Prim Perfect

When you go into a store to buy something, you’ll see that the attached sign will frequently tell you that it is “Copy, No Mod” or “No Copy, No Transfer. What does all this mean?

It actually refers to the permissions that everyone who creates an object in Second Life can choose, or choose not to give their creations.

What are permissions?
There are four basic permissions in Second Life: move, modify, copy and transfer. Everything that is created will have permissions set; everything you are given or buy will come with a set of permissions.

Each of the four permissions can be set to four categories: owner, group, everyone else, and next owner. On top of this, you will always have two basic permissions over everything you own:

• Deletion - you are always allowed to delete something you own.
• Move - you are always allowed to move anything you own.

The last is, of course, essential when it comes to positioning furniture!

But what about the other four?

Modify
This gives permission to edit properties like the name of an object. But it will also generally allow you to make other changes - such as changing the size. This can be very useful when it comes to furniture - especially if you learn how to link and unlink prims (which will be our next lesson).

Copy
If copy is enabled, you can make as many copies as you want of the original item. Copies maintain creator information, and can never be more permissive than the item being copied. This is very valuable when combined with permission to modify, as it enables you to be able to modify an object - and yet still keep a pristine copy in your inventory in case things go horribly wrong (as they all too often do!).

Transfer
If transfer is enabled, the owner can transfer the item to another person. If an item is not transferable, the owner cannot sell, give away, release an object or embed it in something they sell, give away, or release. The transfer permission only applies to the owner, since no one else can initiate a transfer.

Sometimes, the first owner will have rights that subsequent owners will lose - so watch out for this - especially if you are given something by a friend, or buy something from a yard sale.

Move
But why is move on the list, when you can move an object you own anyway?

The reason is that you might want someone else to move an object, without giving them ownership of it. In my case, I install my sales vendors myself and they automatically update. But then I go away and leave them, and the store owner might subsequently want to move them when s/he redesigns the store. We solve the need for me to return every time by giving permission for the owner’s group (and most owners do have one!) to move the object too, even though I still remain the owner (which allows the vendor to talk to my server).

Proceed with caution!
If you have permission to modify, you should proceed with extreme caution. Selecting Ctrl+z will undo mistakes you make with moving and shaping, but it you make a mistake in texturing, you are pretty much left with the problem.

For more information about permissions, and for examples of how different arrangements of permissions can affect an object, there’s an excellent article on the subject by Phoenix Linden.

Other articles are available on the Second Life Support Site. Just search on ‘Permissions’.