But today. Ugh. Bless Miss Teagan Blackthorne. My morning routine consists of a cup of coffee and my email. I go through there to see what's happened while I've been sleeping. I read email, I drink my coffee, my kids have breakfast, it's fairly quiet. 'Cause I am just not a morning person.
I'm sorting through email and come to one from Teagan, which is usually some great story about how she's watching Lost and some chick is wearing our hair, or something cool like that. Today, it's a location in-world. I just cringed.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/mega%20resort/86/235/501/
Of course, I go, cause Teagan's the hair-theft watch dog and she's always right. Here's what I find.
My men's freebie style, Cougar, is on the right. The stolen copy is on the left.
I threw my ad on a prim next to his. Just cause I could.
Okay, I know. We're not losing any money because this style is free. But it's the principal. You don't steal someone's stuff. You just don't. It's blatantly mine. Cause, and let's be honest, this was the first boy hair I ever made and it's not all that great to begin with. It's one of those "Wow, yeah, that's definitely Cougar" things when you see it.
I've given this guy the benefit of the doubt and asked that he remove it. Which, he did. So yay for him for doing the right thing! I thanked him and told him I appreciated it and offered to put the styles up for his customers for free (just like we have at our own location) if he'd like.
With all that's going on, there's no telling if the "owner" of a stolen item is the one who actually copied/stole/etc. anymore. People seem to have no qualms lately about taking things that aren't theirs and reselling them to every Joe off the street. Poor innocent Joe's have no idea that it belongs to someone else.
I don't understand why people feel it's okay to do this. Maybe I'm more morally strict (that kinda comes with being a prude I guess) than others, I don't know. But that (admittedly not-so-great) boy hair, Cougar, took me seriously about a week to make. I have umpteen copies of inprogress, "eww this sucks," "hmm...maybe if I do this...oops nope that was bad," of this particular style sitting in my inventory. It really was not easy for me to make. I actually had no idea what I was doing at that point. For me to come out with something that I felt okay about selling, and could then offer for free to noobs as I made more (and better) boy hair is something I'm proud of.
And to whomever stole it and sold it/gave it away/etc, I hope you see this, and I hope that it makes you think, and I hope that you'll stop taking things that other people have worked really hard on.
Edited to add: I've also just seen this post on Tami McCoy's blog and I'm feeling a little queasy now knowing this person will take it down, and then put it back up, etc etc.
/me sighs. I don't get people sometimes.
5 comments:
I am sorry to ruin your morning coffee. :(
Tami, Sasy, and Laynie were there with me as well. I checked to see if you were on first and then messaged you.
People steal because they lack creativity.
Aww Teagan, you didn't ruin my coffee. Some thief did. I'm so glad you let me know, because otherwise I'd have probably had no idea. I've been too busy playing with new colors to get out. Not that I get out much anyway...but ya know. :)
Bizarre. I mean awful, obviously, as all of the thievery is that's going around SL, but it's just... well, strange. I mean, at 1 linden a purchase, it's not like he's doing it for the money. On the other hand, you offered to put your freebie boxes in his store if he truly wanted them to help people (doubtful) or to use them to generate traffic for other items for sale. So not only is the guy a thief...
Oh, I don't know, I guess I shouldn't expect thieves to make any kind of sense... *shakes head*
I pretty regularly get people asking if we'll put our freebies up at their place. I never have any problem doing so, as long as I don't have to hand them full permission copies. If they'll let me set the box out at their place, I'm all for it.
I remember being a noob and the grid is so, so huge! Being able to find nice (FREE!) stuff was hard! We're all about helping out the noobs. That's why we have the freebie styles in the first place.
I never heard anything back from this guy, not even a "you're welcome" when I thanked him. I don't expect to, but I know I did the right thing by acknowledging my appreciation for him removing things that are clearly mine.
Maybe along with being such a prude, I'm just too Pollyanna for my own good. But I believe you get back what you put out, and eventually things come full circle.
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