Not unexpected given everything that is happening but I was contacted
last week by WotC relative to the permissions I have for the Star
Frontiersman and Frontier Explorer magazines and their websites. I had a
nice chat with my contact at WotC and I have been asked to take stuff
off-line.<br /><br />The exact details as of yet are still undetermined (I'm
waiting to hear back from WotC on a few questions). That said, I will
definitely be removing all of the remastered rules and modules from the
Star Frontiersman site, along with any Star Frontiersman issues (quite a
few) that have remastered Dragon magazine articles in them (we
intentionally did not put any Dragon articles in the Frontier Explorer).
This is WotC's intellectual property and as someone with a degree in
Library Science (in addition to my astrophysics degrees), I can say that
this is completely their right and they won't get any argument from me.
It was this material that I had the permissions for in the first
place.<br /><br />If possible, those Star Frontiersman issues will go back
up in the future with the Dragon articles redacted. Additionally, if I
can, I may take all the optional rule material that Bill had put in the
remastered rule sets and put those out as a stand-alone supplement.<br /><br />What
this means for the Frontier Explorer (and the other Star Fronteirsman
issues) is uncertain. There are a number of possibilities depending on
what WotC tells me in response to my questions:<br /><br />1) I have to pull
everything down - This is by far the most draconian option and while I
hope it won't go this far, it is possible. We started the Frontier
Explorer and (I believe) operated in a manner so that this won't be
necessary (i.e. based on their fan site policies) but who knows what
they will say. I'd say this has a moderate possibility of happening.
With the exceptions of very general articles, a lot of stuff that was
produced in the magazines could be considered derivative work and thus
falls under their copyrights which protects against the creation of such
works. So if they really want to, they could make the case that it all
has to be removed. It would be a shame, but that's the way the law
works.<br /><br />2) Everything can stay on-line but no new issues of the
magazines - They may allow us to keep up everything that was fan
produced (not their original copyrighted work) but ask us to not produce
any new issues of the magazine. This is actually the outcome that I'm
expecting/hoping for based on everything else I know. This doesn't stop
people from posting new material on their own sites (i.e. a fan site),
just stops the Frontier Explorer from being a central clearing house.<br /><br />3)
Everything continues with some modifications - With the exception of
removing their copyrighted materials, we can keep everything up and
continue publishing new issues of the Frontier Explorer although
possibly with some variation on what we can and can't publish. If I had
to guess, I'd say this is very unlikely.<br /><br />Given what I've seen,
it's my opinion that WotC is doing something with Star Frontiers or at
least taking interest in their IP that they've let lay fallow for a long
time. I intend to stay on their good side so I'll be complying with
whatever they ask, even if I don't agree with it or think it's a bit
over the top. I'm not going to get into a legal battle with WotC over
this.<br /><br />For the most part, this doesn't affect the this site at all (nor
the Facebook group or the G+ community). I specifically asked about these sites during
our conversation. They had no issue with them staying on-line, However, to be completely safe, I am going to remove some files relative to their IP (such as any PDFs of rules or Dragon articles). In my conversation with WotC they said there was a possibility that I'd be able to put it all back up at a later time. In any case, I'll be
putting some effort into updating and improving the site over the
coming year. Especially if they exercise options 1 or 2 since I won't
have to put any effort into the magazine publication.<br /><br />With all
that said, I'll be removing the remastered products sometime later this
week after the first of the month. If you don't have a copy and would
like one, get them now over at <a href="http://starfrontiersman.com" target="_blank">http://starfrontiersman.com</a>.<br /><br />I'll keep you updated as I learn more.
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