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

[Penny Patton]

Here's an article I recently posted showcasing a simple trick to getting far more value from the land you own in SL.

It's primarily about using holodeck style scripts to instance areas as you need to use them; and illustrating how such systems can be integrated into larger, seamless environments in creative ways. However, such systems do not work with content that has no-mod or no-copy perms and it got me thinking about how such content is increasingly prevalent in Second Life today with the growing popularity of gatchas and no-mod avatar accessories making these perms seem more acceptable than they ever should be viewed.

Don't get me wrong, there are cases where no-mod and no-copy perms are necessary (ie: for scripts and closed gaming systems), but when these perms are used for practically everything, you, the customer, are being cheated out of basic functionality and it costs you in ways you probably haven't considered. And I don't believe most content creators do this intentionally. Most of them just haven't put much thought into the perms they apply to their creations. They're cheating themselves as well.

As the article points out, virtual space with unlimited data storage, such as SL provides, gives you the option of making any amount of land in SL practically infinite. However, you sacrifice that the moment you start using no-mod/no-copy content in your homes, clubs, stores or RP sims.

 Something to think about, and hopefully give everyone ideas in how to get a lot more out of their SL experience. :matte-motes-smile:

[Shudo]

But unless it's set to no-mod people can copybot it. :smileylol:

!QUIT

!QUIT

!QUIT

!QUIT

[Phil Deakins]

I haven't read the blog post you linked to but, from what you described, the idea of changing the environment just by a click on a menu is nothing new, and has been around for many years.

So assuming that that's what the blog post describes, you are wrong about no-copy. For it to work, it does need copyable furnishings, but most creators won't give you that, simply because all a landlord would need to do is buy one item (say a seat), and rezz an instance of it for each of the homes they rent out. Having been in the SL furniture business for almost 10 years, I know this very well. People even offer to pay 3 times the selling price, but they'll then rez a dozen or more copies. And that's not to mention the fact that they can sell copies of it, and compete with the creator. In other words, and contrary to what you said, it's copyable items would cheat the creator, non non-copy ones.

The way to get what you want is to create your own copyable items for your own environments. As long as you don't sell them, it'll be good.

[Penny Patton]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

I haven't read the blog post you linked to but.....

 

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Let me stop you right there and give you some advice. Before you comment on an article, you should read the article.

 I will tell you that you're fears about copyable furniture are based on some misguided assumptions.

You're assuming that a large portion of the people who might be interested in purchasing your furniture would be equally happy with someone else owning the furniture and placing it in a home they rent but have little to no control over. That's a huge leap, one I would argue is entirely unfounded. There's a lot of people who sell copyable furniture. They do just fine.

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Phil Deakins wrote:

And that's not to mention the fact that they can sell copies of it, and compete with the creator. 

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That's simply not true. You cannot sell a mod/copy/no-transfer item.

[Freya Mokusei]

I have read the article. I'm also fully aware I'm still due to pop by and see your place - the photos you took are crazy-cool.

This is actually how I do things at home - mostly with simple objects (e.g. a photographic greenscreen + lighting that I don't need rezzed all the time), I have a little AI (kinda - he's still a bit lobotomised) dude who floats from person to person waiting to see if it can help to rez anything.

My land is organised into tiers, each belonging to a partner, and also a communal level (and I guess, 'my level') on the ground. Even at a quarter-sim there's a tonne of advantages in getting rid of stuff I don't immediately need. Naturally I got carried away and the building itself is destined to  'transform' depending on a trillion variables - once I get around to setting it all up!

Admittedly I don't buy furniture too often, presumably for all the hassles Phil mentions - folks selling No Copy or No Mod isn't useful to me in any way (I also recently had a discussion about EULA's attempting the same restrictions). When I have bought furniture to mess around with, I've occaisionally wandered into especially prickly situations with folks who were offended that their creations weren't as perfect in practice as they'd been imagined to be. Anyway I'm not criticising peoples' choices in protecting their IP, just adding my voice to the pile of those poorly served by prevailing 'wisdom'.

If it's helpful I'll post the original code for the AI dude later on today. All it is is an llDialog, warpPos and working off of a notecarded list of positions and inventory names. It may be a little less fuss than a whole holodeck and at least useful for folks to try as an addition to their existing decorations.

This is a cool way to be able to spend more land impact on stuff you can see *at the moment* rather than elegant beds and whole interior-decorated wings of McMansions that get used for an hour a week. We have dynamic, responsive websites on the 2D web, why are we still stuck with static, wasteful content in the 3D one!

Thanks for the article, great pics.

[DaniSkunk]

if it can be seen, it can be stolen.  simple.  no mod means nothing. 

[Qie Niangao]

Ah, you're too young to know the significance of the "!QUIT" irony flag.

Much as the !QUIT plague was with us for years after its few hours of effectiveness, even still we have creators clinging to the no-mod superstition, so there's no harm in any reminder that they make themselves very public fools every time they set no-mod permissions.

[Phil Deakins]

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Penny Patton wrote:

---

Phil Deakins wrote:

I haven't read the blog post you linked to but.....

 

---

Let me stop you right there and give you some advice. Before you comment on an article, you should read the article.

Well that was silly advice, wasn't it? Because of it, I went and looked at the article and I found that your description told me everything I needed to know to write my post.

Let me reciprocate, and give

you

a piece of advice. If someone says, "

I didn't read the article, but

...", first check that the writer hasn't made a mistake by making a wrong assumption about the article's content, before you stop to give them advice about reading it. My assumption, based on your decription, was entirely accurate, and your advice was unnecessary and a waste of effort.

 I will tell you that you're fears about copyable furniture are based on some misguided assumptions.

No they are not. They are based on actual experience over almost 10 years of being in the business.

You're assuming that a large portion of the people who might be interested in purchasing your furniture would be equally happy with someone else owning the furniture and placing it in a home they rent but have little to no control over. That's a huge leap, one I would argue is entirely unfounded.

I'm not assuming anything. I've had loads of people, who rent out homes, ask me if I'll sell them copy versions, so that they can place instances in many homes. For those people, I offered significant quantity discounts, which many of them accepted. Again I'm not assuming anthing about "

a large portion of ...

". I can tell you with certainly that almost everyone who has bought my furniture over the years has bought it for their own non-business use. I know that simply because I've never sold anything that's copyable, so, apart from a very few who bought individual items to furnish homes they rent out, that must be the case.

There's a lot of people who sell copyable furniture. They do just fine.

Good for them, but what they (or you) consider to be "just fine" isn't what serious business people consider to be "just fine".

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Phil Deakins wrote:

And that's not to mention the fact that they can sell copies of it, and compete with the creator. 

---

That's simply not true. You cannot sell a mod/copy/no-transfer item.

Yep. I hadn't been up many minutes when I wrote that, and my brain clearly wasn't functioning properly. That was, of course, because for so many years I've sold transferable everything. I don't see any rational reason to sell furniture that can't be transfered, so everything has always been mod/trans/no-copy.

---

 

[Phil Deakins]

You did give me one good idea though. I used to sell a temp rezzer (but not copyable furniture to go with it), but I removed it from sale years ago. I could resurrect it as an environment rezzer without it needing to use temp objects. I probably won't do it, but it's not a bad idea

[Kelli May]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

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Penny Patton wrote:

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There's a lot of people who sell copyable furniture. They do just fine.

Good for them, but what they (or you) consider to be "just fine" isn't what serious business people consider to be "just fine".

---

Barnsworth Anubis (copy/mod) and Trompe Loeil (copy/mod), two of the most popular, long-standing and successful furniture vendors I'm aware of in SL are not 'serious business people'?

I could also throw in LAQ Decor (copy/mod), Neurolab (copy/mod) and Headhunter Island (copy, but no mod) as designers I frequently see represented in SL blogs, and whose furniture I see used in many places around SL. For the sake of honesty, another designer I often see mentioned, Storax Tree, does sell no-copy but my experience is that many large, successful designers do sell copiable items.

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Kelli May wrote:

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Phil Deakins wrote:

---

Penny Patton wrote:

---

There's a lot of people who sell copyable furniture. They do just fine.

Good for them, but what they (or you) consider to be "just fine" isn't what serious business people consider to be "just fine".

---

Barnsworth Anubis (copy/mod) and Trompe Loeil (copy/mod), two of the most popular, long-standing and successful furniture vendors I'm aware of in SL are not 'serious business people'?

I could also throw in LAQ Decor (copy/mod), Neurolab (copy/mod) and Headhunter Island (copy, but no mod) as designers I frequently see represented in SL blogs, and whose furniture I see used in many places around SL. For the sake of honesty, another designer I often see mentioned, Storax Tree, does sell no-copy but my experience is that many large, successful designers do sell copiable items.

---

More dilettantes:

Bazar, Cheeky Pea, Consignment, DIGS, Dutchie, floorplan., LISP Bazaar, The Loft, Pilot, Post, and {what next}, just off the top of my head.

When I first started in 2010 furniture was often no-copy, but by 2011 some stores started selling high-quality sculpted furniture with copy permissions at low prices - {what next} was the first I really noticed doing this. If other furniture makers weren't doing this already they had to start due to their competition.

 

[Aethelwine]

Garden of dreams and Marian Lean do nice systems. Both can be used with Novatech's Horizons system and their away team module. It is pretty easy to make your own scenes too.

But mostly now I use rezzers (there are quite a few simple ones available) more for changing my skybox from a living room, to a bedroom or hot tub room as I desire. Some furniture seems to work better in them than others, some old furniture when you rezz it, you have to wait 5 minutes for it to load all its notecards of poses, whilst newer furniture tends to be ready to use as soon as it has rezzed.

[Bree Giffen]

I have done this in my old skybox. I had the living room and bedroom rezzable and separated by a door. I actually stopped using it because of new low land impact mesh furniture.

The copyable furniture can be a hassle but I usually buy full perm things now. I always have to resize and recolor furniture to suit the decor. 

[Phil Deakins]

@ you and Kelli.

I still maintain that serious business people would not sell copyable furniture. I did mean at normal prices, which I assumed would have been obvious. It's no good trotting out a list of names that do sell copyable furnitre. I have no doubt that there are many, but I did say "serious business people".

I am no longer a serious business person in SL, but I used to be, and I made a LOT of money every month as a result. What I'm sure you won't find in your lists are people selling copyable furniture AND who are in the top very few percent of earners in SL - as I was. Most businesses consider it a successful business if they make tier every month plus, perhaps, a bit more to spend. No doubt some of those sell copyable furniture, and even have good reputations for their stuff.

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

@ you and Kelli.

I still maintain that serious business people would not sell copyable furniture. I did mean at normal prices, which I assumed would have been obvious. It's no good trotting out a list of names that do sell copyable furnitre. I have no doubt that there are many, but I did say "serious business people".

I am no longer a serious business person in SL, but I used to be, and I made a LOT of money every month as a result. What I'm sure you won't find in your lists are people selling copyable furniture AND who are in the top

very

few percent of earners in SL - as I was. Most businesses consider it a successful business if they make tier every month plus, perhaps, a bit more to spend. No doubt some of those sell copyable furniture, and even have good reputations for their stuff.

---

Are there any furniture sellers selling only no-copy furniture who are currently in the top very few percent of earners in SL?

 

[Aethelwine]

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Theresa Tennyson wrote:

Are there any furniture sellers selling only

no-copy

furniture who are currently in the top very few percent of earners in SL?

 

---

8f8 spring to mind.

Gatcha businesses seem to do very well for themselves. Some of the quality of their work is remarkable.

[Phil Deakins]

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.

[wherorangi]

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Phil Deakins wrote:

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.

---

the main reason is that is mostly only landlords who provide furnished accomodation who rez multiple copies of the same furniture inworld. The numbers of these landlords are quite few relative to private owners and renters of bare parcels

most of the bare parcel home owners and renters also dont rez multiple copies of the same lounge suite or table in their house

what people like tho is to have a inventory backup for the times when they accidentally delete or destroy a furniture they have rezzed inworld

and there are lots of furniture makers who cater for these home owners/renters

[Theresa Tennyson]

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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. 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.)

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.)

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.)

You think this model is a good one because it worked for you. You think it's the only one that works because you are Phil Deakins.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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."

It was how you do business. Might not be how you should now though.

 

[Prokofy Neva]

Nonsense.

The age-old bias where scripters and gamers -- the geek squad -- get to protect their creations, contents, livelihood, notably because scripts are server side and harder to copy (inside SL) but...

Creators using prims and textures don't get that protection and are viewed as "lesser" and are supposed to allow the copyleftists to gut their value and livelihood.

Why?

It's illogical, unfair and merely reflecting the Internet agenda in general which isn't in the public interest.

And please don't talk to me about technical exigencies and "science". 

For years, we were told that you "can't" protect textures and prims "because analogue hole" and copyability. iTunes "couldn't" or "shouldn't" encode its digital contect because it will "only be copied inevitably".

Of course, now that the crypto kids have insisted on having invincible code on their phones, email, communications, etc. that law-enforcement cannot access, the real question to ask is why code gets to be used on their anarchy to protect "privacy," and yet that same ability of invincible coding can't be used to protest content. Hello! Even Cory Doctorow grasped this new inherent contradiction that has appeared in his whole indefensible world view.

No one needs "endless space" for their homes. This is just a total fiction. I find that 90% of people do not use the prims they are alloted and are paying for, especially as more and more items become mesh.

This "holodeck" fascination is something that a certain minority culture loves in SL, but it is not the norm. People like stability and familiarity and actually aren't interested in changing their scene every hour or every day, even when you give them that ability. 

Those that go into rentals with those features, that are stacked up regardless of parceling to 4096 m in the air don't use that capacity to change.

Nobody is being "cheated" here in the current system; the notion that consumers are "cheated" if creators get to protect their copyright, make their work valued, and earn a livelihood is entirely fictional and misplaced.

This viewpoint should get the strongest possible pushback from creators who should point out the obvious, glaring flaw in an argument that says scripters and gamers kept to lock up their stuff to prevent theft, but nobody else does.

[Prokofy Neva]

I offer tenants a program whereby they can pay a one-time fee of $25 and get anything in my inventory up to their prim limit rezzed on their rental for the duration of the rental.

Only a small percentage of people make use of this program because most people not only want the fun of shopping and decorating themselves, they want control over the item so as to move it or get rid of it easily. This can be done with "share" in a group but given how griefers go for this feature as their chief means of griefing often, even by blocking known griefers from groups, you can't really control the damage. Even so, it's possible to do in controlled situations.

Most landlords aren't going to rez out the same thing over and over again because it looks bad and Orwellian in many cases. They will want houses to look different, and if furnishing interiors, will want those different too.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with selling copyable furniture that is not transferable. That is the norm, and only a minority of ideological copyleftists oppose this.

[Prokofy Neva]

There aren't "a lot" of people who sell copyable furnituire, no, that's false.

Most of those who do are providing models for builders and they have LICENSES prohibiting distribution of copyable versions.

[Prokofy Neva]

They aren't transfer tho. And Penny's grand vision means it would have to be copyable AND transferable.

[wherorangi]

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Prokofy Neva wrote:

I offer tenants a program whereby they can pay a one-time fee of $25 and get anything in my inventory up to their prim

---

agree with the principle behind this

if we can rent our parcels to others and we do, then we can certainly rent the other stuff we own to others as well 

for anyone to tell us otherwise maybe wasnt awake in Ethics 101 class 

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Prokofy Neva wrote:

They aren't transfer tho. And Penny's grand vision means it would have to be copyable AND transferable.

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Nope. Copy and mod.