Can We Solve Second Life's Full-Perm Scams With Simple "No Resell/No Rebox" Addition?

Lots of interesting comments in last week's post about full-perm scams in the SL Marketplace (i.e., unauthorized resell of avatar enhancements). I closed by hinting at a solution I would describe in another post, but longtime SLer/NWN reader Shockwave Yareach may have an even more elegant proposal:

Of course there is a solution. It is a small change to the permissions system. Simply add the checkbox "no resell" to permissions, signaling that full perm stuff may not be sold. And add another checkbox called "no rebox" as well. Buy a box of textures to make your own products? That'll work. But try to sell the same box of textures and make your money back? That won't work. Sure you can take the time to put all the textures in your own box and sell that - if the textures are set "no rebox" they cannot be stuck in another box, just used to texture it.

That strikes me as a good idea, at least to keep scams down to a manageable, dull roar. I'm not sure if it's technically feasible without a lot of front back-end jiggering for Linden Lab, but at least it's worth thinking about. Until then, however, maybe SL content creators should follow Vanni's advice:

I have made things over the years and sold them, and I've never handed out anything full perms. Copy/no-trans or trans/no-copy only. In my opinion, the only full perm things that should be sold are components that the original maker knows will be used to make more clothes, or parts for homes, or what have you. And those are sold at a higher price as the maker knows they are sold to one avatar once, and hopefully not handed out to others. If a seller is not willing to have people do them in with reselling things inconsistently with the seller's intent, setting proper permissions are the only real protections they have. Always expecting the worst out of people is a better life algorithm than blind trust people will do right.

Sad to say, she may be right about the blind trust part.

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Comments

[Kavon Chrome]

How about simply making it mandatory to have payment on file to sell on marketplace! Then they will know the real life information on who is selling ripped or against T.O.S. items.

[Taylor]

I think people might be misunderstanding what's going on a bit: these items *have* to be sold full-permissions, and they *have* to be resellable, because these items are meant to be modified and resold -- that's entirely what they're for.

The problem is that they're not intended to be resold unmodified, with full-permissions, or at a price lower than the original seller, and that's what some people are doing now.

So there really isn't any technical solution to this. When it comes down to it selling stuff full-permissions is inherently risky. Creators have to be willing to accept that risk and the fact that there will be theft if they want this to be their business. Otherwise, they do have the option of selling no-transfer items directly to consumers and that's certainly no less lucrative.