A simple trick to make any size land parcel into an infinite space.

[Qie Niangao]

---

Prokofy Neva wrote:

 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with selling copyable furniture that is not transferable. That is the norm...

---

Right. I think some wires were crossed in subsequent posts where Copy + Transfer got mixed-in, which has nothing to do with Penny's suggestion. (Besides Copy, though, Modify permission would be required; it's indispensable for many other purposes too, hence my rant earlier in the thread.)

I don't actually use Penny's suggested approach, although I did early-on when I didn't have many prims. Now, when I script something to rez and de-rez, it's for effect, not to swap around scenes.

To Phil, mostly: There aren't many No-Copy furniture items sold anymore, except through gachas (and even those sometimes have an exchange feature where you can get a Copy / No-Transfer version instead, but of course those exchanged items can't be swapped among gacha victims addicts players).

I think the widespread shift from Transfer to Copy started a few years ago when animators made the switch because of a bug that ate AOs. It's still a bit risky to rez a No-Copy object when the moon is full, but nothing like the old days.

Also, as gacha sellers know, No-Copy items have a way of proliferating when sims are rolled-back, so it's kind of a losing practice for creators of very high-end stuff.

[Phil Deakins]

To you and the others:

Ok, I'm out of date with my thinking. At least, I appear to be. It's not surprising since I stopped being a businessman many years ago, even though people still buy my stuff. Not like they used to do though. (And before anyone jumps in saying that it's because it's all no-copy, that isn't the reason at all. It's due to something completely different, which is pretty much common knowledge around here )

Nevertheless, apart from the topic of this thread, I don't really see any need to sell copyable furniture, especially as they can't normally be sold together with the transfer perm, and I really don't see the need for no-trans in this context. Of those two perms, I'd still go with no-copy.

In these posts one or two people mentioned couches and things like that, but there are couches and there are couches. There are couches that you can just sit on, and there are couches that are full of animations, and that are changeable in various ways. Do creators/sellers of things like that sell them as copyable? And what about expensive sex beds? Are they generally sold as copyable? With things like those, it would be very common for someone to buy one, set it up, and one or more friends say, "Ooo, I do like that", whereupon the owner says, "You can have one if you like. I'll rez one in your place(s). I'll rez two if you like." Simple chairs, sofas, dining tables, etc. are one thing, but full-featured items are something else - imo, of course. Do those sort of things generally get sold as copyable? E.g. an expensive sex bed? I'm very inclined to doubt it, but I'll believe you if say they do. Maybe simple stuff is now normally copyable, but surely not full-featured stuff?

For instance, all my beds have a load of animations in them, all their surfaces can be changed to choices of a great many textures and effects from menus, and the size can be changed, both length and breadth, to suit the location where it's rezzed. They are what you might call 'full-featured'. Would that type of thing normally be sold as copyable these days?

[Phil Deakins]

---

Theresa Tennyson wrote:

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

I have no idea? Why do you ask?

Just to reiterate in different words - selling copyable furniture, at the normal price, is a ridiculous business idea. Why would anyone think that it's a good idea? I haven't seen anyone write a good reason for it, or any reason for it at all.

---

That's what I thought.

You had a business model, which apparently was quite successful at one point.

Extremely successful.

As far as I can tell, it was based on selling:

1) Low-prim Second Life furniture (because people with small amounts of land needed very low prim furniture and it could be a profitable niche.)

correct

which was

2) No-copy (so that landlords who had many small furnished units couldn't buy one piece of furniture and use it in many builds.)

correct (I still had my home rental business for some time after the store started, which meant that I knew what would happen. And it did happen - a lot. I.e. such people asked me for copyable items, for that purpose).

to people who

3) Found you at the top of the in-world search (because you were good at optimizing your search position and that was how people found merchants at the time.)

correct

You think this model is a good one because it worked for you.

Almost correct. My own SL experience, together with what happens in the RL world causes me to think it's a good model. The RL world could do copyable items (give more copies to customers who bought one), but they wouldn't even if they could ensure the items couldn't be transfered. In other words, it's good ol' common sense.

You think it's the

only

one that works because you are Phil Deakins.

Incorrect - and stupid.

However, let us look at the current Second Life furniture market.

1) There are many more ways of making good-looking low prim furniture in Second Life today and people are capable of building it using skills that have uses

outside of

Second Life, so being low-prim is more common and less of a sales point.

correct.

2) Linden Homes became a popular entry-level residence, taking away much of the market that was once occupied by cookie-cutter furnished apartments.

possibly, but only possibly

3) The Marketplace gave people a more flexible way of finding furniture to suit their needs, meaning that in-world search position meant little. It also reduced the need for merchants to have large in-world stores.

correct

This allowed furniture makers to work on lower margins - low enough to make good-quality low-priced copyable furniture practical from a seller's point of view, so some merchants started doing that. I would venture to guess that currently

most

furniture sellers in Second Life do that.

quite possibly

Now from a buyer's standpoint,

buying

no-copy furniture when they could buy copyable furniture of equivalent quality for a similar price is "a ridiculous business idea" if only because of Second Life's tendency to eat rezzed items without a trace. If people won't buy what you're selling then you need to change your business model.

I don't need to change anything, but you probably already know why.

Honestly you're sounding like a general store owner from the 1910's telling his son, "Don't put in one of those newfangled gasoleen pumps, keep selling hay. I built this business selling hay. That's how you do business."

lol - a nonsense attempt at an analogy.

It

was

how you do business. Might not be how you should

now

though.

Only because a lot of furniture sellers have moved over to copyable. They have chosen to earn less, probably to give them an edge over non-copy items, but the edge disappeared when lots of others followed suit

.

And, of course, I don't really do business now, but, again, you probably know that.

---

Incidentally, SL can eat stuff, as you said, but my experience of my customers is that it's much more common for people to think that SL ate stuff when in fact it's merely been returned in a coalesced object. I help them find it.

[wherorangi]

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

Would that type of thing be sold as copyable these days?

---

yes

in the house I am in at the mo

I have a swing for upto 4 people. It has 86 animations in sets for singles, pairs and 3 and 4 group. Is copy and mod

i have a hanging bed for upto 2 people, singles and doubles anims. 28 altogether. Copy and mod

i have a shower. Again for 1 or 2 people. 20 anims. Copy and mod

i have a dresser and stool. 8 anims. Copy and mod

i have a lounger. for 1 or 2 people. 92 anims. Copy and mod

i have a bean bag for 1 or 2 people. 14 anims. No-copy and no-mod. The only reason I have it is bc was given to me for free as a shop gift

 

 

[Qie Niangao]

---

Maybe simple stuff is now normally copyable, but surely not full-featured stuff?

---

Really, hardly anything gets sold no-copy anymore except gacha items. There may be a few things sold as one-off collector items, but regular things sold to regular buyers are pretty much all copy perm now.

I don't mean to claim innocence of current naughty items, but the fact is I'm pretty out-of-touch with that market. I think N4RS still sells some volume at the higher end of prices, and it seems to be Copy+Mod, and at the extreme lower end Michgan's Shack sells lots of adult stuff with hundreds of animations, Copy (but no-Mod, so only really useful for ripping the anims from).

Might be interesting if someone with strong Marketplace Search foo could maybe plot the number of results for Copy vs Transfer permissions of common items (chair, bed, table) by maturity rating over time (is listing date a search criterion?). Not sure it goes back far enough, though, and even then, there's the whole problem of longitudinal studies where the subjects have a nasty habit of dying off.

[Phil Deakins]

Interesting. It doesn't affect me but it's still interesting.

Back when I made and sold a temp rezzer, I didn't keep selling it for long because, as a furniture store, I really should have been selling copyable furniture that would go in it, but I didn't.

In view of this part of this thread, I might go around the store, setting some stuff to copy/no-trans, just for the sake of it, but not the full-featured stuff. Not that much gets sold these days, anyway.

[Phil Deakins]

I've just been round a number of inworld stores that sell sex beds. Some are copy and some are not (and some are utter crap ) - probably slightly more copy than not, but only a little more, and one offered a choice, presumably with a price difference. It's probable that most of those that are sold in the marketplace are copyable, or it may be that the no-copy ones just happen to be near the top of search - unlikely but possible.

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

I don't think it's exactly fair to use expensive, animation-heavy sex furniture as the benchmark by which all business decisions regarding the sale of furniture in general should be judged.

[Phil Deakins]

I didn't use it as a benchmark. I learned some stuff in this thread and I asked if it was the same for those things, that's all.

I use Qie as the benchmark. If he says something is true, then it's true

[Bitsy Buccaneer]

My mistake then. Seems I make a lot of mistakes in reading your posts. Just as well I left out my other point since that was probably wrong too.

[Phil Deakins]

lol. Don't leave it out. It's good to be wrong (if you are). That way we learn things - like I've done in this thread. Sometimes we are outright wrong, and sometimes we merely misunderstood. Either way we learn. And sometimes we are right, of course.

If your point showed me to be wrong, I'll appreciate being shown. I could learn something else from this thread.

[Prokofy Neva]

I didn't hear her say that. And even if she isn't inciting violation of both the mechanics of SL and the TOS, it's still copyleftist aggression to demand that people make items copyable that they would prefer to sell in one instance. The end.

[Prokofy Neva]

Qie, creators get to the FREEDOM to set the permissions THEY WANT TO. That's life in the big city.

This demand that creators "must" make something copyable or moddable or transferable is for their birds. They don't have to do anything they don't want. 

I don't like it went an object isn't on "mod" and I avoid buying things without mod sometimes. But I don't insist that these authors change their wishes. That's what Penny is doing, as she always is. She is never content just to make her own world, her own rules, on her own sim. She always agitates to globalize it to everyone else which is just plain wrong.

[Penny Patton]

---

Prokofy Neva wrote:

Qie, creators get to the FREEDOM to set the permissions THEY WANT TO. That's life in the big city.

This demand that creators "must" make something copyable or moddable or transferable is for their birds. They don't have to do anything they don't want. 

I don't like it went an object isn't on "mod" and I avoid buying things without mod sometimes. But I don't insist that these authors change their wishes. That's what Penny is doing, as she always is. She is never content just to make her own world, her own rules, on her own sim. She always agitates to globalize it to everyone else which is just plain wrong.

---

I'm not demanding their freedom to set the permissions they choose be taken away, only pointing out how no-copy and no-mod permissions, for most content, screw over the customer by restricting their ability to take advantage of some very basic SL features. (And I do point out that there are exceptions to that.)

People who sell no-mod/no-copy can continue to do so as they wish, but I'll continue to point out why I believe people should avoid buying such content if they want the most out of their SL experience. I see no reason to keep such knowledge to myself. I don't force people to follow my advice, I just put the information out there. 

---

Prokofy Neva wrote:

There is absolutely nothing wrong with selling copyable furniture that is not transferable.

---

 I agree! Copy/mod/no-transfer are great. They protect the creator's content from being resold against their wishes, while allowing the customer the ability to backup their content and modify it to suit their needs. Are you sure you're not attributing someone else's comments in this thread to me?

---

Prokofy Neva wrote:

Penny's grand vision means it would have to be copyable AND transferable.

.

---

That's simply untrue. I've always advocated copy/mod/no-transfer and nothing I suggested, in this thread or any other, requires transfer permissions. I've no idea what this "grand vision" you're talking about is, but it's clearly not mine.

[wherorangi]

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

I've just been round a number of inworld stores that sell sex beds. Some are copy and some are not (and some are utter crap

) - probably slightly more copy than not, but only a little more, and one offered a choice, presumably with a price difference. It's probable that most of those that are sold in the marketplace are copyable, or it may be that the no-copy ones just happen to be near the top of search - unlikely but possible.

---

a lot of whats happening is being lead by mesh modellers, where modelling is their core skill

they buy builders packs of animations and also builder pack full-featured scripted pose systems. Which they then incorporate into their models

also as well quite a few animators who do sell the packs are using mocap now. The mocap animation packs are not always cheap, however when the modellers do have them and are making a new product then they tend to load them up with the animations they have. Is no extra cost for them to do this

also I see in some shops now 3 levels of animation. Can buy G model, M model, and A model

G is no sexxors animations. M is gentle love + G. A is G + M + bit more hardcore. And the prices often reflect this when offered by the same vendor. G is cheaper than M which is cheaper than A. Basically nawti costs more

[Theresa Tennyson]

---

Prokofy Neva wrote:

I didn't hear her say that.

And even if she isn't inciting violation of both the mechanics of SL and the TOS, it's still copyleftist aggression to demand that people make items copyable that they would prefer to sell in one instance. The end.

---

Everybody else heard her say that...

I'm assuming, though, that it isn't copyleftist aggression to demand that people who run gacha events make their multi-pull rewards able to be sold in one instance when they'd prefer them to be copyable?

[Anaiya Ahren]

In years of working with content licensed for redistribution I have encountered a clause in the license forbidding copy permission for the next owner exactly 0 times.  I'm not saying it doesn't happen but it certainly isn't common.

[Prokofy Neva]

Nope, Theresa, nice try but it's not.

It's a matter of CHOICE for creators to put the permissions on their produce THEY WANT, not what suits Penny's extremist PerfectWorld.

It's also a matter of CHOICE for a consumer like me to say hey, rewards from gatchas should be transferable like gatchas are themselves, not copyable. So they can be sold on the secondary market.

Gosh, it's possible to walk and chew gum at the same time, and for two actors in a market to have conflicted choices, both of which are free and legitimate.

and GASP it's possible to advocate for the consumer that products be resellable -- this is basic jurisprudence since the Singer court case a century ago. And if creators don't want to do that, that's their choice, but consumers can complain that they are hampering resales.

Given that Penny isn't interested in re-sale and markets but only in copyleftism, my point isn't pertinent to a discussion of her PerfectWorld anyway.

[Penny Patton]

 Prok says "It's a matter of CHOICE for creators to put the permissions on their produce THEY WANT" and I agree with that. Completely. Where we part ways is that I believe I have a right to share my opinions regarding how those permissions are used. Not to force my views on everyone, to change the perms of objects against the wishes of the creator, just to speak my mind.

It seems clear that Prok believes that none of us have any right to share our opinions. Well, unless those opinions are ones Prok agrees with. Simply voicing my opinions and observations about how no-copy/no-mod impacts our ability to enjoy SL is "extremist", according to Prok.

 Prok harasses, libels and threatens those they disagree with and tries to shout down any dissenting opinion.

 Let's just look at the arguments made in this thread.

 Prok keeps using the term "copyleftist". What does that mean? 

---

an arrangement whereby software or artistic work may be used, modified, and distributed freely on condition that anything derived from it is bound by the same condition.

---

Ok, so basically open source, freely distributed. In SL terms that would be releasing things copy/mod/trans for free with an agreement to redistribute any derived content with the same terms. What does that have to do with the article I posted or my comments on mod/copy perms?

If you said "nothing", you'd be correct. I'm not suggesting content creators should distribute their work freely or full-perms. I think it's fantastic that people can make and sell content in SL. And yet Prok uses this argument over and over and over again, desperately hoping people begin to believe it's what I'm arguing for if they keep repeating the same lie in every post.

See also;

---

Prokofy Neva wrote:

Penny's grand vision means it would have to be copyable AND transferable.

---

This isn't an argument. Prok isn't offering an alternate view, addressing my opinions or even the tips in the article I linked to.  Prok is straight up lying. Which is what Prok does. Constantly. Even in their most recent post they're still making this claim;

---

Prokofy Neva wrote:

Penny isn't interested in re-sale and markets but only in copyleftism

---

Despite earlier in the thread when Thereasa and others pointed out it was untrue, to which Prok responded with more libel;

---

Prokofy Neva wrote:

I didn't hear her say that. And even if she isn't inciting violation of both the mechanics of SL and the TOS, it's still copyleftist aggression to demand that people make items copyable that they would prefer to sell in one instance. The end.

---

See how Prok insinuates I'm trying to break the TOS? No explanation on how, of course, and still insisting I'm aggressively trying to (somehow) force everyone to release everything full perm and freely distributable.

 

 Not surprising considering how Prok is the same person who accused me of being a paedophile for a much earlier article I wrote showing how when you have a set amount of a land area you fill it up faster when you make everything (houses, furniture, avatars) larger than it needs to be.

 Prok brought that old chestnut out again for a tutorial I wrote about body proportions and avatar shapes, and I seem to recall they went on to threaten their own tenants and visitors to their land with ejection and banishment if their avatars were too short for Prok's liking.

 It seems whenever an article, tutorial, or forum thread comes up where people share ideas on how to get more value out of land in SL, Prok, whose primary SL venture is renting land, rushes in to spam the same rubbish nonsense. Why is that? Why would Prok, a landlord, get so agressive whenever someone shares tips on how to get more from their land in SL?

A mystery we shall never understand, I guess.

 

[Penny Patton]

For the record, it's not like I even have a problem with no-copy content being sold. I just would not buy it myself for the reasons I already gave. 

Some stores offer a choice in permissions. You can purchase a copy that is mod/trans/no-copy or a version that is copy/mod/no-trans, giving you the choice in perms that most appeal to you. I think that's fantastic.

[Phil Deakins]

Don't concern yourself with Prokofy, and don't feel that you have to explain things to her either. She is usually objectionable when she posts here, and what she posts often has nothing to do with fact. She does tend to make things up to suit her negative feelings/outlook at the time.

[Kelli May]

No-one has called Prok out an an important point: conflating copyleftism with a preference for copy/no-trans products.

It sounds so convincing, but it's completely irrelevant to the argument. A copyleftist would not be happy with copy/no-trans items. Copyleftism encourages the right to freely and legally copy and distribute IP. As we all know, you can't distribute* no-trans items. Preferring (even demanding) copy/no-trans products is not copyleftist.

*Yes, you can put multiple copies out anywhere you have rez permissions, but the important point is that copy/no-trans items aren't going to end up in anyone else's inventory.

[Qie Niangao]

---

Kelli May wrote:

No-one has called Prok out an an important point: conflating copyleftism with a preference for copy/no-trans products.

---

You're correct, but that post is even more brain-damaged than that, claiming that buyers should be up-in-arms against all no-transfer products because by preventing resale they violate The Market All Hail The Free Market. Apparently we should only be allowed to purchase transferable items.

I've seen folks in denial about their gacha addictions before, but this is a whole new level of delusion.

[Phil Deakins]

---

Qie Niangao wrote:

---

Kelli May wrote:

No-one has called Prok out an an important point: conflating copyleftism with a preference for copy/no-trans products.

---

You're correct, but that post is even more brain-damaged than that, claiming that buyers should be up-in-arms against all no-transfer products because by preventing resale they violate The Market All Hail The Free Market. Apparently

we should only be

allowed

to purchase transferable items.

I've seen folks in denial about their gacha addictions before, but this is a whole new level of delusion.

---

We should? Heck, I'm gonna have to go round again and reset the things I changed to copy/no-trans, as a result of this thread, back to no-copy/trans.