upload, publish, or submit to any part of the Service any Content that is protected by Intellectual Property Rights or otherwise subject to proprietary rights, including trade secret or privacy rights, unless you are the owner of such rights or have permission from the rightful owner to upload, publish, or submit the Content and to grant Linden Lab and users of the Service all of the license rights granted in these Terms of Service. Uploading content is not really your problem. People who want to use your tool are responsible to get permission from the IP right owner to make a mesh out of the sculpt map and to upload it under their own name to SL. When a creator has bought a lot of sculpt maps from several creators, it can be some work to get each and everyones permission, and some sculpt makers might refuse to give permission, and then there is nothing your customer can do about it. I think it will often be more work for your customer to get all these permissions together then it will be to run your tool. The tos about downloading: Linden Lab and other Content Providers may use the normal functionality of the Service, including the permissions system and the copy, modify, and transfer settings, to indicate how you may use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, or perform their respective Content solely In-World. You acknowledge and agree that the permissions system and other functionality of the Service do not grant you any license, consent, or permission to copy, modify, transfer, or use in any manner any Content outside the Service. You agree that you will not copy, transfer, or distribute outside the Service any Content that contains any Linden In-World Content, in whole or in part or in modified or unmodified form, except as allowed by the Snapshot and Machinima Policy, or that infringes or violates any Intellectual Property Rights of Linden Lab, other Content Providers, or any third parties. So the SL Tos does not allow people to download a sculpty map to their own computer, unless ofcourse they have the permission from the IP right owner to do so. Then another issue, that might become your problem, is that you as a service also need permission from the IP right owner to have their content on your machine. I think that you here have a bottle neck in your project. This is at least for me a border that I don´t want to pass. In individual cases I sometimes do give permission to a customer to download my work to their personal computer, when they come up with a valid reason to do so, but there it stops where I want to distribute. That is also stated in the license agreement of my works: You may NOT resell, redistribute or publish the sculpt maps, or psd files in any form. You may not transfer these sculpt maps or psd files to any other virtual world, website, torrent, or to any other 3rd party individual or entity. Unless... you come up with a business model that makes it attractive for me as a sculpty creator to give my permission. But when there is nothing in it for me, why would I allow you to have my work on your computer? It is only enlarging the risks I already have as a merchant of full perms items. A consideration for me is also: sculpts maps have no value besides in SL and third party grids based on SL. As a merchant of full perms items I have the risk to have my work now and then is illegally copied. But since that is limited to SL (and those few other almost empty worlds) I am prepared to take that risk. With meshes it is something different, since 3d models do have value outsite SL, in a lot of other surroundings. Since I don't want to spend my time on filing dmca's to whatever website, torrent or isp I like to keep this risk of having my work spread all over the web as low as possible. So no, I'm think I'll pass, and won't change my license to make it possible for my customers to work with your tool. Because for me it is only more risk without reward. Unless you come up with a business model that makes it attractive enough for me to change my mind...

Yep, IP rights is the issue. emSynth wrote: The creator of the sculpt map typically reserves the right of ownership of each data file via copyright, however the situation is that the files are released as full perm items due to the nature of their use by the customer. It is not always the case that sculpts map are released as full perms items. Several sculpt creators release their products as no mod / copy / trans. This makes it possible for the second creator to sell the items in SL, but prevents that the maps are downloaded and for example used in other grids then SL. There is precedent. On occasion a customer of a sculpt map creator may need to contact the creator for clarification of the rights agreement for whatever reason. When this occurs, the generally accepted procedure is that the customer must make a good faith effort to contact the creator, and if after some time the creator cannot be located - usually due to leaving SL for some reason - then the customer can consider the IP to be public domain. To my limited knowledge this is accepted procedure. I'm quiet sure this is not the case. Copyrighted items can be deeded to the public domain by the IP right owner. The only case that I know of when copyrighted works fall into the public domain without approval of the IP right owner, is when the copyright expires. This is usually 70 years after the death of the creator and in some cases 95 years after the date of publication. Finally, I will mention an analogy that helps us understand the situation. A software tool is a lot like a hardware tool. The sculpt2mesh tool is a bit like a wrench in that it performs some function that either a car creator or a car customer may wish to perform upon the car. Unfortunately it is also possible for the wrench to be misused in a variety of ways ranging from damaged bolts, stripped threads, or even illegal and / or violent use. Do we outlaw wrenches because of the possibility of misuse, or do we educate all wrench users about the proper use of the wrench? I choose the latter. I think it can be a useful tool, and when it comes with educational notes about he proper use, it will be fine. Then it is up to the IP owners to decide for themselves if they want to give permission for their sculpt maps to be tranformed into mesh or not. I have another question, that has do with creator name. When you want to upload a mesh to SL, you have to be registered. The meshes will always carry the name of the uploader as creator. How will this work with your tool? Must someone who makes a mesh out of a sculpt map also be registered for mesh upload? And whose name will the mesh show as creator? I ask you all these question, because I don't know yet if I would allow my customers to use your tool. I'm trying to make up my mind.

emSynth wrote: Coming to a website near you soon: sculpt2mesh conversion! It will be simple, easy, and affordable to convert sculpt maps that you own into mesh objects. Who do you consider as the owner of a sculpt map? The maker of a sculpt map or the buyer of a sculpt map?

Madeliefste Oh wrote: 1. Improve mesh skills. For sculpts I made all my textures in Photoshop. With mesh I'm now experimenting more with 3d generated textures, and 3d textures combined with Photoshop. Apart from getting more handy with modeling I will mainly focus on getting more skilled in texturing in 3d. 2. I'm going to expand cYo further. The focus will be more on mesh then on sculpties. 3. New brand. I think I found a hole in the market that is not covered yet. I'm going to make a new brand to cover this hole. It will be a niche shop. All objects will be made out of mesh. I'm not going to do this alone, it will be a cooperative project, where I work with several people who are talented in a field I don't cover myself. We need about half a year for all preparations, so the brand will not see the light before mid 2012. Since we still cannot have several stores on one merchant, I'm going to work with an alt as seller for this brand. Because it is just necessairy all objects in the brand stay together in one shop, both in world and on the marketplace. Check 1. Done 2. Done 3. Got the people together, a good team. Made the business plan, designed the overall look, started with the first two products, and then RL came between. I had to shunt this project. When, about two months ago, I wanted to pick the project again two of the four people were not available anymore. At the moment I'm unsure if I still want to invest the time in a new SL brand, or better choose to use this time to develop something for another environment. Might be better to bet on several horses, since SL keeps slowly shrinking. On the other hand the project is still on my mind, and the people that are still available are people I enjoy to work with. And the hole is still there, no brand jumped into in yet. All with all I did not make up my mind yet, if I'm going to pick up this ambition again in 2013. The project might starve softly, or one day the passion and urge to realise this idea might pop up again, and in the end the brand will still see the light. I'm curious. 2013: Surprise me!

Happy holidays to you all, merchants and shoppers.

Something else that was catching my eye, is the bottum part of the floor is taking a large space in your texture. I think you don't need the bottum at all. Nobody is ever going to see the bottum of the floor, but it is now taking almosthalf of your texture. The quality of the visible parts can almost be doubled by deleting the bottum. Another option, when you insist on having a bottum, is to make this bottum floor very small in the uv map. Since it won't be seen, you rather save the precious texture space for the important things that can be seen when the model is rezzed.