Dilbert Zone  The Dilbert Zone FAQ
          FAQ  Questions about the Dilbert Zone site and strip

Copies of past strips
Requesting permission to reprint strips
The Dilbert Newsletter
Dogbert's New Ruling Class
Dilbert on your site
Linking to the Dilbert Zone
Technical questions about the site
Dilbert product questions
Questions about the strip

1. My friend told me there's a funny Dilbert strip about meetings. Can you
send it to me? Can you tell me what book it's in?

For personal use, United Media offers a high-quality, black-and-white
photostat at full size (around 14 inches by 4 inches for a daily; 18 by 8
for a Sunday), suitable for framing. Cost: $50 (Please add $10 for
international delivery.)

To use the strip for a presentation, newsletter, book, memo, or any other
type of distribution, you need permission from United Media.

Due to the enormous volume of requests, we are unable to search for strips
unless you are purchasing a copy or purchasing reprint rights. Many Dilbert
strips are available in reprint books. For a complete list, with dates of
strips that appear in each book, check the book page.
http://wally.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/books/index.html

(Please note that while Sundays appear in color in the newspaper, we are
unable to provide color copies for personal use. Sundays will be reproduced
in black and white.)

Original strips are unavailable. In addition, Scott Adams doesn't sign
copies of his strips. (Sorry!)

If you're interested, send a letter with enough information about the strip
to make it traceable (the date, description or a readable photocopy from the
newspaper), along with a check (no credit cards, please) payable to United
Media to:

United Media 200 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 attn: Julie Haire

A photocopy of the strip you're looking for is best. Simply asking for "The
one where Dogbert talks to the boss" or "Dilbert and Wally at lunch back in
1991, 1992, or 1994," won't help. Our archive system is pretty successful,
but please be as specific as possible.

2. My church/company/school wants to use a Dilbert comic strip in a
newsletter/presentation/memo. Isn't this o.k.?

Our Comic Search service was made for just this sort of request. You can
order Dilbert reprints electronically through your web browser. Or, for more
information on permissions, please send a letter or fax with a copy of the
strip or article which you wish to use and with a brief explanation of how
you intend to use it. Please include the type of publication (or topic of
presentation) and the circulation of the publication (or how many people
will see it). If it's a book, include whether you are seeking world or North
American rights and also whether you need the art (we need a release date
for the art and we also need to know if you want camera-ready proofs,
electronic delivery, etc.) You can mail your request to:

Natasha Cooper Reprint Rights Manager 200 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016

or you can fax it to 212-293-8600. If you are able to send graphics via
e-mail please send your request to permissions@unitedmedia.com Please allow
at least four weeks for a response. If you are on a deadline, please
indicate the date you need a response by.

3. How do I get the Dilbert Newsletter? What is the DNRC?

Subscribing to the Dilbert Newsletter
(http://wally.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/dnrc/newsletter) makes you a
member of Dogbert's New Ruling Class. All others will become servants when
Dogbert conquers Earth. Subscribe at:
http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/dnrc/html/join.html.

4. Can I put the daily Dilbert strip on my web site?

Thanks for your enthusiasm for Dilbert. Unfortunately, United Media cannot
grant you permission to use Dilbert material on your web site. The
copyrights and trademarks for Dilbert are owned by United Feature Syndicate,
a division of United Media. We currently have agreements with licensing and
syndication partners that would be jeopardized by granting you a license to
use this copyrighted material. Please understand our need to protect our
existing clients.

5. I want to link to your site using a graphic of Dilbert and/or Dogbert. Is
this o.k.? How about putting a selection of comics with the same filename so
I can include a continuously updating comic on my Web page? I'm thinking of
an automated HTML writer that would generate a link to the Dilbert comics?

If you display an element from our site on your web page, you have altered
our material and redistributed it without our permission. Altering our
copyrighted material, i.e., inlining a comic strip, is a violation of United
Media's copyrights.

Please use one of the OFFICIAL DILBERT LINK ICONS available at
http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/about/html/linkicons.html and not
your own version (or someone else's) of a link icon. You can download the
official icon and use it as a link to our site and provide your readers with
access to the comics.

6. My friend has a cool Dilbert T-shirt and I want to know where I can get
one. How can I get a list of Dilbert products?

First, you might try the Dilbert Store for great Dilbert products you can
order online. If you don't find what you're looking for there, send e-mail
to Dilbert Product Information at dilbert_products@listserv.unitedmedia.com

This address does not answer individual questions; it sends a Dilbert
Product Information List in response to any mail received. To find out where
to buy a particular product on the list, or for more information about a
specific product, contact the licensee listed for the product.

7. I've already seen the strip that's on The Dilbert Zone. Why are you
running last week's strips?

Long answer coming:

The strips on United Media's web are updated daily, but they run one week
behind the current strip in the newspapers. And there's always a four-week
archive.

We needed to find a way to make Internet distribution of Dilbert economical
while complementing the daily strip that runs in the newspaper instead of
competing with it.

Some background: We started running same-day Dilbert cartoons on GNN's Web
site when almost nobody had heard the phrase "World Wide Web." We figured a
few thousand people would ever see it, and we charged GNN accordingly. We
weren't concerned about running current cartoons in the same markets as our
primary clients -- newspapers -- because the impact of the World Wide Web
was so tiny. For us, it was more of an experiment than a bold business move.

A hundred million "hits" later, we started to realize maybe we had
underestimated this Web thing. (Oh, give us a break -- YOU didn't predict it
either.)

On a smaller scale, we had an agreement with the ClariNet service for
same-day cartoon distribution over the Internet. Between the Web and
ClariNet distribution we approached non-trivial overlap with our newspaper
clients for same-day Dilbert cartoons. (We estimate there are several
hundred thousand online Dilbert readers versus 50 million newspaper readers
of Dilbert.)

So we had a dilemma. Demand for Dilbert on the Internet was huge, but we
have an obligation to our newspaper clients. In addition, one of the most
frequent requests from readers was to see strips that had run within the
past week, either because they missed the newspaper one day or because they
heard about a particular strip from somebody else.

Our best solution (we think) was to build the United Media web site and run
the comic a week after the newspaper, thus protecting Dilbert's value to our
primary clients while also satisfying readers' requests to see recently-run
strips. This solution depends on two assumptions, which we're still testing:

Assumption #1. Comics don't get "old" in a week unless you've already seen
them. And if you've already seen them, we've done our job -- so the online
archive should be additive.

Assumption #2. Many online readers don't read the comic every single day. So
by having the online versions a week behind and including a four-week
archive, online readers will rarely miss a strip.

8. I thought you were updating the strip daily. I logged on yesterday and
the same strip was showing up. Why?

Because of the way some browsers and servers cache the images that they
receive, it is possible that you are seeing a local copy again and again
instead of getting the updated strip from our site.

We've done everything possible on our end to solve the problem for most
users but, given the Web's pesky quirks, here are a few possible
work-arounds.
   o Click on the strip itself to load just the daily strip onto
     your screen.
   o Click on your reload button to get a fresh copy of everything
     on the screen.
   o Clear your disk cache, then quit and restart your browser. If none of
these options work it is possible that you are working through a proxy
server. If so, have someone connected with that system contact us at
webmaster@unitedmedia.com to work something out.

9. The Dilbert Sunday comic is really blurry -- kind of fuzzy, in fact.

The United Media site was designed for best use with a Netscape browser.
Microsoft Internet Explorer works well, too. If you are using AOL's browser,
the color strips could be blurry, or fuzzy.

10. What's with the animated ads?! They drive me nuts!

It's a fact of life that without advertising and product sales, United Media
would have no web site. Currently, our ads are being handled by outside
firms that rotate them from their sites, so we don't see the ads prior to
their rotation on our pages. Animated ads have become commonplace on the
web, and, whether or not you like them, the advertisers are paying us, and
we like that.

11. Some of the graphics on the page show up as bizarre icons.

Bizarre icons are a symptom of an overloaded server, or line. Try clicking
the "Images" button on your browser or the "Reload" button. That should fill
in the missing pieces.

12. Why does Dilbert's tie flip up?

The answer is either A) It's a metaphor for his inability to control his
environment or B) He's just glad to see you.

13. When did Dilbert start?

The cartoon strip Dilbert began in 1989. It now appears in over 1,900 papers
in 53 countries.

14. Does the boss have a name?

The boss character has no name. He's the same boss as the old boss, but his
hair got pointier over time.

15. What is the name of Dilbert's company? What do they do?

Dilbert's company has no name. It's intentionally unclear what they do for a
living, but Dilbert has a degree in Electrical Engineering from MIT.

16. Why doesn't Dilbert have a mouth?

There is no particular reason that neither Dilbert nor Dogbert have obvious
mouths. They eat when nobody is looking.

17. I heard Scott Adams once worked at my company. Is this true?

Despite what you've heard, Scott does not work at your company. He worked at
Crocker Bank in San Francisco from 1979 to 1986, then Pacific Bell from 1986
to June 1995, mostly in various engineering groups. He's not an engineer by
education; he has an MBA.

               Thanks for all of your feedback.

Dilbert©1999 United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
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