Toysoldier Thor

And this is why I say over and over again that you just cant trust any development from LL and you must be ultra critical and questionable when LL drops hints of something dangerous and covert going on. When LL announces "we are doing a maintenance update tomorrow and we cant tell you until after the change what we did"..... honest.... MERHANTS NEED TO GET NERVOUS! LL staff are so easy to read... They were scared of this change internally and these actions were their internal defence mechanisms to push this dangerous change in without having to listen to the community how dangerous this is. They are the 3 Monkeys "HEAR - SEE - SPEAK NO EVIL" Sadly as depressed as my sales have been since their secret Aug Week 1 changes - seems I should get ready for possible more declines.

Luna Bliss wrote: The Marketplace has grown dark...as images of Kraken drift through my waiting mind.. LOL..... Nooo dont mention the Kraken... I thought we slayed that beast (i.e. LL's failed experiment of hugely discounted specially selected and LL marketed SLM items) when we showed Medussa's snakehead in front of the LL beast and it turned to stone and crumbled into the pit of other LL Grand Ideas that failed. If this is a Spawn of the Kraken with lipstick and a pretty moomoo (i.e. the well hidden DD) that is finally rising from the dark waters of the LL development shop.... then beeee afraid!!!! Be very afraid. Or its just a minnow that will be jumping into the boat from the LL deep waters of development..... Since LL Commerce and LL Development like the BLACK OPS approach to working with us Merchants.... we will only know if its a Kraken or a Minnow when its thrown into our boat.

Couldbe Yue wrote: VonGklugelstein Alter wrote: it has to do with Commission discounts from the old Xstreet system. It only affects a very small number of people who received an email yesterday telling them what they are going to do and why. they're removing the discount? that will make 25 people unhappy. (this is all from memory mind you but I seem to remember it was a 4% commission for the top 25 sellers and I can't see LL improving the commission). hmmm perhaps that's not it as that shouldn't be hard coded and even if it is, it shouldn't need an hours downtime to sort it out. So I am in the same thinking as Couldbe.... If this change is only to fix 25 or 30 commission changes for the top merchants from 4% to 5%, this doesnt sound like a code change or a change that needs any form of maintenance outage to engage. If it is... WOW... was the SLM redesign of Xstreet really poorly designed! You are telling me that during the xstreet overhaul update to SLM the LL development team did not take Merchant commission calculations into account as a settable parameter as opposed to a hard coded change?? Either the LL Team has some poor solution designers (strong possibility) or this change this morning is not about removing discounted commissions. But we can only guess - as LL Commerce likes keeping us in the dark. Dont you love the new LL Commerce Team's mandate to be more open and upfront with their customers!!

VonGklugelstein Alter wrote: it has to do with Commission discounts from the old Xstreet system. It only affects a very small number of people who received an email yesterday telling them what they are going to do and why. OK Von....... thanks for the insight.... but let me throw a "what if" at you.... What if while they are playing with the commission system, something happens to the commissions SLM-Wide? And... what is the big secret with the change that they could not simply say.... "The change being made tomorrow is.... and it only impacts ....." At least we merchants can watch to ensure that the change only impacted the expected target.

Couldbe Yue wrote: Pamela Galli wrote: Reading that announcement makes my blood run cold. yep, I can't even remember the last time I actually looked forward to a LL release ah well, hold onto your hat, it's white water rafting time again!! LOL Couldbe... that is a good analogy.... When being a customer (i.e. us merchants of the SLM) of LL Commerce Team, its like being forced on a white water raft on the raging river and told by the LL Raft owners that we must all wear blindfolds since "we cant tell you water rough waters or rocks we might hit until we potentially hit them". What is so ironic is that of all the groups within the LL management, one would think the LL Commerce Team would be the most BUSINESS MINDED and most appreciative of proper mature business processes - like properly informing the customer base of what changes will be in an up coming change so that we could at least be on the lookout of any bugs or fallout from the change. Todays change must include DD components that Brooke and company doesnt want us Merchants to know they are putting in because we all know how Brooke believes the DD work is BLACK OPS classed work that we should know as litte about as possible. <shakes head in disbelief> So when things start acting strange in the later this afternoon.... Merchants be ready that we will have no choice but to conclude that these changes were the root cause. I still think my 50%+ drop is sales since the 1st week of August (that still has not recovered) was due in part to changes made by the LL team in early August.

that is why LL Commerce is not telling us until after they do it.... for them its easier to ask for forgiveness after they mess us up then permission

Once again... another immature process from this company.... "we are announcing that we will be doing an apgrade to the system you use but we wont tell you anything about it until AFTER we do it since tis a big secret", Heaven forbid LL wouldnt tell us in advance what the changes are so we could be aware of what changes we might experience or find bugs with. Noooo that would make too much sense. Wow this company!! what a piece of work

Pamela Galli wrote: Oh get this -- I filed a ticket when I made the discovery about the transaction download malfuntion, and just got a reply. It said this: Hello Pamela, You can see that on your USD transactions history (last 45 days), and in your Account Statement PDF for each month. http://secondlife.com/account/history.php http://secondlife.com/account/statement.php Isn't that helpful? He doesn't even know what a transaction history is! wow i thought maybe that was a secret better way to get SL transactions beyond 30 days. what dummies. The real bug will be fixed next week. The work around is what we suspected - Avoid including the old day in the range of dates.

High 5's to Arwen and her time-sensitive theory (with effective diagnostics) for being a key factor to isolate the bug for the Blank downloads on transaction history. With this fact and us suggesting the bug must be related to an issue / change LL made in early August, it helped LL developers pinpoint the root cause to the problem. It was an improperly set TIMEZONE on a related server. https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-4097?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels%3Acomment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=282119 Praveen Linden confirmed they found the bug and will be scheduling a fix to the bug next week. Good work Arwen

Pamela Galli wrote: You know, my customers have given me so many good ideas - stuff I would never have thought of -- that I just can't understand LL not being more interested overall to user suggestions. I have to say, tho, that I think the commerce team is well -intentioned -- they sent out that detailed survey and on that basis gave failed deliveries priorities. I just think they were saddled with a piece of crap software and had no clue how much time things would take. I mean, no one thought it was going to be "We are going to work on DD for months and in the meantime nothing else will get done." These are good points and the fact that likely the current LL Commerce & Development Team were completely caught off guard with regard to exactly how complicated and time consuming DD would be to deploy. And... this symptom / situation is yet one more piece of strong evidence of what I keep saying in posts regarding LL's immature level / evolution of Business Priorities, Effective Resource Planning, and Systems Development. 1) An effective mature team would have been able to more effectively quantify all aspects of what it would take to design and develop and deploy a DD system into their already known and existing "piece of crap" environment. They would have identified the risks, complexities, resourcing, and time-to-delivery required to deploy DD. As Pam accurately stated - DD's complexity clearly caught LL by surprise. Why? Because with an immature IS organization where the App Developers and coding geeks are asked to assess development estimates, the response from this team is usually "ohh that wont be hard to do... just give us a couple months...". (BTW calling this new SLM platform a piece of crap (which I would suspect is a true assessment) is funny and ironic as in the era of Pink Linden.... it was this new platform LL selected for SLM to be developed on that would leave behind the old crap XSTREET platform and allow LL to expand SLM much more effectively... 18 months later we now call SLM crap.) 2) IF LL actually did have an accurate understanding of the complexity and risks of a DD deployment, then the next LL org weakness is their resource planning and priorities. So if DD deployment was so important a priority - regardless of the complexity, then they should have put some common sense behind how they were actually going to accomplish this? A more feasible option might have been to outsource the development of this with a trusted contracted development shop that was guided by a smaller team of the LL staff. Since the LL Staff is so small, their resourcing could have more effectively been directed to important and yet more digestable deliverables... LIKE... UHMMM .... the backlog of Merchant request to fix Xstreet functions that a year later are still not addressed. Sadly, this is just another example of a company that screams of immature business management and IS development immaturity. LL Customers continue to pay the price. But we all know that LL's Customer Service priority is among the bottom of LL's priority.

LOL trust me... its not because she was listening to me. The ticket is older than when I first ran into the problem.

Collosus was at the SLCC event last month - I saw his face on one of the video presentations and he spoke. So at least at the time of the SLCC - he and Brooke and the head of the commerce a guy named Jim I think... were at the table. There was a new dude from EA that joined the team (likely a Rod hire) that was also at the table. So maybe this is the group of 4 that makes up the LL Commerce Team.

Not only is the shrinking skeleton LL Commerce / Development staff a major inconvenience to LL Customers in getting SL, SLM, etc. upgrades and important/wanted features to get deployed (i.e. SL Merchant will likely never see any of their list of backlogged fixes / enhancements that are in LL's future plans bucket), but the bigger risk for all of us SL residents and merchants is the quality of what LL releases to the customers / market. Not only is DD a fundamental shift of a component of SL's and SLM's architecture which has its own risks even in well funded and well resourced projects, because LL's Commerce Team and Development Team appears to have become so small they could all be seated in my closet, this working condition substantially increases the risk on DD going live with increase and more severe bugs that would normally have been easily avoided and/or detected and fixed prior to going live. The other risk to all of us is that with this team being so small, the ability for this team to quickly respond to a major post-deployment bug is severely limited as well. LL will do what they have always been good at doing for new services deployments - use the Merchants and Customers as their QA testing and bug finding team... then use the "OPPS SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE ... WE ARE WORKING ON IT" response. But this poor strategy becomes a major risk to all of us when they cannot be effectively engaged when us lab rats find these bugs for LL. To show how limited and overwhelmed the LL development team is.... a bug that showed up in August on SL Transaction History downloads responding with BLANK FILES has been known for over a week by LL and yet not one response or action has been taken to repair this bug to their financial transaction system that serveral merchants rely upon for tracking revennue and expenses needed for tax reporting. If LL cannot respond and repair this important bug.... imagine how fast they will respond to a critical DD bug where all our sales potentially stop or our SLM products get shipped to all customers by accident or or or... So... Rodvik has some much bigger issues in LL that he knows but is keeping hush hush to the public. The fact that Brooke and Dakota - the only two that in early 2011 actually openly communicated with their customers - have now completely shut down their communications with their customers..... Things must be pretty bad inside the walls of LL. As for us Merchants that they are keeping in the dark on DD and other unkown issus... BE AFRAID..... BE VERY AFRAID!

So yesterday I struggled all night to get my SL Fiscal Yearend by piecing together the remaining SL transaction download that were still working vs all the downloads that LL got working. I missed out the 1st 5 days of inworld transaction because I was stupid and trusted that LL's transaction downloads were working. Now - since LL has still not fixed the problem, I will have to save transactions more frequently and check each download that it was not empty. Tonight I did more checks and the download are still failing.... here are some of my tests that have failed: TEST 1: Displayed all TXs from Aug7-Sep6.... A huge list of TXs were displayed.... following is what the download saved: SL-transactions08_07-09_06.xls - size 3.5KB - ID Type Description Debit Credit Time Resident/Group Ending Bal. Region TEST 2: Date range changed by reducing FROM date to SEP 5... Results same as TEST1... empty download. TEST 3: Date range changed by increasing TO date to AUG 8.... Results = full successful download of all transactions in the date range. TEST 4: Date range changed TO and FROM dates both at SEP 6.... Results = full successful download of all transactions in the date range. TEST 5: Date range changed TO and FROM dates set to oldest possible of AUG 7.... Results same as TEST1... empty download. So far the conclusion seems to be if your transaction downloads include the earlist (oldest) day in the 30 day date range, then LL's TX DOWNLOADS will fail.

This blank download of www.secondlife.com transaction history screwed me last night when I realized the download of all my August transactions was nothing but a blank empty file with only header row in it (from Aug 1 to Sep1). When I tried last night to capture at least from Aug 6 to Sep4th, the download was still generating blank files. After talking to fellow merchants in the inworld group IMs.... I tried downloading from Aug7th to Sep4th and it worked. I tried downloading ONLY aug 6 transaction and it failed again. It has something to do with corrupt info in the Aug 1st thru 6th transactions. Needless to say.... thanks to LL continuing to only offer us 20 day max transactions... I can no longer get the 6 days of lost inworld transactions.

Dartagan Shepherd wrote: Toysoldier Thor wrote OK Sassy... this has to be the most abused and lame argument and response used by LL's FanBoys and Fangirls and that you are stooping down to this level of defending LL is a pretty sad sign. I dare say you are becoming the forums "Dart of 2010". Stay tuned for Dart 2012. The beginning of the end is near! LOL.... no need... someone has taken the torch from you with great non-feasible solutions to problems.

OK Simple response to Sassy's solution to everyone's complaints about LL bugs, limitations, inaction, etc. on Merchant solutions of "IF YOU DONT LIKE SLM THEN GO SOMEWHERE ELSE - YOU ARE NOT FORCED TO USE LL SOLUTIONS TO SERVICE SL CUSTOMERS".... A lame useless argument / idea / suggestion that should be taken as serious as Sassy takes our concerns about poor LL service. My solution to Sassy's responses that provides no value to the discussion of the problem or solution like you offered the thread..... dont respond if it bothers you so much when others complain about poor LL service and decisions.

Sassy Romano wrote: Josh Susanto wrote: It IS up to me to fix a low order rate. It's NOT up to me to make the system work the way LL already says it works, when, clearly, it does not. It IS up to you to find a sales system that works in your favour, it would appear that Marketplace does not, I suggest not using it and marketing via other methods. People are not forced to use Marketplace. It is the incumbant supplier but it's by no means the only outlet. OK Sassy... this has to be the most abused and lame argument and response used by LL's FanBoys and Fangirls and that you are stooping down to this level of defending LL is a pretty sad sign. I dare say you are becoming the forums "Dart of 2010". Even Dart has evolved to a more reasonable person of late. So when Merchants legitimately or even with exaggeration complain about LL, iwnorld, SLM merchant systems, your response has now stooped to the famous childish response of "IF YOU DONT LIKE IT THEN LEAVE" ? (yeah I put the caps there just for you). So lets challenge you on the true value proposition of your response since I believe your response is more a non-feasible sarcastic response - which is the case for anyone that uses this argument when defending something. Let me give you a RL scenario. Being I live in Canada and most Canada Provinces like ours have several remote access northern communities that are only accessible by air in summer or the addition of winter roads in winter. Most of these communities are very small and only have one general store. As bad as the food is because of the age on the shelf / freezer, and as costly as it is because of the transportation costs and near-zero competition, and as much as local residents complain frequently and bitterly that they would like better service, better quality, more variety, they dont often get any improvements and the store owners quietly snikker at them. So now lets put Sassy in the role of the inlaw to the owners of the store that feels she must defend the Store. When the local residents complain bitterly how crappy the store is, Sassy tells the residents.... "well if you dont like the store or what it offers or the service then go elsewhere! None of you are forced to buy from the store. There are other options so go find better.". This is what you are saying Sassy to ppl like Josh and me and other that are complaining about poor neglectful LL service. So what are the better options for these residents in the monopoly situation in this captured market they are in? BTW Sassy... lets throw in a factor that you might not have heard of... FEASIBLE OPTIONS! So should they go out into the 1000s of square miles of forest and hunt for food? Pick berries? Grow their own garden? Buy a plane and fly in their own food? Which of these are feasible? Since there are not FEASIBLE options... this does not dismiss the option and right of the residents to complain about the crappy service of the local monopoly store. In fact the only feasible option is to do what ever they can when dealing with a neglectful, non-listening store owner to get this monopolistic owner to improve the service and provide better quality. This is the situation we are in with LL and the SLM. Tell me what feasible alternative there is to SLM when selling good into SL? Any competition that SLM had LL is cutting them off at the knees on many levels (DD will be the final nail in their coffins). So Sassy, lets turn the tables and I tell you "if you dont like SLM then market your products elsewhere". where would you feasibly go if I give you the challenge? Again - this isnt fair for your scenario since 80% of your sales are inworld. But lets say its the other way around ant 80% of your sales come from SLM. Put your money where you mouth is Sassy.... where will you take your SLM products when you leave SLM? Pretty Lame argument Sassy... if you are going to be LL new forum white warrior... at least take the high road and provide legit arguments. Toy http://ToyTalks.weebly.com

Honestly Mickey.... they are not called LINDEN LAB for no reason..... I do honestly believe that LL is not as much a corporation with an objective to become a growing and mature Capitalist Success like an EA... they are a formal group that is designed to perform social experiments within the virtual worlds of SL. They are experimenting with labcoats looking down into the SL virtual world, seeing the 100's of thousands of us lil LAB RATS (aka SL Residents) scurrying around in the SL maze.... changing stimuli and factors of the maze to see how it impacts the rats. That is why you see LL Staff and Sr Management make so many Head Scratching stupid non-strategic decisions. Why? Because they dont care about long term viability of the SL grid or company... the LINDENS are in the LAB doing "what if" social experiments. So... what if we change the Search Engine to give an advantage to one part of the SLM Merchants and not others... and we dont tell them what the change was? Will they accept it? Will the disadvantaged try to analyze identify and adjust to be able to leverage? Welcome to LINDEN LAB fellow SL Resident Rats.

I have all my sales in EXCEL so I could chart things if I needed to. But if LL has changed the SEARCH engines in SLM to promote cheaper priced items, then I should be able to see this in my charts and possibly make pricing changes if we all could somehow figure out the magic price point where lower priced items are bubbling up to the top of search better than premium priced items. Most of my premium items that sold very well until AUG 1 and that makes up 90% of my sales are in the 800 - 999 range. These are the items that took a nose dive in august.

The changes on search could be tied to the price of items since it was my premium products that took the biggest hit. I dont have 100% facts to prove this but I did notice that my daily sales of my two demo pack freebies kept selling like hotcakes and my old cheap 59L tapestries had they normal sales. But these sales make up about 5% or less than all my normal sales.

Dora Gustafson wrote: My SLM income in August is just one third compared to July and any other month in 2011 Is it just my business or is it general? Totally felt your pain. My weekly and monthly sales - upto and including JULY were normal - I mean there was not even a noticable downturn in July (which for most in the northern hemisphere would clearly consider to be SUMMER). Then August 1 my sales took a massive downturn from 50% of normal sales initially to about 70% of nomral sales in the later half of august. I have had a coulpe days sprinkled in that were considered a normal day of sales - but most were more than 70% down. Other merchants can say say "yeah this is just normal summer slump" but its not nomal. 1) I did not see this massive collapse in sales last summer, 2) summer includes july and this slump hit on Aug 1 almost to the day. So the Summer Slump argument to me is BOGUS. I suspect since it seemed to hit on almost a specific day - it was a LL change to something fundamental - like the Search Engine or something that impacts customer traffic to SLM. Also, the announcement of MESH IS COMING is likely another major factor that is putting a dent into anything SCULPTY. I think with all the PR hype from LL on MESH IS NOW HERE - many sculpty customers might be holding off on buying sculpties because they might think that buying a sculpty pack now is like buying a spitoon (totally wrong but LL isnt making that part of the MESH announcements well known and MESH is still 6+ months away from being a mainstream legit product). And then the RL Economy and the stupid US Politicians on the US Debt Deal and all the subsequent impact of that on the economy likely is another factor. BUT it was likely a LL change that triggered the LL collapse.

maybe this is LL's way of trying to hide how bad of an economic collapse that happened and is still happening in SL! I normally cash out of LL on a 7 day cycle - I am 2 days away from my 3rd week for pay out. Only making 1 sale a day on average. LL better have these transaction histories working by tomorrow so I can download August.

Mylar wrote: Basically you're saying pretty much what I said. And, yes, Ty is really an exception to this situation as he is not concerned about traffic or profit. And understand, what I'm about to say is not directed at you, Toy, you actually do something with your photos. But I've seen so many "artists" that simply take a straight on snapshot of someone else's build and call it their own. As a builder I find this offensive. Eventually I will need to expand to an entire sim build, and as long as this is going on I will put the same restrictions on the land. It's unfortunate, but the small amount of traffic I would lose from you and other legitimate artists will be worth the cost of keeping out those who abuse that right. Not trying to start a debate, just pointing out that the issue goes beyond just some land owners arbitrarily locking down their land. They have concerns that also need to be addressed. I know who the big names are in the SL artist community, and you are among them, as are some of the people who commented on your blog. You're on the right track bringing this issue out in the open, you just need to take it a step further. If the sim owners know that their issues are also being addressed, they will be more likely to open their sims up to you and others again. No debate needed as to what both the builders of sims (which by the way I am one of and where I make most of my $ in SL and where I say that some of SL's biggest and most popular Sim builders have and are using my rocky terrains and waterfalls and hoodoos etc as part of their beautitful sims that are being photographed) and sl photo artists / casual photographers know is the problem. It is those photographers of sims that either knowingly or naively take photographs of sims and disrespect the sim builders (and more importantly the creators of all the 3D content on the sim) talents and efforts by NOT having the courtesy to at minimum post/publish/note that the photos they took and are displaying in sites like flickr and/or selling in some manner includes content from the creator of the sim/location/SLURL in SL. Even though without a stated covenent by the land owner - this practice by all SL photographers should generally be a minimum ethical practice BUT we must understand and keep in mind what LL's original intent was for the wording and rights of the TOS. They envisioned (and I fully see their point here) that a publically accessible land is SL should be treated no different than a publically accessible land in RL. If you go to a state or even private park in real life - a park that was manicured and beautifully grooms by some caretaker of the lands - and you toook a set of photographs of these lands (or city scape etc), then you would naturally expect and rightly so be entitled to use your photographs in ANY WAY you wished - including framing them and selling them for profit. You also would not have to contact the owner of park and ask if it is OK photo the park prior to taking photos or selling them. The only time this would be an issue is if while you are driving into some private land and the owner puts up a sign saying NO PHOTOGRAPHY IS ALLOWED ON MY LAND - then you would have to abide by the owner of the land's rights or dont access the land. This is exactly what LL envisioned with their photo TOS. Only difference between RL and SL is that everything in SL is created by someone. Even many sim builders/creators use other creator's textures, prim builds, rocks, etc. So it might be their build and assembly but not all their creations. but I digress... As such, as sleezy as it sounds that a photographer goes onto a SL publically accessible land and takes photos of your sim and then sells them raw as a backdrop, its his right to do so and based on LL intention - he should have that right. BUT... where I think ALL photographers of SL should be much more aware and be more courteous is to at least GIVE CREDIT to the creators of the sim lands. Ironically, even if they did credit what they believe is the CREATOR of the Lands / builds, not all creators are being credited if the creator of the land used other creator's works as part of his/her build. Again, I know several sims / parcels of lands that are built with my landscape rock terrains. I also know my rocks and waterfalls are used on 100's if not 1000's of sim builds. Many of my customers are SL SIM Landscapers for their customers. You know where I am going with this.... No one credits my and my work that made up at least a part of the beauty of that sim nor is 99% of the cases does a sim creator or owner put up a sign on their lands stating... "the following creators and their 3D components were used for the build of this sim...". But... as much as it would be valuable for me and my rocks and water to be recognized as part of these amazing sims, I dont worry about it. Its just the cost of participating in SL. So I guess in many cases one can take this concern by sim owners abou this supposed abuse of photography of sims without credit and actually trickle down the abuse that sim owners are also not building sims without credit of the components of the sim that they did not build themselves but simply bought and installed. But as a builder of landscape material for sims... I am not concerned if a sim creator / owner does not formally credit me. Just would be nice if they say where the rock came from when asked as opposed to the sim owner simply saying - "look at the beautiful sim I created". hmmmmm I guess this issue of abuse has a slippery slope. Finally Mylar, my last point is something that both Ty and myself agreed on - it really doesnt matter if you or him or other sim creators put formal covenents on your lands banning photography... since the only ones that you will stop from abusing your sim creations are the honest artists and those are are also aware to read your covenent. In honest truth, those that will blatently abuse your rights will not stop because you put up a covenent nor do you or most sim creators have the time nor energy nor money to police and enforce the policy. So put on a restriction that in all honesty will only ban the honest ones that you actually do not want to discourage. THAT IS WHY TY REWORDED HIS SIM COVENENT. This same abuse happens all the time to many of us artists and our art. I have a 6 floor art gallery with 50 of my works. Do you not think that on several occassions some SL residents have actually come to my gallery and taken a snapshot of my art and used it on their own - even though they fully see I sell the art? Abuse happens in SL regardless if I put up a sign at the front door of my gallery or not. Just some thoughts to keep in mind.

Mylar wrote: When you take a picture of a build that some one else does, you're taking a picture of some one else's artwork. That's what it really boils down to. It's the same as if someone walked into your gallery and took pictures of your work. A person's artwork is copyrighted at the moment of creation. So sim owners have every right to lock down their work how ever they see fit. You may attribute the work, but the sad truth is many don't. Mylar, I understand and agree what you are saying BUT you need to read the TOS on SL Photography / SNAPSHOTS to see that all SL residents (even if they did not take the time to read the TOS) have agreed that BY DEFUALT and unless the owner of the parcel of land deems otherwause - had allow photography of that creators build for what ever use the photographer sees fit. EVEN IF the photographer took photos of a sim without any credit to the creator / parcel owner and sold these photos as backdrops. This is the issue specifically that happened to Ty and his lands. Is that sleezy and unethical to sell photos of Ty's work without credit at all? YES... Was it illegal? NO. I dont want to focus on Ty's group of lands and I am only using his lands as an example, but if Ty did not want to restrict creative art inspired by his lands yet wanted to stop abuse like the person that sold photos of his land with NO CREDIT, he had and has the right in the covenents to state that ALL PHOTOS TAKEN AND RE-PUBLISHED or SOLD must provide attribution of the Calas Creators and the sim location. But initially Ty restricted photos for any commercial use - which is his right but negatively impacts far more than what he intended. He is not the only sim owner that had started doing this. BUT, because of this blog and my talk with Ty, he didnt realize the negative impact his policy had on us honest photo artists and it was not his intention to discourage us. So he has re-worded his covenent and countless SL Photographers are very happy. But this blog was to address the bigger issue - not just Ty's lands... but a growing number of lands that are restricting without realizing the impacts of their decision.... including reduced traffic because of lost promtoion by photo artists. As for taking photos of SL hanging paintings.... I guess technically you could be right but all my art is signed and in the note a copyright. LL TOS states that SL photographers cannot violate any other copyright or IP content - photo'ing signed wallart would potentially violate copyright. So no... photoing a sl painting on a wall is not the same as photo'ing a sim build unless the sim owner explicitly states the rights and restrictions of photography on the land.