Why aren’t SL vehicles resellable?

Alright… picture this. Shortly after waking up this morning, before even my first sip life-giving coffee, I stumble to my desk, still blinking in the morning light. I crank up the computer (hand-crank computers are very rare these days), and open my mail client. Oh, I see a message from Second Life — from a customer! Let’s see what they — Aaaa!

Bleh I hate No trans dealers.. Above all its egotistical and self rigious to put so much value on a something so insignificant that you seem fit to make it exslusive and Monogramic
I personally enjoy yhr frredoms of being able to pass down used goods to new players or even paw it if i am In a bind, to deem it that you are so important that some primitives… which are tiny lights on a screen are so imporant that you feel the need
to make them exlusive.. is just selfish and pathedic
I No longer have the will to do bussiness with you, and I have given you my 3 cents

Ouch. Somehow I’d lost a debate and a customer during the night.

The heated debate over permissions is usually driven by ignorance and fear on both sides. In the Second Life forums it’s not uncommon to see an angry consumer demanding to know why greedy content makers try to rip people off by removing the right to resell items. Content makers fire back and then it degenerates into the usual poo-flinging forum drama shortly before the thread is locked by moderators.

As Yoda says, “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” And “The path to the dark side, fear is.” Backwards-talking, Yoda always is. Wise, it makes him sound, I think.

The truth is, it’s not about greed at all. (Greed, it is not at all about.) It’s about a goofy permission system that doesn’t do an adequate job of protecting both the seller and the buyer.

SL permissions have two checkboxes: Copy and Resell/Give Away. These checkboxes allow sellers to remove the buyer’s ability to either copy or transfer an item. Why not sell with both the Copy and Transfer permissions enabled? It’s like MP3s: Joe Musician sells one hit MP3 and suddenly everyone’s sharing copies. Joe’s earnings in this scenario amount to approximately… one pittance. Plus or minus a cent or two.

Permissions are the Digital Rights Management (DRM) of Second Life. If you acknowledge that content makers have the right to prevent rampant copying and sharing of their work, then you’ll understand why SL products need to be set to either No-Copy/Transfer or Copy/No-Transfer. Because either setting adequately protects content makers, the seller needs to choose which permission is best for the customer.

Here’s a forum post from December in which I attempted to explain my choice of permission settings:

Buy the permissions that best fit the item

It doesn’t make sense to refuse to buy any no-transfer items, because no-transfer is often not a good idea for you as the buyer.

Here are examples from items I sell…

Vehicles – Copy, No-Transfer.
Never ever buy a no-copy vehicle, because vehicles go missing so easily in Second Life. Cross a sim border too quickly, and that L$500 helicopter you bought could unexpectedly become a L$500 hole in your inventory.

Attachments – No-Copy, Transfer.
Whenever it’s reasonable safe to assume that items won’t go missing (like vehicles do), I want my customers to be able to give away or resell items. Not only is this helpful for gift shopping, but it’s also good for entrepreneurs who want to set up shop.

Regarding reselling items…

There’s only two kinds of reselling that I dislike:

1.) Buying items and reselling them at a massive markup. Don’t be greedy, don’t cheat people. Take a modest markup to cover the efforts of distribution, but don’t gouge.

2.) Collecting full-permission freebies, and reselling them at a high price as no-copy items. That’s just scummy, and deserves at the very least the frowning of a lifetime. The customer hurts by paying unnecessarily for a crippled item, and the item freebie creator (you know, the person who supplied you with the nice goodies to sell?) wrongfully gets a bad reputation for distributing crappy, overpriced items.

Finally, how do you buy a no-transfer item as a gift?

The web shops (www.SLExchange.com, www.SecondServer.com, and www.SLBoutique.com) all have an option for delivering your purchase to another avatar. That’s the best way to buy a no-transfer item for a friend.

Why not get the creator to change the permissions? Your friend probably won’t appreciate losing their brand-new no-copy helicopter on the first flight, would they? (LINK)

So to protect the buyer, all SL vehicle makers — at least the ones who care about their customers — should set vehicle permissions to Copy/No-Transfer.

While it’s a confusing issue that’s difficult to explain clearly — especially before my morning coffee — permissions are not about greed or ego or mean-hearted content creators who just want to block people’s right to resell. (“Always with you what cannot be done,” Yoda says.) Yes, DRM exists principally to protect the seller, but the specific choice of permission is driven by customer needs.

And now, I’m going to stumble over to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee. A Jedi’s strength flows from the coffee.