Topic: Daily Dilbert Cartoon Controversy

[Ken (OP)]

We seem that have a little controversy with the Daily Dilbert Cartoon!  :yikes:
On the Dilbert Website they offer up the daily cartoon in several different ways that don't require you to be registered, or to pay for the cartoon. The one we use is the RSS feed that automatically pulls the current daily strip into the FamilyForum and displays it at the bottom of the Forum page. However, one of the TinyPortal members was reading the licensing requirements and it sounds like we may be supposed to pay for the feed... if so then we'll need to remove the strip from our site.
The topic where we talk about the issue is HERE.

So... I'm doing a bit of poking around trying to find out the answer to this question.
Here's where my research stands at the moment:

On the 800 number listed on the Dilbert site I reached Gary, he's a service rep for Resolution Inc., which is "an independent e-commerce company with an exclusive license to sell items on the official online Dilbert store."

After talking to him for a few minutes it became clear that this question was all news to him and he left the line to talk to his boss, who was in the dark as well. Turns out a different department handles the website, so they (Resolution, Inc.) had no idea that the daily cartoon was freely available in several different ways including RSS... and so they had no answer as to the correct status of our block code feeds.

At this point they are going to start an internal dialog to see what to do about the situation and will let me know something within a couple of weeks.   

[Skhilled]

I can understand it if they only want people to view it on their site but will miss it here.

I used to read it on their site everyday but that was a few years ago.

[Ken (OP)]

The current situation on the Dilbert website is kind of strange because in some places they are trying to get you to signup and pay for using their cartoons, but then they give you the RSS feeds without making you signup or pay. Hopefully they let us keep the RSS, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

[Skhilled]

Maybe they didn't know that the rss feed was freely available. Somebody's head might roll over this.  :innocent:

[Ken (OP)]

Could be.
It seems obvious that the different departments within the company are not tracking what each other are doing.

[Skhilled]

It's that way with a lot of companies, especially if a "department" is actually another company.

[Lesmond]

It sort of  reads like one of the Dilbert strips to me lol

[Ken (OP)]

It sort of  reads like one of the Dilbert strips to me lol

 :08:

[Skhilled]

LOL

[Ken (OP)]

[Update]

We are now starting into the 4th week waiting for the Dilbert folks to get back with an answer on the license question and I've not heard anything at all from them. And, our Dilbert feed still works just fine here on the FF.  :08:

[Skhilled]

Funny, I was going to ask about this yesterday but was side-tracked...