Baby Buyers Beware

About a year ago myself and Bronwen Llewelyn made some scripted babies. We put a lot of work into there design and functionality to try and create a reasonably realistic baby in second life. I scripted these with behaviour to bring life into them. They giggled and cried. When they cried you had to help the baby by careing for it. This might meen paying it attention by feeding it, giving it a toy, or rocking it in your arms or similar.

It has been brought to my attention that there are babies out there other than the ones we created together using my script, sound bites and animation files to give them 'life'

This posting is to anyone who owns a scripted baby, or is thinking about buying one. Check to see if it has my script/content in. If it does the baby itself should be created by Bronwen Llewelyn. Neither myself, or Bronwen have given permission for the script or content to be used in other peoples products.

We are currently investigating what has happened and how, and will take any action we can to stop this. We worked very hard to produce these and are very upset by this.

I would also be interested to know anyones similar experiences, and how it was resolved.

Thanks

These babies... are they being sold in boxes?

My reselling your goods through permission error or malfeasance, claiming them as mine is a Bad Thing. My creating a similar object that behaves similarly to yours has been deemed just fine the last time this issue generated months of debate. I suggest that you determine which of the two cases it is before getting too agitated.

Disclaimer: I am not now, nor have I ever been a merchant of babies - in or out of boxes.

I have seen your babies - and I have seen other babies. Your babies are very different from "other babies."

You can not sit back and tell someone they can't create something, on their own, that is similar to yours - however, if indeed it is your script (which, to my knowledge, none of them are, as they don't have the same behaviors) they are using, then ok, you have a "case." If I see your scripts being "ripped off" then you can be sure I will speak up, but I have seen both types in action and they are not the same animal at all.

Best. Thread. Title. Ever!

...People are actually buying babies? o.o Egads, so THAT'S where abortions go! Their tiny baby souls are digitized, streamed onto a server, then implanted into the innocent prims of an avfant(infant avatar? I guess.). In the words of that guy on the Guinness(sp?) commercials.. Brilliant!

By the way.. I don't mean to offend, if anyone's bothered by the mentioned connection between abortions and prim-babies. It's quite in jest.

Ok, I agree with the general feelings here completely.

To clarify this, the problem is the script and content inside these particular babys that are being sold... I have seen them myself, and I am the creator of this script, and related content. Its not just similar, it has my name on it. Neither myself or bronwen have given permission for them to be used in other peoples babies.

At the moment, It looks like they are buying our creations, taking the contents out, putting in there own, and selling for considerably more :|

Christiano, glad you like the title

lol, i don't believe that is wrong. Maybe just low morals.
He buys the baby with the script. The script is from him. You have given him the permission to transfer it. And he sells it for more.

Ah. That explains it.

My baby script is stuck in state teenage_years.

It will no longer respond to my commands, and just IM'd me with "You're not my real father."

It's done an llGetCreator() and has now gone out into the world in search of you.

Thanks.

Ok, the only "other babies" that I have seen then are not the ones in question. I'll just go back to quietly lurking.

Grrr, you beat me to it! You win this round....

--BL

Baby prims are made out of PEOPLE!

Frans, I think the important thing to remember here is we are not selling the script and contents, and have no intention of doing so. The guy that sells these babies, has already asked Bronwen for the script and been refused. The product we sell is the complete item only, and yes we want the complete item to be transferable...that is as far as it goes.

The problem here is people taking the content out, putting in thier own objects without our knowledge and reselling under the pretense that it is there own work. I cant really see where your logic lies in thinking that this is acceptable. Because it is possible, does not make it ok.

Also I think its worth considering from a customers point of view, which is how I found out about this... I can`t support the script by itself, If it has been taken out, messed with or put in other objects. Warrenty on your baby is void...hence the thread title 'Baby Buyers Beware'.

I guess no one noticed this insanely funny post.



One of the greatest things I have seen in my exploration of these forums, congrats

Hahahaha omg that's just classic.

honestly at events those babies are annoying. feed me change me...argh shut up already.

i'd like to sling shot those babies lol

Mar

Who will think of the children?

These two sentences make no sense.
If it isn't wrong it isn't immoral and if it *is* immoral then it's wrong.
They mean the same thing.

I'm making a scripted baby - but all mine does is explode.....

Are they transferable and copyable? Or do they actually buy a baby for each "new baby" they create? I hope you made the script no-copy at least. Also, can't you hide scripts? I have objects that have scripts where you can't see the actually scripting (ie if you open it). I know that doesn't solve the problem of it already having happened but maybe it will help for the future anyway.

And I think what the previous poster was saying is that since the script is transferable, the buyer is within their rights to resell the script. Whether in the object they bought it in or another object. As far as I know there is no way to lock a script to an object but it sounds like a good idea.

My daughter had one of those 'realistic' babies that talked, knew what you were trying to feed to it, etc.

I think she had it three days before I found it in the corner of her closet, shoved under a pile of stuffed animals and covered by a blanket.

I dug it out and it was screaming, 'That's not bananas! I want bananas!'

I asked my daughter about it and she told me it was fun for the first day, made her feel like she couldn't do anything right the second day, and on the third day, she decided she didn't want it anymore... but since she couldn't get it to stop screaming that she wasn't feeding it the right thing, she buried it under stuff so she couldn't hear it and left it there.

Oh, the thoughts that went through my head. Amusement at the parallels I've felt at times as a parent, horror at the extrapolation of her 'solution' to real world terms, and curiosity that she didn't bring it to me to fix/shut off.

I asked her about the last and she simply said, 'You work so hard and you were tired last night and I didn't think you should have to take care of my baby.'

Ahhh, kids.

She's 17 now, and likely that is long forgotten in the ocean of angst in which she now swims... but this thread reminded me. So thanks.

This is the same problem that comes up again and again because of the stupid way in which the rights are arranged. If you are a good person and leave things open for people to see and learn from then some less than noble person will always steal it and try to resell it.

Many people have noted that there should be a permission seting for "give away" that is seperate from "resell." So that those that want to share without giving an unfair advantage to resellers can so so. Currently we have "giveaway/resell" which tries to encompass two completely different things in one permission thinking that they are the same.

This is the same bug in the system that causes all the yard sale grief and the selling of freebie items that many find so offensive. Interesting that a place built on the "creative commons" idea that uses a digital permissions system as the basis of so much, that Linden Labs got it wrong in the first place and now have released so many versions of the software without correcting it.

I have lots of things that I would like to give away to people but can't (or won't) until they fix this bug.

So prevent it from happening. Put pieces of code within the script to insure that it is within the proper object or cease working. IM me if you need help with that.

I knew it!! That whole story about two avatars loving each other very much and using pose balls really doesn't have anything to do with making prim babies, does it? I feel so betrayed.