Stroker Serpentine has started a group to represent creators in Second Life. It's free to join, use search/groups/sellers guild to find it. Read about the aims of the group in Stroker's post to the forum.

One of the astounding things for me, on joining SL, was the idea that I would retain copyright in anything I made in world, and could choose to sell, give away or keep it to myself. I pretty soon started building, and made a candlestick which I still see all over SL. Originally I made it as a freebie and publicity for the game I was making in the Game Development competition, but that was outlawed by a change to the rules, and so I stopped. By then, as it was mod/copy/transfer, it was already propagating all over SL.

However, I have found that same candlestick for sale in innumerable places over the last two years. I have made a lot of freebies in SL, and I have found a lot of them being sold in yard sales and shops all over the world.

Some people -- notably Prokofy Neva -- consider any attempt to prevent people selling freebies as misguided, and doesn't see anything immoral in that. There are some shops which have more or less made it their business to resell freebies to unsuspecting new people. But I see it as tantamount to fraud ... the object can be obtained for free if you know that, but you may be conned into paying 100 lindens for it if you don't know it.

I would like to see Linden Lab enforcing the rules on IP rights, but this has become muddier and muddier over the last two years. There have been various exploits: the perms bug which allowed free copying of items that shouldn't have been free to copy; the scripts bug which allowed access to closed scripts; the new OpenGL exploit which allows people to copy textures etc; and now the texture pick bug which can allow access to restricted textures. All of these have led to things escaping into the wild, which ought not to be there. Thus, as fast as one person sells a freebie, another gives away someone else's creation for $0.

There have been some deliberate facilities given to people which enable copying -- most notably the prim mirror made by Jeffrey Gomez which allowed copies to be taken of any object with copy/mod enabled. his intentions were honourable, but not all his clients for the prim mirror were.

LL have always acted fairly fast when the freebies being sold are their own, but not quite so fast ... or not at all, when they are a creator's things. It is hard to see that any action is taken when people copy builds, sell on textures they have stolen and use corrupt or exploited copies of other people's work.

I started a scambusting group, but found that there was general apathy about the possibility of closing down the trade of the people, and no real agreement about the morality which should obtain in world. I can see that there is a real need for a group that can exercise some muscle when talking to Linden Lab about the issues ... and the FIC shield obviously isn't working any more.

I have joined the group, will await developments with interest.