For fans concerned about the "everything posted on the boards belongs
to Decipher" clause in the main site's fine print:
A statement from Pamela Bowles of Decipher's legal department, October 21, 2003
"I would say that postings in pure fan areas belong to the fans. That
doesn’t mean one fan couldn’t “rip off” another, but that is all at
their own risks. Further, Decipher will not step in to mediate such a
disagreement. The only thing from Decipher’s perspective would be that
we are continually generating and exploring new ideas and if we were to
pursue something that was similar to something a fan posted, we aren’t
going to be responsible for the coincidence or have our idea “held
hostage” in order for a fan to try to claim a royalty. To that extent,
they are also posting at their own risk. It is important however
to realize that we don’t spend time hanging out on those areas of the
site to get ideas and most monitoring is done by volunteers, so we
truly don’t spend much time on these boards.
There are
certain areas (especially with the RPG stuff) that are Decipher
sponsored areas and if someone submits something to be posted in one of
those areas, then they are relinquishing copyrights/ownership to
Decipher. Again, this is to protect Decipher from
having someone approach us 5 years from now and say “hey, you used that
on your website and now we want $50,000”.
I hope this makes sense and alleviates the concerns of the fans.
While this could change in the future (though I don’t expect it will)
the above would be the general guideline."
Respectfully,
Pamela Bowles
Associate General Counsel
Decipher, Inc.
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