Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Whizbang Dustyboots" data-source="post: 9465190" data-attributes="member: 11760">I don't think that's necessarily true.When WotC wanted to reuse some of TSR's Dungeon and Dragon content for Ghosts of Saltmarsh, they were able to track down the creators and make deals with them.It's entirely possible that there were other things they wanted to use and either couldn't find the people ([USER=6782171]@M.T. Black[/USER] often mentions in his retrospectives that some of the Dragon freelancers are dead or appear to have disappeared off the face of the earth) or they said no at the price WotC was offering.If WotC wanted to go whole-hog on something like the Dragon archive (and do the same with Dungeon), a lot of these people are findable, if you want to find them. (As our US attorneys in the ENWorld community will attest, almost everyone can be found with a Nexis/Lexis search and a little bit of cold-calling.) And even making a demonstrated good faith effort to find everyone might be enough legal cover to use the works created by freelancers who have gone off to live in a cave with Bigfoot.The problem was that, as far as we know, TSR/WotC didn't even try to do the right thing, so they justifiably got their hand slapped with a ruler.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Whizbang Dustyboots, post: 9465190, member: 11760"] I don't think that's necessarily true. When WotC wanted to reuse some of TSR's Dungeon and Dragon content for Ghosts of Saltmarsh, they were able to track down the creators and make deals with them. It's entirely possible that there were other things they wanted to use and either couldn't find the people ([USER=6782171]@M.T. Black[/USER] often mentions in his retrospectives that some of the Dragon freelancers are dead or appear to have disappeared off the face of the earth) or they said no at the price WotC was offering. If WotC wanted to go whole-hog on something like the Dragon archive (and do the same with Dungeon), a lot of these people [I]are[/I] findable, if you want to find them. (As our US attorneys in the ENWorld community will attest, almost everyone can be found with a Nexis/Lexis search and a little bit of cold-calling.) And even making a demonstrated good faith effort to find everyone might be enough legal cover to use the works created by freelancers who have gone off to live in a cave with Bigfoot. The problem was that, as far as we know, TSR/WotC didn't even try to do the right thing, so they justifiably got their hand slapped with a ruler. [/QUOTE]

Verification