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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5712003" data-attributes="member: 82106">Right, well, nothing prevents that from happening, and you notice that it took a LONG while for WotC to dare dip its toe in the waters of letting anyone upload anything. The DMCA Safe Harbor rules are the only defense a service provider has there really, and they require you A) don't profit from the infringement, and B) take action to remove anything you suspect might be infringing, and C) comply with notice and takedown procedures. I'm sure they did a very careful analysis of their legal position on that before they decided to allow even character portraits (and remember, you can't even share those AFAIK). I think they can work something out. It is just kind of tricky and requires having procedures and legal opinions and such in place. In fact the whole DMCA thing may simply put it on a bad footing, as charging for DDI is a pretty heavy argument on the "you profited from this" side of things.There are more subtle variations of this kind of issue as well, which can come up. Such as what happens when WotC publishes things very SIMILAR to user submitted stuff that is up on DDI? "Hey you stole my idea" is a big pain the butt. Obviously they get submissions now to the magazines and it can be something of an issue there too in theory. OTOH they have to get ideas from SOMEWHERE.I don't think any of these things are show stopping insurmountable problems and they've been worked out before in other contexts, but they are the kind of thing that makes people go slow and can lead to sleepless nights in some circles. That may partly explain why there has been very slow movement in this kind of fairly obvious direction. In a sense the fact that DDI is a subscription service works against it here. OTOH no non-commercial online community is ever likely to muster the resources to do that kind of thing. So it will happen I'm sure, in some form or other. The suites just have to see the benefits over time and get comfortable with the risks and realize it is well worth it to do.OTOH maybe they've decided it just isn't a good business case to go that direction, or its too soon, or who knows what.</blockquote>

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