Madeliefste Oh

No, you don't approve an open source option. You publish your 'book' at a compagny that states: "You retain any and all Intellectual Property Rights you already hold under applicable law in Content you upload, publish, and submit to or through the Servers, Websites, and other areas of the Service, subject to the rights, licenses, and other terms of this Agreement, including any underlying rights of other users or Linden Lab in Content that you may use or modify." If people want items that are open source they should use items that are open source. If people don't want items that have restrictions on redistribution, they simply should not buy them. 

KittyCat Ninetails wrote: One problem I find is I have thousands (literally) of sculptie maps. Some of them I purchased over 2 years ago. I cannot (and do not even try) keep track of changing tos on items I already own. So if I bought a sculptie from John and his tos at the time was that I could not give away or sell the map..and now his tos is that I cannot give away or sell the item I make from the map with copy/trans rights....do I have to worry about his new tos? The chances that I kept his old tos notecard are somewhere between slim and none....and slim is on his way out of town. You don't have to worry about Johns new tos. You must stick to the tos which applied on the moment of buy. That is the moment that the actual 'deal' between you and the original creator was made. So when a creator changes his tos this doesnt work backwards for items already sold, it only works for items sold under his new tos. It is the same as when you buy an object for a certain price. And the seller raises his price after a few months. Then he cannot come to you and say 'hey, you must pay me so and so much, because I have raised my prices now'.The new price doesn't work backwards to objects he has sold in the past.

Josh Susanto wrote: If you go to a hardware store and buy a bunch of wood and nails and such, how many clerks are going to warn you "yes, you may make a chair with these, but you may not sell the chair because the design of these components is valuable intellectual property."? This is not a good example. There is no IP right on wood or nails. You can better compare it with a bookshop. When you buy a book, take it home and decide to make your own cover for the book. Though you did made your own cover, that says 'Roman by Josh Susanto' , the content of the book is still protected by copyright law. You are allowed to make copies of your cover and sell those, but despide you made a new cover you are still not allowed to make copies of the text or claim the text as being yours. Just because you are not the IP right owner of the text.

Miyo Darcy wrote: I think soon the marketplace will sadly be floated with ripped modells. I don't think so. Models sold on 3d models sites are not suitable for SL. In general they are build in a away that they will be much to prim heavy for SL.People can buy for example a nice chair on a model site, or find a free chair model, but then when they bring it in SL the primcount might be 55. Who is going to buy that? While there a are nice 1 or 2 prims chairs available as sculpt? And in the future low prims chairs in mesh. You must be skilled in 3d to adjust a bought model for SL. It's a lot of work to make it suitable for the needs of the SL grid. It might take less time to model your own chair than to prepair someone else model for SL. When you make it yourself you have the advantage you are the IP right owner of the model.

Signed. Decisions about how to run my business depend on the plans for further development of the marketplace. For example: I have three different brands. More then a year ago Grant promised that there would be a future option for one avatar to have several shops for several brands. When I had to relist everything for the change from Xstreet to marketplace, I choose not to work with alts that hold different brands, but let all my merchandise on my main avatar. Now with this DD delivery it looks like I have to re-organise my selling system again. Again I'm at a point that I consider to use two alts for two of my brand. Because it's not shopper friendly when you have your marketplace store cluthered with merchandise that appeals to different target groups. It isn't good for the image building of your brands either. But I have not enough information to make a well weighted decision. I don't know if 'one merchants - more shops' is still on the to do list of the marketplace team. And if it is still planned for the future... what does future mean? Future can be a few months or a few years. I prefer to have all my merchandise on one avatar. I very seldom use an alt. But maybe I just must step over this, and start to work with alts to be able to have different shops for my brands. If I only knew what the plans were, and a rough time line... it would be more easy to make a decision.

As a seller of building components with full perms, I would like to see better protection of my IP rights. A lot of people still think that despite an user license or eula comes with a creation, they can ignore this and use the permissions that SL states. To make more clear that this is not the case, and the buyer is hold to an users agreement, I would like to see a new feature for this kind of items on the marketplace. It can be full perms meshes, but it applies also for full perms sculpties, textures, scripts. All items that help the builder build and must be full perms for this reason. This new feature will contain an 'I agree' button. The object can only be sold to the buyer, after he submits that he has read the terms of use and agrees on them. It will both make more clear for the buyer what his rights are; what can and cannot be done with the object, and it will give more protection to the IP right holder because there is an agreement about the use. If you like this idea, please vote or watch the jira: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-4085

Dartagan Shepherd wrote: I need to set my own terms, have them respected, have mechanics in place to automatically enforce some basic agreements (for instance distributing something full perm, that changes distribution permissions for the next->next owner. As in full perm for you, NOT for resale at these perms) That I also a good idea, the possibility to set next owner and second next owner permissions. I support that as well.

Thanks all for the support of the idea, this is the jira: https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-4085

As a seller of building components with full perms, I would like to see better protection of my IP rights. A lot of people still think that despite an user license or eula comes with a creation, they can ignore this and use the permissions that SL states. To make more clear that this is not the case, and the buyer is hold to an users agreement, I would like to see a new feature for this kind of items on the marketplace. It can be full perms meshes, but it applies also for full perms sculpties, textures, scripts. All items that help the builder build and must be full perms for this reason. This new feature will contain an 'I agree' button. The object can only be sold to the buyer, after he submits that the has read the terms of use and agrees on them. It will both make more clear for the buyer what his rights are; what can and cannot be done with the object, and it will give more protection to the IPright holder because there is an agreement about the use.

For me it depends, how mesh will be adapted by the community. I will concentrate on new objects first, when there is a large demand for mesh versions of my sculpts, I will consider. But in general I hardly make updates. I don't like to return to old projects. So I try to make my creations as good a possible before I release them, so there is no reason for updating them later.

I would suggest to pick the category where you have the less competition.

When the marketplace team makes changes to the marketplace, I think they should analyse first how much time these changes will steal from merchants. And come with a solution when this is an unreasonable amount of time. I would like to see a 'one click convert magic box to DD folders' feature when DD is released.

In April this year it was like I said. They might have repaired the bug in the meanwhile. I don't know. Best is to contact Dakota to get a clear answer. You can reach her by ticket.

DanielRavenNest Noe wrote: If it was me, I would have them create a new account, with their real life info. You add your payment info temporarily. Upload that one item on that account, then delete your payment info, and let them have the account back. Then the upload will be in their name, and all the problems will be theirs. Are you sure that is not against TOS? Since IP right is an RL right, I would not upload for an anonymous account. But when it was a real good friend, who for whatever reason cannot have piof I would consider to do so for him. But not without an signed paper from him as RL person, that states that he is the IP right owner and he allows me to operate as his agent in SL.

Sassy Romano wrote: Even then, there's little danger to LL, i'm sure in their SWAT analysis, they're not overly concerned about competing marketplaces. As to the OP''ers suggestion that "It wouldn't take much to convince some major merchants and if a few of them make a move, the rest will follow"... I doubt it, just like people keep making the same assertion about alternate grids. It's an additional marketplace, not instead of, unless you wish to spite yourself as a merchant. I make decisions based on my data, not which big merchant goes where, i'm not a sheep. It hasn't been said in this thread yet but in the freebie charging days it was suggested that merchants were leaving in droves (all prematurely I might add) but remember the statistic, in any given month, 80% of the items on Marketplace never sold. So simplistically, remove 80% of the content and nobody would have noticed. That's a lot of merchants would have to leave to have that impact and i'm sure those "big" merchants (what's big anyway?) are smart enough to realise that despite any frustrations they have with Marketplace, it is the place to be right now. So in summary, even if there was an alternate web shop, i'm sure most would treat it as an addition to their market portfolio, not a case of leaving the incumbent marketplace unless they just wanted to make a point, a point that nobody would notice. While reading this thread the same thought came in my mind. In those days, when that roadmap was announced with the plan for paying for listings on the MP, it was a very good time for alternate marketplaces. There was a lot of protest any many people took their merchandise from Xstreet (Xgreed) - or at least they said they did so -. Existing marketplace services were booming and new ones arrived. I never saw a reason to take my merchandise from xstreet, but I started listing my merchandise on two alternate marketplaces as well. It's a matter of betting on several horses. After a few months I could conclude that it was lost time to list my products there. I had more sales on Xstreet in one day, then I had on the other two together in half a year. I stopped listing new products on those marketplace. The time spend on adjusting the listing for those sites, was better spend on making new products. The problem was not the merchants didn't want to offer their merchandise on those alternate marketplace. The problem was that customers didn't know of their existance. I fully subscribe was Ceera said: You cannot compete when the company store has the monopoly on advertising. 

You sure have something to lose: time. Building up a store takes time. Often the places that are free, are for limited time, a few weeks or so. Then you have to pick up your things and go again. In the time you invest in building up your store and moving it again, and change the landmarks and such, you might as well make a nice product 

When it is for taxes... they are not interested at all in the linden dollars you earn. As long as your money stays in world you don't even have to tell them what you earn, because Linden dollars is not a valid currency for the taxes. But the moment you change your Linden dollars to USD, you do have a valid currency that can be taxed. In your dashboard, in the tab account you have this sub tab account statements. When you download those each month, and keep them, that is enough for taxes. (At least if you use the Lindex to change your L$ for USD. If you use another exchange I don't know how it works).

Marianne Little wrote: I think it's a third group of freebie hunters that keep an eye for quality freebies, even if they purchase §L. Oh maybe I was not so clear in my text. I too see a thrid group. That is what I call the 'overlap', people who are both buying customers but still pick up freebies. But what I find interesting to read is that several people say they use alts for freebieshopping, or do it both with a main account and alt. So a merchant must not conclude too soon that people who pick up freebies never come back to make a purchase. It can be that the person has several accounts and just uses one for the freebies, and she is a paying customer with another of several other accounts. Thanks for the info, ladies.

The marketplace is hardly a competitor of sims that provide shop space anymore, it has taken over. Two years ago I had my mainshop, my Xstreet shop, and about 30 profitable satelite shops in world. Those satelite shops helped landowners to pay their tier and to make a profit.They were attractive for me because the landowner could generate traffic that I could not reach with only my mainstore. Within a month after LL joined the in world purse and the xstreet purse about half of the satelite shops, were or no longer profitabe. Sometimes my affliate shop was still profitable for me, but the landowner could make the place as a whole no longer profitable for him, and stopped. Since the marketplace arrived the rest of the shops started running slower and slower and one by one they vanished. Hard working mall owners with real good concepts that had proven to succesfull for years suffered from the marketplace. Nowadays I have a mainshop and a marketplace shop. The marketplace shop has completely taken over the function of satelite shops. This marketplace shop takes 5% of all lindens spend out of the economy. While at affliate shops I was happy to pay 12 linden per prim, when the mallowner could bring me the traffic that justified this high prim price. Part of that money was used to pay tier to LL, the other part circulated within the in world economy. While I as a merchant am happy with the marketplace, in the bigger picture I consider it to be a loose-loose situation, both for LL and for land owners.

Thanks for visiting my store, and thanks for the compliment. I do feel we are pioneering. But I think we are already experts, that is to say in our own little corner of the virtual market. Sometimes I think I have a rather good picture of customer behaviour and marketing in SL, and then sometimes I hear people talking or see things happen and I think: I still have no clue about the secrets of a virtual economy. But what is a kind of obstacle, of so you will challenge, for becoming an expert is that things often change in SL. For example you did get a lot of expertise on how to make your merchandise visible in search, and search is changed. You find out how to advertise in the most profitale way for your brand on Xstreet, and LL changes the system to the marketplace. And you must start again by trial and error finding the best method to give your brand visibility. Or you finally have settled your brand on a nice homestead and LL raises the price with an extra ordinary amount. And every time you must be flexible to these changes. It's often a matter of adept or die. Those kind of thing will happen in the future as well. For example the function of in world groups might change with the new network system LL is implementing. People who have invested years in building up a group or groups might find negative effects from this. Then you can have a lot of expertise on 'how to grow my group' but if the system no longer support the current form of groups, you must be flexible to translate your expertise to the new system. Adapt or die. (I don't know enough yet about this new system to predict the influence it will have on SL groups, I was just thinking of an example of something that might happen). Mesh is a change that will influence the market as well. Some will win customers because of mesh, some will loose customers because of mesh. I think it is very important to stay informed about changes and to be flexible enough to use the expertise you already have to do what is best for your enterprise in a changing world. Because some knowlegde you have gained can be worthless tomorrow, but other knowledge you have gained will still be usefull in ten years. 

I'm sure there is another kind of spin-off as well, that is no such much word of mouth, but more 'picture to eye'. For example an avatar very active on Flickr makes a photo shoot of a model in a dress from X. In one of the pictures you see the model in the dress and in the background one of your chandeliers. Now this Flickr account has 800 followers. One of them asks in the comments by the picture 'where is that lamp from'? Or this picture with your lamp in it is choosen by another Flickr group as the picture of the week... Flickr is just one example of how communities gather around visual input and where products can pop up in pictures and cause spin-off in your sales.

I don't have one best seller either. I have some products that sell all the time, I have some products that sell just now and then, and then like you I have a range of products that goes slow for months and then suddenly there is a periode they go as hot buns. Since my sales comes 80% from the marketplace, I think it has more to do with visibility on the marketplace. Once it gets a certain degree of visibility the selling is growing. And sometimes for undeclarable reasons it sinks back again, and other one becomes temporary more populair. It might be a bit word of mouth, but in general creators are not very eager to reveal their sources to others. When my objects come in world they are part of a new creation and don't carry my name any longer. So they don't advertise for me, but for my customers. Thus in my case it can not be what causes this sudden hype for one of the items. Freebies to stimulate sales have never worked for me, in non of my brands. What I observe is that shoppers and freebie hunters are different categories of customers. There is just a very small overlap in these groups. The overlap is people who are already shoppers and pick up a good freebie now and then, people who participate in organised hunts to discover small shops they never have heard of before, and people who are on the edge between freebie buyer and paying customer. I don't have any hard figures, but my guess is that 99,9 % of the freebie shoppers is never going to spend any dime in SL. And the 0,1% that becomes a paying customer has hunt so many freebies that your name is already burried in the big pile of presents, and will never pop up again. From what I have observed from freebie shoppers is that there are two main categories: One group is starters in SL. Hunting freebies gives people something to do in SL, styling your avatar with freebies is a part of proces of getting used to SL. It can also be a way to make friends, people help each other with hunting, they form couples or small groups. Some of them might one day become a paying customer (most of the time not your costumer), but the majority of them has left SL before they come to the point to make this decission. The other group is one who has 'freeb' as lifestyle. They don't have money to spend in SL, or they don't want to spend money in SL (or more in general online), or they are principal against commerce in SL. For them it is a sport to live in SL without spending, and they take pride in their freeb lifestyle. This group will never become your paying customer, no matter how you try to attempt them. I think you will profit most from the overlap between freebiehunter and paying costumers when your brand is positioned there on the market to be attractive for the beginning spender. Your brand must be visual attractive, a bit more stylish in its own category then the average shop and offer very affordable prices. 

Here they still stay choose neutrality. See DMCA page, this it what they write: How does Linden Lab determine who "wins" and "loses"? Linden Lab does not adjudicate the substance of the copyright claim: we do not declare winners and losers. Your copyright in an item is determined in the real world, by real-world processes including the DMCA. The DMCA process allows users of an online service to resolve copyright disputes using the adjudication systems available in the real world. 

I find it hard to explain this in English, but I'll give it a try. LL is not responsable for the damage you and your neighbour bring to each other when you have a a fight. But LL is responsable to a certain degree for the content on it's servers. LL is by law obligated to take down content that infringes someones copyright. But as long as LL doesn't know that there is an infringement, LL cannot be held responsable for hosting 'illegal' content. So that some people do sell products that infringes someones copyrights (sometimes copyrights of big compagnies) can be possible because the legal IP right holder never found out about these infringements, or because he did not claim his rights. Only when the IP rightholder sends in a claim in the light of dmca is LL obligated by law to receive the claim and have it investigated by its copyright agent. LL is also obligated to take the content from the servers when a dmca claim is valid. The day that a server provider by law will be made responsable to solve the issues that his users have among each other, is the day that LL will intervene in resident to resident conflicts. That day will never arrive.

It depends what you make if you need an in world store. When you make objects that you cannot show in their full glory on the marketplace is it worth to invest in a in world store. For example when you sell animations, the marketplace cannot give your customer the experience of trying your animations on their own avatar, while in an in world shop you can put up some stands or poseballs that show the products. Our for example when you make butterflies that fly... you can ad a movie at your product on the marketplace to show the movement, but the experience to see them in world might be more attractive for your customer. When you sell clothes, you sell them by the picture. Whether a customer sees your picture on the marketplace or in an in world store, it is by the picture he must decide to buy or not. A picture in world has no additional value above a picture on the marketplace. The only thing what in world shop can do what the marketplace can't is to create an atmosphere around your products. About sales in world versus marketplace: For me is it about 20% in world, 80% on marketplace. It was like that when the marketplace did not exist yet, but was still Xstreet, and it stayed like that after the changes. This has all to do with the shopping habbits of my target group, builders and creators. 20% of them wants to see the objects first in world to jugde them, and 80% doesn't want to loose valuable time on in world shopping, they want to go on with their projects. But even if it was only 5% that bought from my in world shop, I find it necessairy to have this in world shop. The customer must have a chance to see how the products behaves in world. For my products it's an important part of the service that my brand offers.