Henry
Autoexreginated
They may not have sold well, but I'll give MINE up when the freelancers involved pry my copy from my cold dead fingers. 
Seriously, It's a major issue for freelancers who wanted to re-use those articles, but the way I see it, Dragon was an unusual case; the majority of freelancers who contributed to Dragon, also gamers themselves, got more from the CD-ROM archives than they lost, because the majority of work done was for outdated game systems, and no longer commercially viable.
It does set an interesting precedent, though: no magazine will EVER henceforth have electronic compilations for sale, because producers are too unsure of a fledgling magazine to pay more for perpetual or reprint rights to an article. Even should a mag gain popularity, it still means all early issues are lost for all publications. Granted, it wouldn't apply to Library archival work, but not all publications are archived, nor are they easily available to the public, as in the case of the first 100 issues of Dragon, or the first 10 or 12 issues of Dungeon.

Seriously, It's a major issue for freelancers who wanted to re-use those articles, but the way I see it, Dragon was an unusual case; the majority of freelancers who contributed to Dragon, also gamers themselves, got more from the CD-ROM archives than they lost, because the majority of work done was for outdated game systems, and no longer commercially viable.
It does set an interesting precedent, though: no magazine will EVER henceforth have electronic compilations for sale, because producers are too unsure of a fledgling magazine to pay more for perpetual or reprint rights to an article. Even should a mag gain popularity, it still means all early issues are lost for all publications. Granted, it wouldn't apply to Library archival work, but not all publications are archived, nor are they easily available to the public, as in the case of the first 100 issues of Dragon, or the first 10 or 12 issues of Dungeon.