SUNSET BEACH - Recently, Nyte Caligari of Nyte'N'Day released her "SensiDress". The SensiDress, developed by scripter Zynx Zabelin, is a scripted flexi skirt that allows an avatar to sit without the flexi prims sinking through the surface upon which the avatar sits or going through the legs of the avatar when s/he walks. Accomplished by simply telling the prims to reposition themselves upon a change in position using the LSL language in a script in the skirt, the technology promises to revolutionize the clothing industry in Second Life. 
 
Within minutes of her announcement, Caligari was besieged with requests on her blog to have the script made available either through selling it or as a free script. 
 
Cale Vinson, Caledon citizen and talented scripter, commented on Caligari's blog that she had made what she called a "SkirtSitter Script" in January 2007 and released it to a few friends. She wished Caligari congratulations on her script, and then posted her own SkirtSitter Script on the Second Citizen Forum on September 11.  
 
September 11 was also the same date that Raven Lament of Ravenwear and Aria Alexandria of Sinister Scripture released their collaborative project, the "Smart Skirt", which is a skirt that accomplishes the same purpose as Caligari's and Vinson's scripts. Additionally, Lament released a version of the script for designers at a price tag of L$4000. 
 
On the surface, it may look like IP theft, but these three Skirt Sitting scripts are three completely unrelated scripts created by three different scripters. 
 
A quick purchase of the Caligari SensiSkirt and the Ravenwear SmartSkirt reveals that both work in completely different ways, as does the open source script Vinson posted on the Second Citizen forum. 

However, while Vinson's, Zabelin's and Alexandria's skirt scripts have been created separately, there is a suspected copy of the Vinson script being sold at SLExchange by Shampoodle Ferraris. The item is called the SkirtFix and is listed as #25 of the most popular items as this is being written. A quick comparison between Vinson's and the Ferraris' scripts showed that they were the same script, even down to the word-for-word instructions Vinson posted on secondcitizen.com.