This new scripting protects the designer from having their designs stolen. I wont go into details but anyone with prim based products that are mod are at risk.  This script resizing is actually wonderful.  It takes the guess work our of resizing hair for all players so there is no need to have the hair mod.

Sorry if this trend is not for you but it is going to be growing at a fast rate.  There has been too many instances of ignored thefts lately.  The designers need to protect themselves.  Have you tried the samples that were given out of the hair to Calla, Savoir Hair, etc?

For pictures, when I find a hair is not working just right and I am in a time crunch I use position just for the angle of that shot to save me time but it would work well in this instance.

To start with your question, yes I have tried some of the samples, and they confirmed to me what the issues would be. In some cases, the hairs will fit. In most, they won’t. In all cases, I would pass on buying the hair because it limits my own personal use of an item I have bought too greatly.

Regarding the issue behind all of this, if by theft you mean reproducing an item prim by prim, I am not sure that really is theft in the legal sense. Looking at RL fashion, you can’t patent a clothing design, so that sort of ‘reverse engineering’ is probably not illegal (though I am not certain what LLs stand on the issue is).

However, semantics aside, I do agree that its morally wrong to do something like that on Second Life for the purpose of redistributing it (either for free or for sale). But I don’t think its a good answer for the makers to make the products less usable or even unusable for those who don’t use their products in inappropriate ways.

I am not sure what a good solution to the problem is, though. Possibly, the only good answer may be LL becoming more responsive to dealing with such issues. As a consumer, I certainly can’t agree that this is a good answer, no matter how necessary some may feel it is.

Unfortunately, many designers have tried to get action from LL but did not meet with success.  This did not come from a rash decision but after trying long and hard to get LL to address the issue.  The theft out there right now is scarier than prim by prim reproduction.

I admit when I first heard about this,  I was against it.  At this point the script presented to me was a simple re-size script.  And while I don’t want my designs stolen, from a customer prospective I thought was bull..  I can’t get anything to fit me “just right” by making it bigger or larger.  For some reason I have an effed up asymmetrical head.  I ALWAYS have skull popping out of the left side of whatever hair I wear.  Thank goodness I make hair and don’t have to deal with that issue..  :D

Then a different script was presented to us which would allow us not only to re-size it, but also move select prims around by simple clicks.  Seeing as how a large portion of our customer questions/concerns is “Help!  I can’t get it to fit right and I suck at editing”,  a simple click method sounds great.

So while I understand it may not be something everyone is happy about… I believe it will work, and the hair will still fit the way it should.  It will just be different. I’m personally not a fan of change..  ask Lily.  I pretty much threw a fit when the subject was brought up of re-scripting and recolouring all of our hair.  But when it comes down to it,  I will do anything to protect the designs I’ve made from theft.  This is no longer a game to me,  and many others in my position.  This is my job.  It pays our rent, puts food on our tables.. feeds and clothes our children.  For someone to be able to take that from us so easily..  scares the bejesus out of me!

~Hae,  Calla

As I don’t know what is being referred to, I can’t comment on whether I think the actions taken are motivated by what is going on.

But regardless of what is going on, fact remains that in my opinion, designers who implement this will be selling a product that I feel places too many restrictions on my usage of it.

I don’t want designers to stop designing because their designs are being copied, but I also won’t buy no mod hairs, so either way I still lose access to those designers and the designers lose out on a purchase.

Now, I have no idea how many people feel the same. Maybe its a small minority. But if its not, this change could have considerable effect on sales as well.

Perhaps you missed this part of Haedon’s comment. 

“Then a different script was presented to us which would allow us not only to re-size it, but also move select prims around by simple clicks.”

Aria Alexandria (scripting goddess supreme) has somehow devised a way that a SINGLE PRIM of a no mod item may be moved. 

Which, in theory, should eliminate the issues of “there’s a funky piece coming out of my eye/ear/boob-because-I’m-standing-funny” because you will *still* be able to move a single piece.  It just won’t be via the “Edit” menu.  (Which, btw, does still work if you need to move or rotate the entire wig.)

The responses from the majority of people who have sent back feedback about the new touch-to-size have been enormously positive.  The concerns were exactly what you’ve described, which we (well Aria) are working on a solution for.  Trust us, hair makers are 1000 times pickier about a prim not being in the right place than most other people.  We understand.

Anyone remember what happened when shoes went no mod and everyone was forced into a size 0 foot?  At least you’ll still get to pick your own head!  :)

For those of us that SL is a paycheck for, we can’t afford to have our creations so incredibly vulnerable.  Most clothing designers have recently gone to no transfer for the same reasons.  Shoe designers went no mod long ago.  None of it is done to make customer’s lives more difficult, it’s to protect our hard work and investments. 

Again, with this script Aria’s working on, customers and creators will BOTH be able to get what’s most important to them.  Hang tight, change isn’t always a bad thing, and honestly this one is long overdue.

/me wonders if this means Hae is talking to her again…  :)

<3 Lily

I don’t quite follow how this additional ability of the script would work. Are you saying that all prims can be moved, just one at a time, or that only selected prims (presumably pre-selected by the creator?) can be moved? :)

Depending on the specifics of the functionality, it does make it more likely that a hair could be fitted right for most everyone. I would still personally not buy no-mod hairs, but yes, I imagine customers on the whole would be much less bothered by it.

As for the shoes issue ... well, I think its very annoying as well, and it does prevent me from buying boots. Even if the creators allow modifying of the upper prims, the upper prims will then become too large for the foot prim. So, its generally a dealbreaker for me too.

I fully understand the need to protect ones livelihood (and I have gone a long way myself to chase down people who copied certain things of mine) but as a consumer I do take the same stance on this as with DRM-protected music, books, etc. Which is that I don’t want to buy things that are too restricted in terms of what I can do with them.

I am also concerned that this change (which I do not see as positive for the customers in any way, since the benefits of the script could be introduced without taking away the mod ability) really won’t be that effective anyway. My understand is that even the protection of no modify can be circumvented. Then it becomes a little like placing a no right-clicking script on a webpage to prevent image-theft: potentially annoying for more advanced users and still not a good protection for the images.

I won’t buy any hair that isn’t mod/copy/notrans. Ever. Honestly, I would rather not buy any new hairs ever again than buy hair with different permissions than that. But I don’t think it will come to that because I seriously doubt my favorite hair designers will change their permissions.

Giving the recent going ons with the skin thefts.  I can see every designer taking all the steps they needed to protect themselves and their designs.  Don’t knock it until you try it.

But the thing is, there is no foolproof way to protect your designs. In some cases (but not when it comes to textures), you can make it harder, but you can’t stop it. Thefts have been going on all the time and I am certain they will continue.

If the change to permissions becomes widespread enough, workarounds (which, as far as I understand it, already exist) may also become more widespread, and more people may feel justified to use them. Not to copy things to resell, but to do so for personal usage. Just like how a very large portion of Internet users see nothing wrong with cracking DRM-protection on music.

Digital content will always be pretty impossible to protect, and I think that ultimately the only real way of dealing with theft is to go after the thieves using the DMCA. And, as I saw someone else point out on a blog, take into account the fact that theft will happen in your business planning.

I often retexture hairs and link hats to hairs. What about that, huh? Sometimes I suspect designers want to control the way customers wear their items. Reminds me of a story of an architect who included furniture in his designs. He sold one house with its furniture to a family, and later they invited him over and he noticed they had rearranged a few piece of furniture. He went over and moved the pieces back where they were when he sold it.

Solaesta, you are kidding me right?  Control the customers?  This has nothing to do with controlling the customer but controlling theft.  As to linking the hair to a hat, why?  Why not just put them together in a Folder if you like how they fit together.  Wear all.  I am not sure that either of you realize that you are coming across as very selfish.  Go forbid, you might have to buy another color or buy a pack that comes with the color you are looking for!  Look at the real world, you just bought a pair of shoes and decided you want them another color.  What are your choices?  Pay for the shoes in another color or have them dyed if they are dyable.  Either way you have to pay to get this done decently.  There is no difference.  You cannot demand that your SL jeans, shirts, etc(most clothing is no mod except prims) be mod so you can retexture them so why hair.  If you buy a shirt in SL and love it, you have to buy the other color you like, there is no tinting it.

I have to agree here - I suppose like every other female that ever got her hair done, getting hair is only the first step - I have to fuss with a new one and move the parts around to get it to suit my face and av.  Only rarely does something work right out of the box and resizing is only part of the equation.  As an artist and designer myself I appreciate the trouble with people stealing designs, but as in that story about the architect there comes a point when we all have to let go of our creations.  There is a line between prudence and paranoia and perhaps the market system will demonstrate that if people stop buying items that don’t work for them.  For that we’ll have to wait and see.

No, I don’t think that controlling the way the item is used, as long as the usage is legal, is at all what this is about. There is obviously, and for good reasons, genuine concern about content theft.

But given the recent revelation of a tool being sold that can backup your whole inventory (though the claim was that it would only work on full perm objects, that seems to have been disputed), I am afraid that all of these measures will be like closing the barn door even though the cow was never actually in there.

Teagan,

I do not appreciate being called selfish. Frankly, I am offended and I think its extremely annoying that you react like this. As a customer, I have every right to decide what I feel is reasonable to pay for.

When it comes to hair, I buy to get the prims, not the texture, because I make and use my own. And it is my right and that of anyone else who does the same to take that approach.

And, frankly, your real world analogy is ridiculous. You can dye clothes, you can have them altered in other ways, you can resell them. If SL goods were comparable to RL goods, they’d all be mod/transfer and never copy. Actually, you could copy too, and no one could stop you.

But the problem is that you’re comparing apples and pears. Expectations in RL and SL are not the same. And sure, sometimes things have to change, but I will continue to stand by that this is a bad change and that it ultimately won’t do any good.

Why link a hat to hair? If you have run out of attachment points, that’s why.

Also, most of my favorite designers *do* allow you to tint or otherwise mod the clothing layers. Shortening sleeves is something I do often, for instance if I’m wearing a longer-sleeved shirt under a shorter-sleeved jacket, I may shorten the shirt sleeves so they don’t stick out.

Often if a top comes with prim sleeves I also shorten the sleeve on the clothing layer and wear the prim sleeve on the upper arm instead of the forearm. I have done the same with pants that have prim cuffs (the prim nicely covers the jagged edge of the shortened sleeve/leg). If I can’t do this sort of thing with what I buy I am much less likely to buy it. When it comes to hair, there is *zero* chance of me buying it if it’s not copy/mod.

Of course I don’t want people stealing designs! But “solutions” like this will restrict legit customers who like to mod their stuff, and it *still* won’t prevent theft.

Your comments about mod clothing, Solaesta, reminded me that I have seen several blogs lately where the writers have noted in their reviews that they don’t like no mod clothing, including for the non-prim stuff, for the very reasons that you mention.

If anything, people seem to have become more vocal about this rather than more tolerant. I guess those of us who feel this way will have to continue to be (politely) vocal about this matter (whether its about hair or shoes or clothes) and to vote with our lindens.

I also think its a good idea to support any attempts to put pressure on LL to act more quickly on DMCA complaints.