Spica Inventor

"Anyone else get a dark sense of foreboding from LL actually asking us something for a change? Its a bit creepy **Only uploaded images may be used in postings**://secondlife.i.lithium.com/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-happy.gif" border="0" alt=":smileyhappy:" title="Smiley Happy" />" hehe. I think these rare customer feedback things are much more for public relation brownie points which equate to making more money for L.L. then they are for anything else. (Controlling the way a customer thinks is priority number one when it comes to successfully marketing to them). ;-)

I recognize that there is a spam causing problem with things being listed on the SL Marketplace and not ever selling even one of them sometimes over multiple years. Perhaps things that don't sell over a period of time (say 6 months) should be automatically unlisted as at least part of an anti-spam solution?

I'll be repeating alot of suggestions many Posters have already mentioned.... 1. Get rid of store name as a result in general relevance search. 2. Combine search categories as an option. 3. Filter demos as an option. 4. List total amount sold for public view. 5. List price/sell performance history. 6. List time/sell performance history. (by month perhaps). 6. Default to maximum search results items per page (96) or more. 7. Limit keywords to a much smaller amount (say 10 perhaps). Or characters( 50 perhaps) 8. Stop pumping higher priced (overpriced) stuff to the top of relevance search results (Contrary to the opposite what some here are erroneously claiming L.L.'s tactics are again as L.L. in reality is highly interested in causing price inflation to the detriment of all.) ;-)

Creating (high quality) stuff is very important for economic growth in SL, but what's much more important than that at the moment is reducing the cost of land substantially, because the cost of land (funneling too much of the economy into the L.L. treasury in that manner) is holding back creativity more than anything else by far.

Let me put my LL cap on again to answer this million dollar question.... Demos in your face causes you to buy expensive stuff, right? Freebies means L.L. makes less money, right? Of course that's shallow simpleton thinking, but that's the way L.L. thinks. So that's why after dozens of similar requests and separate topics about separating demos from freebies in the search results over the years right here on the merchants forum, things haven't changed. :matte-motes-wink:

It's nice to see some honesty about why most people are so concerned about ripped mesh items being introduced into SL from foreign sources, and the real reason being that higher quality ripped items being introduced into SL essentially take market share away from pre existing SL merchants, in theory anyway. However looking at the birds eye view, if mesh copyright violations serve to attract more people and therefore money into SL due to improved aesthetics, perhaps existing merchants are not being economically damaged afterall as they share in the economic advantages of a growing user base. Therefore it seems not to be about worshiping on the alter of IP rights afterall with many, it's much more about me me me and mine mine mine. :matte-motes-evil-invert::matte-motes-wink:

Well let me put it this way. If having to enforce IP rights costs LL say 20 million dollars a year in various expenses and overheads, if changing the TOS in some manner could reduce that to say 3 million dollars a year for the first year, I would think that LL would jump at that opportunity. Of course if such short sighted behavior costs them long term profits at some point, what is that to LL, a company run by executives and shareholders who would never be 'playing' in SL otherwise? I wonder if the we, the people who play in SL could scrape up all the 'Linden' shares and buy the company ourselves? Then we could vote on all the issues and it could be like a Democracy or something. hehe :matte-motes-wink-tongue:

It's obvious to me the reason why it took LL so long to give an official/unofficial rebuttal is because they had to come up with some (phony) rhetorically based generalized reason why the TOS was changed in the way that is was. In order for this propaganda to be most easily believed, it required an analysis for a period of time on what you guyz where speculating about on this subject to more easily reinforce your views with a deceptive smoke and mirrors based 'informal' letter when 'the analysis' was completed, and that would most likely be believed by the general SL audience. Of course Cowboy was here to sockpuppet it, being his job to do so. No doubt there are multiple real reasons why the TOS IP rights was changed, and they may have all been covered during previous posts by you people, but I am now convinced that none of the real reasons where to help creators and merchants in any way IMHO. Higher short term net profits and short term company value (meaning squeezing towels in the first and acquiring content rights for the second) has to be the real reason and which is typical stratagem for a company struggling with profitability due to too many bad decisions and a situation greatly aggravated by a lack of direct competition.

It would seem to me that it would be a much better business model if land costs where less and marketplace cuts for LL where more to compensate. Perhaps an 20/80 land/marketplace gross profit ratio or better would be ideal. Inworld purchases are what they are, and I can't see promoting them or not promoting them would make much difference to the success of SL other than causing some damage to profitability in either case by meddling where they don't need to meddle, and therefore should probably be left alone to develop naturally. I figure that LL thinks that stuffing more people onto fewer sims (and fewer servers) is somehow going to be more profitable for them, (reducing overhead, expenses and such) and calling it greater efficiency which would equate to greater profitability in the short term but in the long run such downsizing philosophies are usually doomed. LL should focus on getting more people to spend more of their time in SL and I think it would greatly help populate whatever land there is, (and the amount of land there is shouldn't really be that important), if people could actually afford to purchase a chunk of land to put more purchases on, and then with that added 'entertainment' they can call their own through greater creativity or whatever they want to do, they would 'hang out' alot more which equates to spending more and more people spending. Relying on six figure salary types to make monthly tier payments on most of the sims and having everyone else carrying around their backpacks on the backs of their avatars just aint gonna sustain it.

Oh oh. Companies having financial problems deliberately start to do these type of things. Not a good sign. :-O

Try temporarily getting rid of the Ainu words and see if that was the culprit for some 'strange' reason.

"*I respond to questions on the issue. I was recently asked my opinion from someone and, after giving it, the response was "The content in SL is so poor compared to other MMOs (this constant comparison to "other MMOs" is really getting on my last nerve) that LL has no interest in the content here." Well, I tried...lol." Well, the general quality of the architecture would no doubt improve if land was cheaper so that peeps could actually afford to put a nice variety of structures down in world and in so doing create an economic incentive for creators to produce nicer stuctures due to a much larger market for these things. The vast majority of the peeps that come and go in SL just can't afford to purchase anything that doesn't go directly on their avatars due to land costs, and I find that to be one of the very big reasons why SL is slowly dieing instead of growing rapidly.

Well here's my attitude about it.... I don't care if peeps are uploading ripped mesh from outside the game from sources that have nothing to do with SL, but I do care about copybotting of stuff internal to the game and think that that type of activity should not be allowed, and LL should definitely invest money in monitoring and enforcing the disallowance of such. I haven't created anything since I found out about the TOS change and am still 'extra' angry at LL in general , but I'm not all that prolific about making things and putting them up for sale anyway, so my impact and extortion ability on getting the TOS changed back through those means is pretty much zilch. Like many have suggested, it will probably take a good year for all the creators and those wanting to be creators to even learn about the changes in the new TOS, so I'm not expecting any measurable impact from protestations for at least a half a year to a year. I don't think we need to go to extreme measures such as getting everyone to take their stuff off the market until the TOS gets changed back, (since many creators really do rely on SL income to pay bills and such), that wouldn't be a realistic or productive option for them right now assuming that the TOS gets changed back within a year or so from much less drastic pressures such as the ones going on right now imo, because I can see LL taking a big hit to their profits for a few months just to cause a lot of pain for these merchants along with themselves and mostly out of spite but partially to discourage such protests from happening again. I wouldn't put that past them.

:smileywink:

So the LL griefing department workforce has been reduced from 1 to zero now huh? Must have needed him more over in the legal department with the ever growing workload due to the TOS changes, or maybe he was reassigned to the marketing department to aid in TOS related damage control PR increase requirements. ;-)

"Linden Lab has no obligation to monitor or enforce your intellectual property rights to your User Content, but you grant us the right to protect and enforce our rights to your User Content, including by bringing and controlling actions in your name and on your behalf (at Linden Lab’s cost and expense, to which you hereby consent and irrevocably appoint Linden Lab as your attorney-in-fact, with the power of substitution and delegation, which appointment is coupled with an interest)". Soon after I posted yesterday on this thread, this is what I suspected and now is becoming increasingly probable as the most likely reason for this new TOS. I'm speculating that L.L. wanted to cut down on the policing of internal IPR complaints thinking they would save a substantial amount of money that would otherwise be going into overhead and court costs. (Notice L.L. has returned to pre layoff levels or close to them with their employee population at 170+? again even as SL usage slowly shrank these past few years). (I'm thinking a lions share of these added employees went straight to the (over bloated) LL legal department to handle increasing complaints and law suits. More importantly cutting down on IPR related legal fees and procedural expenses along with court settlements would probably be an even more substantial reduction in these IPR related costs then employee overhead reduction, and the new TOS would seem to be trying to make that possible. However the resulting loss of peeps who appreciate creativity and particularly the highest quality artists and merchants, with or even without a substantial profit motive as their basis for contributing to SL, will probably end up costing L.L. more in the long run from this draconian move imho. Turning SL into a copybotters paradise would definitely do more harm than help imho.

I roll my eyes and shake my head and listen to the ever nearing sound of golden parachutes opening up. But you can bet that the official reasons for said bonehead move will be quite different from the real reasons. ;-)

I see two 'real' reasons why some people would want to push inworld sales. 1. Linden Lab merchants don't have to pay tier costs for their giant stores on their free full sims giving them a competitive advantage inworld only. 2. Well established merchants have a big competitive advantage inworld by virtue of their well known-ness. This allows their inworld stores a much greater degree of attractive magnetism that is required to make an inworld store make more money than tier costs that the SL Marketplace can and has only take away from. This also explains their irrational animosity toward the SL Marketplace. Preaching brick and mortar wondrousness is like saying that if we get rid of purchasing via the internet in the real world, (especially sites such as e-bay, Amazon etc.) the world will be better off for it somehow. So they think by minimizing the 'damage' of the SL Marketplace, prices will inflate, and they will gain from that inflation personally, and the small fry competition will never get established or just go away and fall into obscurity. No more of that small fry presumptuous pin pricking! They believe that getting rid of the marketplace would somehow cause the grid to repopulate again with peeps happily spending on land purchases and rentals just like the good ol days. ;-) Without X-Street/The SL Marketplace, SL would be doing much worse as a whole by now in every way and particularly in the area of profits. ;-)

O.k raise of hands. How many merchants here are more concerned about loosing market share to the 'video game stuff' than they are about I.P. rights and violations thereof? Just curious. ;-)

Sometimes I wonder, are merchants really so very worried about IPR's or is it more about anti-competitive wishes and the notion that if better stuff enters SL they will make less money as a consequence lost to the 'professional' competition? Personally I think that if better stuff enters SL, it would attract many more peeps willing to spend more money and be a win win situation for everyone. ;-)

"They will always be there". What is LL's reason? ;-)

hehe. One persons search spam is another's useful search details. I'm guessing that LL keeps it cursory and token hoping the few listings that get taken off periodically and temporarily and backed by vague guidelines will influence peeps not to get too crazy with search words in a general sort of way and at the same time not annoy the merchant base too much with such inconveniences. If LL was really serious about reducing keyword spam, they would get rid of the store names as a keyword in general searches as I have found they are usually not relevant to the specific product being searched for, not in the least.

It's kind of funny if you think about it. Merchants give peeps money to leave good reviews and now get extorted to not leave bad reviews. If one accepts one 'technique' to make money, then they got to accept the other the way I look at it. Personally I wish we could do away with all the deceptions and underhanded activity that seems to plague SL, but I doubt it is possible or possibly even desired for most for that matter considering that RL is the same way. :-)

Because the vast majority of customers want copy/mod products instead of gift giving items that can be retailed. Yes i'm sure most would rather gift themselves your teddy bears and other things you make instead of waiting for the off chance for someone else to gift them to them even though they seem to be intended as person to different person gifts. A problem with transfer only items is that eventually the market gets so inundated with them that retailing them, and at lower prices, circumnavigates the original seller. In SL it seems to by and large manifest as person to person trading instead of general retail outlet shopping or flea market activity or the like. :-)

Yep agreed. Laziness and/or carelessness and/or paranoia.