Don't scream at me its just a thought :P.
In RL many many industries have accreditation, meaning that they 'shouldn't' not can't, operate under the banner of being that profession without it. Now that kind of thing of course gets abused just as much as anything, meaning people fake accreditation and what not.
But in many ways its a valuable thing to be under that kind of banner, its a safeguard, kind of like 'some' unions - again don't scream because in my country 'some' of our unions are good lol.
Anyway a few months back, I was in a group that was trying to fix things with theft and the idea of accrediting came up, and I as usual ran off at the mouth with a billion ideas in less than 5 seconds - yes Efe, I didn't breathe :P.
There are ways to do this, a few actually, and without necessarily having allot of elitist wah wah stuff going on.
What if there was an agreed upon logo for instance, and to get the logo for your store you had to be deemed theft free by a panel of members - remember this is just me spouting ideas .
Now thing is and this one is actually bigger than individual stores, in many situations of theft in the past, when the person stealing rented space, people have contacted the landlords and said 'blah blah blah ' and the response has more times than not been 'I don't care ' .
Why don't they care, easy they make rent from that one store.
BUT, what if the land was approved, what if the sim owner was approved as being totally co-operative to 'NO STOLEN GOODS ', what if that the terms of being approved by the 'theft free group' was that no ifs and or buts , you returned the renters items and they had no store .
Now in my mind that would generate big things for that land owner
1. People would want to rent there, with the absolute knowledge that no one is going to set up a store next to them with stolen product and if they do it will be dealt with straight away.
2. The land owner could advertise their mall/renters as a "Clean Environment' meaning customers are going to want to shop there, again knowing they wont come across stores of stolen merchandise .
Now those two reasons alone would pay more than one thieves rent in my mind, because eventually what would happen is that the booming malls/store area's would be the ones that people once they are aware of this 'banner' so to speak, would want to shop at those locations, people that rent would look for spaces also under those banners, and people that are prone to selling stolen content would eventually have less spaces to rent at.
Ok so then you think yes but most of them own sims, but again the first theory, the sim couldn't and wouldnt be approved if there was any stolen content on it, and if any was reported then bam kicked no longer acrredited.
But again you say lol - don't you love my conversation with you :P - what if they were accredited and then went on to steal, well thats the tricky part and something that would mean a good amount of people would have to be willing to do this in the first place.
A website could be set up to list all locations accredited, and there would have to be some sort of ban list stating accreditation has been pulled. No that wouldn't be a witch hunt or some kind of flaming, it would be pure and simple such and such location is no longer accredited, and of course somehow that would need to be absolutely worked out how , maybe the banner wouldn't even exist in world, maybe it would purely be site worthy. SO rather than banning them they just wouldnt appear on the site anymore, again this is all just ideas running through my mind.
A site compiled of all theft free sims and stores , and then its up to the individuals to use that how they will, I know I personally would love a site filled with slurls to just click and tp and find that nothing there would be stolen or reselling of anothers work - by that I mean freebies that you didn't make yourself as there is still allot of that that happens, and I have a few friends that totally freak out and won't shop in those stores, and fair enough for them to make that decision for themselves.
Now then you think, well what if a store is accredited but they rent at many spaces, then people would see the sign in their store, well thats up to the individual shopper and the actual store really , but again don't you think that eventually stores would pack up from malls and rental locations if their landlords weren't willing to support the fight against theft ?.
The thing is too that many are starting to stick to the absolute no way no how theft free stores, big stores that have complete sims or space, and they have enough incredible items, that people don't need the stress of shopping anywhere else. Again great safety in that , you know you wont find stolen items there, and you shop happy.
But what about those starting out , the people that have a few little locations spread out over SL and its going to take time to build up their products and reputation, they deserve a chance to be seen, well again , if those people find out there are places to rent that absolutely guarantee that the land will stay theft free, well by renting there they will be seen by all the shoppers that will want to visit those locations.
Ok I am so repeating myself I know it, but all is fair and good being a theft free store YAY YOU, but if the location you are at doesn't support you in that, then you are struggling up a very big mountain, and there are sooo many that want to help lighten that load.
If nothing like this actually gets done, think about it as a landlord yourself, what can you do to ensure the well being of your renters and your own sim.
Ok I rambled, I think I just want to see some signs when I land somewhere I have never been, that assures me I'm not going to deal with the pain of shopping in three stores; get to the fourth and finding it full of theft :o( , because then unfortunatly for those three great places, I will mark that sim off my need to continue shopping at memory bank.
Ok again a site or group doesn't need to even happen, if you own land and you rent spaces and you agree that no way is there ever going to be stolen content on your land, then let us know, let us reward that passion for a theft free SL by wanting to shop at your locations ♥
xox Sasy xox
7 comments:
In theory this would be great, however one important thing to consider: who or what entity would be responsible for investing the time and money it would take to organize this kind of grand scale endeavor?
You are talking about the time needed for whatever governing body oversees it to set and establish rules and well as to consider each business that applies for approval. Then there is the cost of a web domain, host, and someone to administer the web site. If said web site is not kept very up to date it becomes useless so it can't be on a "when I have time" basis, it has to be updated regularly, like daily for businesses with infringements.
This seems more of a Linden level project (insert hysterical laughter here) as opposed to a resident run operation.
Yeah I agree, I was thinking it all out as I typed it :P as you can see its the only way I end up somewhere.
Pretty much the way I ended it all, is the good step, the idea of people just stating in some way, this land is theft free.
xox Sasy xox
If everyone can see how valuable this service is then members wishing for accreditation should not mind paying a small fee say a couple hundred lindens to cover the costs and we all know what sitting around and waiting for Linden Lab to do anything is like.
I would love it if there was something like that. I have suggested it before. Most business owners in SL I think would be willing to become "accredited" simply because they want their customers to feel comfortable making purchases.
Although the oversight etc., would be a nightmare. I mean - you would have to rely on people's word and that can have it's own consequences. I'm talking about a certain individual who was outspoken about content theft when he/she was stealing said "textures" from another site (renderosity). I guess anyone who joins would have to be able to sign something stating that the content that they sell is theirs etc... Kind of like an agreement that you sign when you sell stock art? I'm game, sign me up. I have nothing to hide.
As for the Linden's managing something like this - I don't want them to, it would never see the light of day. Sometimes things are better when they are locally run.
I would love to see an offshoot of DIS (Designers in Seclusion), like some sort of certification etc. It couldn't hurt. Also malls and landowners could be a part of it so that new designers would know who to rent from or trust. I guess what you are really referring to is a "Guild"
You have my support.
Many people have wished that the Fashion Consolidated banner was just such an "approved content" vendor marker. Honey Fairweather, and I and PK, wish that it were so as well. But it isn't. We at FashCon would love to be able to work with some 3d party entity who could objectively assess PS files and sculpties under dispute. But that is a massive undertaking. Not so much for the website - those can be got for free - but for the time and expertise required.
Many of the cases of alleged theft that we see consists of skins that have been Photoshopped. The items aren't identical and one needs to have some one savvy to see the processing layers and adjudicate claims of common source materials.
I firmly believe that the Vast Vast majority of Fashion Consolidated affiliated merchants are wonderful hard-working artists and creators. I, personally, hate to see the FashCon name sullied by a mere handful of shady shops and would love to see them ousted, but we need objective evaluation to do that.
I totally agree with you here Sasy, I was thinking something along the the same lines myself and did start to do some research on it, but then it all just got too big and complicated.
This kind of project would need a team who are dedicated to this issue, possibly law educated with advanced knowledge of PS and sculpties and with a lot of time on their hands.
It should start at the mall owners at least, yesterday when I visited a very reputable mall and saw two stores which were selling skins obviously derived from a well known skin designer. I know that the mall owners have spaces to fill but I do think that in an ideal virtual world they should check each store before allowing them to rent, if a store within the mall has stolen items chances are it will taint the mall reputation and that of the fellow store owners.
It would definitely be hard, and time consuming.
But yes it would be great if landlords wanted to make it very clear that theft wont be tolerated and strict guidelines for their own sims of what that means.
A lot of it is intuitive though also, you see a store with incredible skins and you recognise them as another's work well then bye bye.
It is hard to have anything at all to do with your renters if you don't choose to, with the vendors that people can just click on pay into and next thing you know they have a space to sell whatever they wish it takes time to follow that up.
But if you do go through your spaces each week and look at the content, it shouldn't be too hard a task.
Anyway dont want to tell anyone how to run their businesses *coughs* (that was a personal cough at myself lol
but if you do care in the long haul about establishing your properties as rent-able spaces for good work and get good income from it, thats a great step forward.
xox Sasy xox
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