Miss Ophelia's Metaverse Manners: SL Shopper Etiquette, Part 1: How to Contact Creators & Spot Copybot Content

Exclusive to NWN, Iris Ophelia's ongoing take on etiquette and ethics in virtual spaces

I wanted to deal with some of the social troubles that can come with a shopping market as massive and complex as Second Life's. This topic received such a large response that I'll be breaking it up into two parts. This week I'll be addressing three questions, including some vital tips for identifying copybotted items! Let's get right to it...

Is it okay to IM a designer's partner if the designer isn't responding to me?

            -Speechless Shopper

This is almost always a big faux-pas. Let me put it this way, if you can't get a hold of your dentist for an appointment, do you call their husband or wife? The only situation where it would be acceptable to do so applies to SL as well, and that is if their partner is directly involved in their business. If they create or work together then it's reasonable to contact either partner, because either one should be able to help you. If you're only talking to them to get to their partner, then it's definitely not okay.

Make sure you're contacting the right person in the right way-- if they want you to send your information in a notecard, send it in a notecard, and if they want you to email them or deal with a customer service rep instead, do so. Always check their profile thoroughly for contact instructions like this, and remember that not everyone logs into SL every day. Give them a few days before sending any kind of follow-up.

Keep reading for two more shopper dilemmas!

How can I be sure that an item I'm buying or wearing hasn't been copybotted?

Unfortunately, there are very few ways to be sure, short of knowing every single thing ever released in SL (Good luck with that!) However, there are a lot of little clues you can look for to help protect yourself. Here are some of my key strategies for protecting myself from copybotted items:

• Compare the quality of the pictures and ad to the quality of the item itself. Does the item look like it would require considerably more Photoshop skill than is demonstrated in the picture advertising it? That should raise a red flag right away.
• Does the designer have a large number of products, in spite of only being a couple months old? It takes a lot of time and work for a designer to build their brand, so it's suspicious when a designer manages to spring upwith hundreds of products ready.
• If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. L$100 for a box of 20 legitimate full-permission skins? Dream on!
• If someone is claiming to be selling used items from other stores, check the original store to see if any of their goods are sold transferable. While some places like BareRose sell almost everything with transfer permissions, hair, shoe, and skin stores almost never do, so anything someone can sell you from those stores is almost definitely stolen content.
• When in doubt, ask the community. If you're suspicious of a product show it to friends or people who may know more about the kind of item-- if it's a pair of shoes, for example, ask an avid shoe blogger if they recognize the style or the brand. That way you can multiply your chances of recognizing a copybotted item exponentially.
• EDIT: Adeon Writer mentioned this in the comments and I can't believe I left it out! Inspect an item prim by prim for the date/time of each prim's creation. A botted item will usually show every prim being created within seconds of each other, whereas a legit item's prims will have often been created minutes, hours, even days apart.

It's impossible to recognize every copybotted item, but many can be easily caught by vigilant shoppers like you. If you do sniff out a botted piece, remember to alert the designer so they can pursue the appropriate legal actions.

If you have a question or issue in a store that doesn't openly display the owner's (or customer service person's) name, is it ok to IM the person listed as the "owner" in the kiosk properties?

            - Not-wanting-to-be-irritating-to-shop-owners

I would be a little wary of doing this, especially in situations with rented shops in malls. Before you IM them, check their Profile Picks for mentions of the shop, policies, a shop blog, or anything that would tip you off that they're the owner. If you can't find any details like that, examine decor and other vendors in the store for different owner names and check their profiles as well. If no one has any mention of the store in their profile, go with the name that appears most often as an object owner in the shop. Even if they aren't the proprietor of the store, they should be understanding of the effort you took to find out who to contact and forward you on to the correct person.

In preparation for Valentine's Day, next week's theme will be romance! Submit your virtual love dilemmas to ophelia.iris [at] gmail [dot] com, or submit anonymously to the Metaverse Manners Formspring.  Be sure to include a pseudonym (i.e. "WTF from the Welcome Area") so you know when I'm addressing your query!

Iris Ophelia (Janine Hawkins IRL) has been featured in the New York Times and has spoken about SL-based design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and with pop culture/fashion maven Johanna Blakley.

Comments

[Laetizia Coronet]

Designers could add a little brand logo to their stuff, just like in RL. That way, customers can see if an item is sold in the shop where it belongs, or if it is a ripoff.

Personally I shy away from shops selling a myriad of unconnected items (you know, three sculpty trees, a couple of tops, two houses, a car and some poses), especially when there are very diverse skills needed to make all of it. Chances are it's "gathered up" instead of created.

[smiles large]

There is not a functioning marketplace in SL anymore, what you see is ruins within waves after waves of designers leaving the platform... the online SL Marketplace is there to make the picture just a bit fuzzier and to funnel what's left of the staff with Starbucks money... the ruins are there and can't be missed.

[Nalates Urriah]

I disagree with smiles large. The Lab is changing to make SL more of a social network and market place for virtual goods. Over the last couple of months my sales have started to climb. I'm doing better than ever before. I did have to make changes to the transferred information, to get to work better with the new search... However, there is still lots to do and functionality of the Market and Search are both missing a lot.

Laetizia Coronet may have a point. I think it is rather shaky. If one also considers the age of the avatar, which it self is shaky criteria, it might be a little better. In my almost 3 years I've made a house, clothes, scripts, furniture, sculpty furniture, and other oddball things. What I think are the best of those items I have for sale, which makes for a few of each category. But, I made them all.

I say age is shakey because I know creator-merchants that use multiple avatars to help manage inventory and provide some insurance against total loss if inventory when SL hicups. One might think that means one avatar would have all of one category of a product. My experience is while most of us may make an Alt in an attempt to be organized, we just aren't that organized.

As Iris says, it is hard to know. Those making false charges based on over simplifications and their ignorant self-rightist do-gooder ideas create a fair share of the misery in SL.

While one does not want to allow abuse of original creators, one needs to be sure they know what they are doing before making charges.

[Noirran]

Great post Iris, if I could mention one thing. Please please please when looking for the owner of a shop, check the vendors/items in the shop, NOT the land group. Lots of shop owners rent land, from people like me, and im'ing me because you never received your boots will do you zero good.

[Adeon Writer]

One great way of spotting copybotted content is the inspect window. When you inspect multi-prim content, you can see the creation date of each prim in the content. Copybotted content typically has them all created in a matter of 3 to 4 seconds, while real content has the timestamps all over the place, often spanning hours.

[Adeon Writer]

"Designers could add a little brand logo to their stuff, just like in RL. That way, customers can see if an item is sold in the shop where it belongs, or if it is a ripoff."

And if I must say - along with selling things no mod and no copy, this is the third way you can make me not buy your stuff - I avoid branded clothing in SL just like I do in real life. :)

So be careful with that idea. It's not a good one in my book.

[Iris Ophelia]

Adeon that is SO TRUE and I can't believe I overlooked it. It's so important that I'm going to add it in right now and credit you. :D

[Brookston Holiday]

The one problem with the inspect window is content created by importing sculpted prims. I sell a boat that is 99% sculpts; as a side effect of importing it from offline, it looks like all the prims were created at the same instant, because it's a copy of the same prim with a different sculpt map applied to each.

-Brookston

[Mistletoe]

In addition to what Brookston mentions, I would think that recolors of similar items might also have all the prims rezzed in one go. Perhaps I'm mistaken?

[Iris Ophelia]

That's why I tried to use "weasel words" like often and usually, because there are always some honest exceptions. None of these are 100% positive ways to identify botted items, because if it was really that easy no one would ever be fooled. The point is more to identify potential red flags and encourage people to look more closely at what they're buying.