Bravo Fleet
Normally I’d address this to all the members of Bravo Fleet, but this time I think it is appropriate to address it to all of the members of Bravo Fleet past, present, and future. On Thanksgiving Day, one of the members of the Bravo Fleet Admiralty received this PM on Discord from Confusedfire, the Public Relations Officer of another Trek group:
I want to preface this with a few things. The first is that since the current BFA took over at the beginning of June, this is far from the first time someone has threatened to sue Bravo Fleet and/or the Bravo Fleet Admiralty. The second is that it is the current policy of Bravo Fleet that threatening frivolous real-world legal action against Bravo Fleet will earn you an automatic ban from all Bravo Fleet communication services including the Discord server. And finally, if anyone ever does want to try to make good on the threat, the current Bravo Fleet Admiralty would greatly appreciate them filming a lawyer’s reaction in real-time.
Now, onto the point of this announcement. When JonM created the current BFMS way back yonder, he inserted into it specific legal language which can be found here: https://www.bravofleet.com/legal/
Most people don’t read that. It’s a bunch of legalese and who really reads the Terms and Conditions anyways?! But in there is the “legal code” that Bravo Fleet operates by and anyone who joins and remains a member agrees and has agreed to. It is broken down into really easy to read language but there are a few quick points I want to highlight from it directly:
- You agree that you are solely responsible for your reuse of Content made available through the Services, including providing proper attribution.
- You retain any copyright that you may have in Your Content.
- Bravo Fleet may, but is not obligated to, review Your Content and may delete or remove Your Content (without notice) from any of the Services in its sole discretion. Removal of any of Your Content from the Services (by you or Bravo Fleet) does not impact any rights you granted in Your Content under these terms.
The short of it is that when you come to Bravo Fleet, you are free to add content. If and when you leave, you are free to use content created in Bravo Fleet by others as long as you properly attribute it to Bravo Fleet. You are free to retain any content you created without question. Bravo Fleet does not have to delete any of your content that you created while in Bravo Fleet and for use while in Bravo Fleet.
The crux of the matter has always been that Bravo Fleet is a community and when you create content you’re creating content for the community. Other people get involved, and then once they do they have just as much claim to the content as you do. It isn’t fair to them for you to leave in a huffy and then try and take all the toys with you when you go home. On the flip side, when you leave but have a story integrated with BF canon (the Raeya system, for example) we just ask that you credit Bravo Fleet because you’re essentially crediting the hundreds of authors who helped build that.
We understand this causes a lot of frustration, but many leadership teams over the years have adhered to these general rules when it comes to content because all have felt it is the fairest to the most amount of people and is not unreasonable to ask. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns we’ll be more than happy to address them.
