Sex Gen Removed!

How would a refund policy sign change that?

Exactly. That's why I always recommend to never spend money in Second Life that one doesn't mind throwing into the fireplace. I'll risk a few dollars every now and then; but hundreds, never again.

And the more people are burned by SL transactions, and the more such burns are publicized, the more they will become as conservative with their money on SL as I. Unless ways are developed to make SL transactions safer.

Yes, god forbid that you should take any responsibility for what you're selling.

Just as long as you get to take the money to the bank you don't care if what you're selling is legitimate, right?

Don't be so silly. You didn't answer my question, btw. Would a sign satisfy you? If it would, you'd be very gullible, as anyone can make such a sign, and then run off when they need to back it up.

SL is an anonymous environment. 3ring said almost perfectly - she said "buyer beware". But, since it's quite uncommon for things to go wrong, I prefer "buyer be aware".

A refund policy sign wouldn't change it for me, because anyone can write anything on a sign.

A genuine refund policy - with external enforcement - would, because it shows that the producer is standing behind what they are selling.

Exactly.

Also correct. I can't see LL doing it though, but you never know - maybe in time. It would destroy a huge number of tiny shops, so I don't see it happening.

inspect it. if you can't, take your chances of being the end-user chump if you buy it anyway.

honestly, you can treat it like a list of ingredients. it would be a lot of work, but if you really want people to know what's in your stuff, you can make a notecard for every single item, listing the content pieces and its creators. if you don't do that, knowing what you do NOW, and you lost items from this sweep, from this moment on, you cannot complain.

and if you're a buyer, and you buy from someone who does not offer such a list, from this moment on, then you get what you get and you cannot complain.

If someone is dishonest enough to sell infringing material they're not going to offer refunds, hence the suggestion for a mandatory large deposit with LL to sell anything in SL. I never mentioned anything about signs.

How would get the uploader's name off of a texture that's applied to a prim? Inspect only shows who created the prim, nothing else.

In this case inspecting the item would not help you a bit.

All my MLP2 objects inworld have been destroyed. it didn't matter to LL that they did not infringe on strokers trademarks in any way.

NEW TIPS FOR BUILDERS:

1. Copy and paste any free scripts you use into new scripts created by you.

2. Make them no trans. If someone uses your script in an illegal way all your scripts will be destroyed.

You didn't, but your first reply didn't confirm that you meant LL, so I was asking.

Right, but consider what just happened: thousands of unwitting owners of more or less random prims and scripts with a particular account name as creator have just had stuff go missing and/or unrezzable, so now those thousands of customers are painfully aware that they shouldn't have spent L$s. Every potential customer now thinks just that much harder about how it may just be that one day whatever s/he bought will just go poof.

And thus is devalued every product in SL.

I'm not saying this isn't right; for now, I don't know a better way to deal with it. I *am* saying that this is no occasion for content creators to be popping champagne corks: everything we've made and everything we ever will make has just lost some measure of value to our potential customers.

.....

I was fortunate this time: I never based any MLP stuff on anything but Miffy Fluffy's original scripts and distribution. But it was easy for me to be lucky: I'm a scripter. How many furniture creators even know who Miffy Fluffy *is*?

.....

And there's a huge scalability problem, caused I think by the fact that what's being distributed is purely data with no physical manifestation at all. It reminds me of that old SCO Linux case, only worse.

Imagine, purely hypothetically, that Francis Chung accidentally included a subroutine that had been released under the GPL, when the Franimation Overrider was first constructed. Now, at this point, imagine somebody discovers this and gets a DMCA for any in-world content based on that code. What happens? Every AO worth using--every ZHAO, every ZHAO 2, every WetIkon, essentially *every* AO-- instantly disappears, together with all contained animations.

And the corresponding devaluation of in-world content from that would very likely be the end of paid-for content in SL.

I always thought that the MLP scripts were originally posted on the Scripting Tips forum here.

Yes, but this is a Second Life problem bound to happen sooner or later. It's up to merchants to figure out how to increase consumer confidence in products.

I'm sure there are a lot of honest, meticulous merchants in Second Life. Problem is, the consumer has no way of knowing who is honest and meticulous, and who isn't. Merchants are going to have to figure out how to make the consumers feel confident.

A lot of people want to blame consumers for not doing their research or making dumb decisions. At some point, they'll figure out that spending money in Second Life is just too hard, and they'd rather find easier ways to spend it. Or if they are too dumb to spend money in Second Life, they'll just take the logical course and stop doing the dumb thing of spending money in Second Life, and start smarly spending it elsewhere.

The script itself actually is GPL'd, what's the problem?

Well if/when someone uses the scripts with Miffy as the creator and puts it in something they called sexgen ... it will be your turn. (well unless you took the time to cut and paste from the forums, broken php tags and all)

i have something that has a miffy script in it lol..but i dropped all those in my house this morning and checked to see if they would go away and they didn't..the bed was a gift so i never spent anything on it..

There were, but because there are many scrips in the MLP package, and the fact that the php tag is broken, many people just get the scripts inworld as it's less of a pain in the ass. Now it happens that many of the scripts inworld where uploaded by Eva Capalini, and those are the scripts that were removed.




the scripts that were removed were also opensourced (BSD in MLP's case)

(Reminder to readers that this is purely hypothetical.) You're right; I was thinking that because folks sell the AOs the script was public domain, but of course it doesn't have to be, because people can charge for AOs without restricting distribution of the script inside. Okay, to make the example work, imagine that there were *proprietary* code inadvertently embedded in Franimation Overrider. That actually makes the DMCA takedown scenario more compelling anyway.

or an even better example ... someone used the scripts and called it the Sexgen AO. Strokers files a DMCA on the item, LL looks at the creator of the scripts (not the person selling them) and zaps the scripts created by this person into the great bit bucket in the sky.

Maybe I haven't followed the thread as closely as I should yet.

I've been using a lot of MLP 1.2 scripts for items I've made (mostly just for myself, though I have one item that is about a week away from being ready for sale). I got the scripts inworld, not in the forums.

So does this mean I should expect to see many of my items with MLP broken when I log in, and I will have to piece them back together?

Geez, if that's the case, I think I dread logging in and I don't want to tonight.

Apparently, it's just those that have Eva Capalini as the creator.

Right, but in this case, merchants were selling perfectly valid scripts written by a reputable source but with a "creator" whose content was blacklisted. (Correctly or incorrectly--I don't know E.C. nor what the details were behind the blacklisting.)

The point is, it would be indeed magical for consumers to know that the products they bought are immune from such problems, when the sellers themselves can't tell.

I had the same issue as others with the Eva Capalini scripts in items i have created, though replacements from inventory seem ok... for now. My items don't even have adult anims in them, just cuddles, so no mention of sex.. gen or otherwise!

Two questions if I may....

1. Anybody aware of any official LL word on this one? Other than the support ticket response earlier in this thread?

2. Can anybody point me to the source where these scripts are available, so I can ensure I take them from that source, confirm they are legitamately available & create my own?

Thanks

This is looking more and more like a serious screwup by Overeager Linden.