ABC.com Comments page Question

[allmc2008]

After you type a comment in the ABC comment page why does this come up at the bottom of the e-mail??

Note: The Company’s long-established policy does not allow us to accept for review or consideration any ideas, suggestions, or creative materials not solicited by us or our subsidiaries. Therefore, in the event that you have submitted such content, please be advised that the submission has been forwarded to the Company’s legal department for handling.

What is the point of leaving a comment? To me this is translating to:

Note: We only view/accept positive feedback from viewers. Everything else will be discarded

[jcar03]

It means they do not accept ideas about a series like people sending scripts or story line ideas. It is a legal issue and has nothing to do with critiques about a series.

[dragonflies]

Yep due to legal issues they're not allowed to use any ideas/stories...whatnot that people might send in. Although alot of people could probably do a better job than some of the soap writers out there

[Mr. Vixen]

Just imagine -

Someone write's a comment on, let's say, the General Hospital comment page. They say "Man, I wish Johnny and Carly would have sex in the kitchen!!!!" And then several weeks later on GH, Johnny and Carly have sex in the kitchen - Whoever wrote the comment would be jumping up and down screaming that "they used their idea", and they would have a legal standing to say so.

It's just a liability thing, really.

[marceline]

That's pretty standard on any "official" website for a tv show/network. Some places are just a little more fun with it. Here the language on the TNT Leverage site.

[SFK]

I just watched the episode of What's Happening!! where Raj submits a story idea for new urban sitcom and weeks later sees his story being acted out before his very eyes on screen. Of course he thinks his idea has been stolen and he hasn't been given proper credit, but "his" story had already been written and used several times before.

I still wonder though... sometimes "coincidences" don't feel so coincidental to me. I won't go into specifics, but I shared something rather... specific about a soap star on here once and days later I saw it mentioned by a soap blogger. I once hypothesized/suggested a storyline direction in a popular online publication, and saw something very similar happen onscreen about a year later. I had a nice meeting with a soap casting director and in my follow up I "casually" mentioned a rather random character no longer on the canvas that I might be right for if he was ever brought back. Months later, guess who they brought back?

[DramatistDreamer]

I have had friends who wrote screenplays that, while they were unproduced, appeared to mysteriously resemble plots for movies that were then released in the near future. The school I used to attend had a screenplay 'bank' where one could submit a script for 'critique'. I never submitted anything because I overheard some students joking with a touch of sarcasm that it was the type of 'bank' were ideas were frequently robbed (okay they didn't use that exact language, I made up that phrase ). What they were really said was something like 'oh, you mean that thing where you submit your script and they steal your ideas?' To this day, I'm very protective of any creative work that I write. I've been asked but I've never even done collaborations.