So. I call bull. But I have to go, I am sooo late!

No harm, no foul.

I wasn’t offended by anything you said, so aim your “Dear God” frustration elsewhere. I merely attempted to clear something up. Ever so sorry.

Fact 1: I have nothing against 50L friday. Remember this while reading my responses. I would have came in here and said the same thing had it been any other organization.

Fact 2: I was nice in my initial response. You guys CHOSE to read it and become offended.

Fact 3: I have filed *many* requests for trademarks, I have never had one rejected. How many have you filed? And as someone who is incredibly knowledged in trademark and copyright law, I am telling you, the way it is written in the notecard causes readers to think, “Oh, the event is licensed under creative commons”.. Impossible. As someone running this event (Im assuming youre involved?), it should be a top priority to make sure customers/participants understand who you are, what you are, and the limits regarding any sort of reproduction.

Fact 4: When you are trying to be professional and legal, it is VERY important to be SPECIFIC. And if what is “licensed” is the text/ads, then you need to SPECIFY that. You claim this was done, but it was not. You even pasted what the notecard said, and nowhere does it mention that the TEXT written in it is what you are trying to protect. Just saying “50L fridays is licensed….” Is incredibly broad, and is also an event. In other words, the end of the notecard has just told the reader that the 50L friday event is licensed under the chosen Creative Commons clauses.

Fact 5: The 2 licenses chosen to be tacked into 50L friday work together to basically give somebody *no* rights regarding it. Which is the COMPLETE opposite of what the Creative Commons mission is. Creative commons is the complete opposite of a copyright; otherwise known as a “Copyleft”. Maybe she meant to say “The text written in this notecard remains the copyright of and may not be reprinted without written allowance by the copyright holder”

Fact 6: I was only trying to help, but if 50L friday wants to continue looking ignorant, okay

Of course you wouldn’t, we see this all the time, RL stores are always competing with their prices.

The 50L/69L etc sales will likely eventually burn out because everyone is getting in on the act (which will be a shame), but that’s the way it goes when someone has a good idea, people want to copy, and you can’t stop this.

I know that sounds slightly insane, but here is my rationale. On Fridays, if I’ve got to go to work that day, I don’t get home until the evening. That means that I’m a little late on the jump, so to speak, to go and shop at 50L Fridays stores. However, by that time, I’ve seen exactly what 50L Friday items are being offered by some bloggers who ONLY blog those items on that day (often times, not even using their own images – just using the store owner’s images).

I’ll be honest. There may be a store or two on the 50L Fridays list that is new to me, but if I see an item being offered that I do not like (for whatever reason), I am MORE disinclined to go to that store than if I were to just hear about it on the blog. In essence, their 50L Friday offering… is negative advertising to me. Also, by seeing exactly what’s being offered on these blogs, I’m free to just go ONLY to the stores that have what I want. This means I’m NOT providing traffic to other stores. It’s this “sneak peek” that I think really hinders the more positive benefits of 50L Fridays (and Saturdays and whatever else copycat group sale they have going on).

In my opinion, bloggers might want to be respectful and maybe NOT blog their 50L Fridays acquisitions until the next day… Let people explore for themselves. Let them go from store to store and at LEAST provide traffic to see if what is being offered is something they might like. Otherwise, you’re putting horse blinders on ‘em and they’ll just go straight for what they want.

This data will be able to prove exactly how sales, the SL economy and events such as 50L Friday, truly affect the sales and profits of our beloved designers.

The data recieved will be published publically on Thurs 18th December, and hopefully will contain a broad and honest view of the facts surrounding this issue.

No personal data is collected from the survey and it is entirely anonymous.

Designer Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/B2FQKVD

Consumer Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BJ6J2FN

If you have any queries or concerns about the surveys or you just want to know more about it, please feel free to IM Cyclic Gearz inworld.

———-

Fill them in or don’t – I’m tired of claims of freebies and things depreciating the designers, when the facts will prove it as bunkum.

In business you aren’t there to look out for each other (unless you are linked in some way), you want to promote *your* business and make money, and it’s no different in SL.

I infinitely owe OMGWTF Barbacue for what she’s done in terms of store awareness.

In my opinion, people jealous of things like this are simply ones who can’t actually get in such a circuit…

And as for 50 L Fridays only being for “popular” or awesome, super talented creators. Hell. No one’s been to my store when I was on circuit, because HELLLL I have the most boring things ever… all I sell is eyes, and few at that, my profile art and junk may be enjoyable to look at, but in terms of being a clothing store, good luck. XD

Also it is fun, isn’t SL supposed to be fun?

Sounds to me like someone is sour grapes because they wanted in on the act. :/

I knew an art director for a big movie studio and with all of his years of experience he had to hunt down jobs in different states. Jobs in the graphic art field are difficult to find, if at all. Last I heard he was working temporary. This is not an isolated example.

My guess is the majority of good designers in Second Life have run into the same problem finding a RL job. A big problem in Hollywood is age, no matter how good you are. Another problem is out sourcing of thousands of jobs several years ago from major studios.

Thus, my LOL at finding a job in the classifieds.

#1: “RL garment industries have drastically closed down in North America and Europe because of monster megastores producing in overseas sweatshops — 50L is 0.19 cents in USD (approx Dec.09 market value). Don’t let this happen to your favorite designers.”

Since when has SL turned into a sweatshop? The costs of creating items in SL and the conditions are not what would be considered “sweatshop”. You create something in a PC, you are underneath a roof, most likely you have decent lighting and a heater in your room if its cold–or if its too hot, you have air conditioning–Where’s the sweatshop in that?

What’s more, the difference between BIG CORPORATIONS and SL CREATORS is that one: PROFITS GO DIRECTLY TO THE SL DESIGNERS. Unlike RL, it is Walmart or a similar big company that takes the big percentage of the profit–it doesn’t necessarily give enough of the share of profits to the overseas factory operators and stuff. In fact they can pressure those overseas factories to lower down their production costs just so they can get BIGGER PROFITS without making the end product more expensive for the consumer. In SL, nobody is forced to create things for a cheap price, and if they want to create things and price them cheaper–they can because the profits belong solely to them as the creator and the seller.

#2 “Most of these groups demand 50L-60L items to be placed exactly at the teleport point, thus not promoting the brand by encouraging the customer to walk around if not for a few meters to learn about the store. It also doesn’t help with traffic score.”

I don’t want to be stereotyped into this group, as it is simply not true. For what its worth, if I see something cheap or on sale, and I see it looks great, my tendency is to be curious and look further into the store. If I see more items I like that aren’t on sale, if I still have the L$ I would go purchase them…heck, I’d purchase everything in the store if I really like the stuff!

But there are some people who are satisfied with buying the item on sale and it will be just that. That’s unfortunate–but take note, those things also happen in RL. As with RL, you can’t really predict people’s attitudes and everyone is different in reacting to something like 50L$ Fridays.

Search? pfft. Works if your a linden alt.

Events? Sure. Paying models 10L hourly.

Classifieds? Only if you won the lottery and are just getting your schadenfreude kicks by screwing over the normal people. After all you have plenty more money to throw at pissing off barbies.

xstreet? lol. Not touching that funeral pyre of a topic for a while. But the thing to remember about that fiasco is the money follows the shoppers and they are still on xstreet regardless of who leaves.

Blogs? Well there is a necessity. The feeds are sort of like playboy magazine with the ever delicious gogo always the pinup model lol. (Not a complaint )

We do what we have to I guess. The hunts are getting old though. See the issue with hunts is the number of people that stand around rezzing just to grab and go lags up the sim for those that want to shop. I.e.; why 50L Fridays is a good concept.

Magazines would be cool. Except every time I pay one I get fucked over in the end. And not that many people really look at them.

Now if I was billionaire just funning i’d put SL ads in NYLON irl hah hah!

That being said, i DO find it annoying that soooo many humpdays…monday blues…thursday this, tuesday thats..are now coming. The danger is its getting TOO much, like the hunts and the freebie stories before. That’s spoiling the ORIGINAL concept, in my opinion.

Everyone CAN do what they want, and no designers will be held at gunpoint to join i assume LOL..just overload is destroying these things, as always.

I need sleep my brain is fried so i will comment more tomorrow <3

SL has very few avenues to advertise and get your stuff out there, and sales are one of the best, especially when doing them as a group. So this person needs to figure out how to get more people in thier store because the “sale” concept in never going to go away. Sink or swim. Better start exercising them arms.

On another note Tenshi, pleeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaassssseeeee stop condoning people like Weathering by letting their comments go through. We may not agree with someone but that doesn’t give us a right to go harassing them in-world.

Would be more obvious if it read, “The text contained within this notecard, any advertising and promotional material, along with the group charter for the 50L Friday group, is licensed under the creative commons….”

It’s demonstrably false as profiteering refers to gaining excessive profits from items in short supply such as during war time or shortages due to drought and natural disaster.

Pixel fashions are anything but in short supply and SL profits are hardly excessive. I think your word choice betrays an irrational bias that would lead rational people to ignore your opinion.