When does PLR cease to be true PLR and just become MRR

Robert, not knowing your situation specifically, I can't really answer your
question so let me put my 2 cents in on the subject of PLR in general.

The very nature of PLR (and of course this depends on what the original
rights were) makes it so that the person buying the package can pretty
much do what they want with it, unless certain things are specifically stated
that can't be done.

It's very hard to account for all possibilities, especially with a changing
environment. A new technology may come out that makes a PLR package
almost worthless because of what you can do with that package in
combination with the technology. This is one of the reasons why you'll
see legal mumbo jumbo that says "cannot be printed, copied or duplicated
by any existing medium or any medium that may be invented in the future."

If you take a look at a list of rights that one of our members here wrote
up, you'll see that there are a ton of them. A novice product creator may
inadvertently leave one of those rights unmentioned, thus leaving it open
to interpretation by the buyer to do as he or she pleases. If it doesn't say
"you can't do this" legally, they have every right to do it...even if whatever
it is was NEVER intended to be allowed.

This is why I think PLR products are just flat out dangerous to sell and
buy unless you know for certain that your marketing skills can sell the
crap out of it even if there are loopholes that were left out of the rights
file.

And then of course, there are going to be those select few scuzz buckets
who will say, "The hell with it" and just do whatever they want with the
package, like sell it on eBay even though the rights say "cannot be sold at
auction sites." And let's not even get into the prices that these things
are sold for by some of the buyers. Some of my own PLR products are
being given away, which is why I've created my last PLR product. It's just
not worth it. The initial big sale doesn't make up for all the lost revenue
for future sales I could have made because the product is probably being
sold for $1 at Craigslist.

But as for changing the terms of the product after the sale?

That's just flat out wrong.

I don't know what legal action you can take, if any, but I'd write to the
guy and say, "Hey, when I bought this from you, these were the rights
and now, 3 months later, these are the rights. That's just plain wrong."

And see what kind of reply you get.

The smart PLR buyer, which I am sure you are, will so radically change
the product, that nobody would be able to recognize it when it's done.

Anyway, these are my thoughts on this whole subject.

Hi Robert,

I would have thought that it would be when they don't allow you to change the content (if it's text) or for software when they don't allow you to rebrand it or change the source code (but software is more 'grey area' because I have seen software sold as PLR where you can repackage/rebrand but not change the source code - as well as many other variations).

I guess software becomes MRR if you can only resell it as it is, without changing source code, package/brand or anything else etc.

The only time I would find it acceptable would be if the seller had realised later on (after discovering a reseller causing issues to others) that their terms were insufficient to protect the interests of all other resellers.

If they changed the terms purely to benefit themselves, and also if it was to the detriment of the resellers (IE causing their purchase/membership to become worth less) then I wouldn't be happy.

I've had many experiences similar to this where something has occurred which has reduced the benefits of my purchase after the purchase has been made. My course of action has been to question the seller, ask for a refund if necessary, or simply let them know my feelings, mark them in the 'black book' and move on.

But even so, you can't get back the time you spend on projects that are ruined by these sort of issues.

Anyone else remember the Private Label Monthly vs Adsense Templates 2 debacle, where due to a plaguarism issue, the two sellers eventually came to a 'compromise' and the buyers were shafted? I was one of those buyers of the former who got shafted. The buyers were sold on the product as 'limited availability', but due to someone plaguarising all of the content and throwing some new templates in, the content was then spread to a couple of thousand buyers PLUS all the people who bought it on the sly from ebay resellers and black hat places.

That content then became the worst possible content to rewrite and use because every word of it was slapped on thousands of MFA sites - some of them thrown up instantly on a domain with 70 subdomains - some footprint! Many of us were already working that content and had to abandon our projects. The seller decided that rather than going legal to protect the exclusivity of his content and members, he would come to some 'mutually beneficial agreement' with the other party, but an exclusively unbeneficial agreement with his members who were putting food on his table every month.

I've had many experiences like this and those people (many whos names you would all know) are bolded and underlined in my 'book'.



I now generally avoid PLR coming from the IM niche because it's way too risky and messy, and whenever things go awry, it's the buyer who gets shafted. No ta.

I am a fan of unrestricted, even if that means the product (unmodified) might have a short lifespan.

If you go to the trouble of modifying something extensively, there shouldn't be any restriction whatsoever on what you can do with it.

I have purchased tons of PLR where I have disagreed with a lot of the content, had to totally change the writing style etc.
You might then go to significant effort in marketing, without the ability to exploit the full potential of a product and its lifetime value.


PLR Audio with an ebook - almost worthless, because if you change the book, you need to change the audio
PLR Video - again seriously problematic if you need to make changes - powerpoint and suitable time encoded transcript would be worthwhile.

Then there are the software problems, especially with anything PHP or WordPress related.

Most themes and plugins are not coded sufficiently well to avoid tangling with GPL licensing - the idea of not giving source code to customers is in most cases ludicrous - yes you can protect source in some ways, but for most it is too complicated.


If you allow me to post the PLR content on the web unprotected, it has to be unrestricted, as there is no way to control and police syndication, including images.
Who knows, maybe I would want to publish under CC SA Attrib allowing Commercial work and derivatives.