ATTN Piazo: Dungeon mag and Dragon mag CD-roms & the Tasini v NY Times decision

[Henry]

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also gamers themselves, got more from the CD-ROM archives than they lost, because the majority of work done was for outdated game systems, and no longer commercially viable.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.

 

[jaults]

ditto johnsemlak's observation and review

Ditto diaglo's observation and review... With Erik Mona's recent thread on classic Dragon articles, I have been going back and reading a lot of gems I missed before. What a fantastic resource. I really would love to see a Dungeon archive.

Thanks,
Jason

 

[Voadam]

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also gamers themselves, got more from the CD-ROM archives than they lost, because the majority of work done was for outdated game systems, and no longer commercially viable.

And what did the freelancers get out of the CD-Roms? I got a lot out of it because I bought it from TSR/WotC. I don't know if freelancers were paid or compensated for the reprint of their work.

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.

I believe it simply means that electronic reprint rights are now standard for most magazine and newspaper contracts. That was the consensus at a writer's meeting I attended yesterday where the Tasini case came up as one of the points of discussion.

 

[Zjelani]

I'll have to check one of my contracts at home, but I believe Paizo clearly purchases all rights to an article, not first publication or anything like that. Dunno about the pre-Paizo days.

Also, from a GenCon seminar, I believe they stated that, at least with the articles and such (dunno about Kenzer's comic), they were legally in the clear, but it did cause some bad blood, especially with artists. However, don't take that as gospel truth, just my half-remembering of second-hand information.



Personally, I find the Dragon CDs to be extremely useful as well. It'd be great if they could find a way to produce Dungeon and Polyhedron CDs without honking off too many of the freelancers who contributed.

 

[Steverooo]

Back in the T$R days, Pre-Paizo, I know (from personal experience) that they always bought ALL rights to articles and artwork, and recall reading that WotC returned some of those rights after they bought rights to stuff from T$R... So I doubt that Copyright plays any part in any Paizo decisions not to publish further CD-ROMs.

 

[Steverooo]

I'll have to check one of my contracts at home, but I believe Paizo clearly purchases all rights to an article, not first publication or anything like that. Dunno about the pre-Paizo days.

ALL rights is going too far, for my tastes. First Publication and Electronic and Print Reprint Rights is more than enough. All Rights will hurt submissions, IMO. It isn't necessary.

 

[Kesh]

This seems to come up every couple months or so.

Yes, that case was the reason I heard (at the time) that they stopped making the CD. Coupled with slow sales...

However, there has been another court case recently which sided with National Geographic, rather than the photographers who were suing. Should that survive its appeal, we'll have two Federal courts with opposing rulings on the matter. Which means it'll have to go to the US Supreme Court to be settled.

 

[grodog]

David Kenzer has stated on the Kenzer message boards that there never was Kenzer lawsuit vs. WotC: that's apparently gamer urban legend.

 

[ascendance]

Actually, IIRC, the Kenzer vs. WOTC case was because WOTC didn't have the rights to reprint KODT in Europe. And whoever mentioned that there wasn't a lawsuit is right. It was settled out of court.

 

[Pagan priest]

To the best of my knowledge, the reason that Dragon or Dungeon bought all the rights to any work submitted was more an issue of copyright of the D&D material that was used to create the submission in the first place. To write anything, you had to use material already copyrighted by TSR.

Of course, that rational falls apart when you consider that Dragon has published articles for Traveller, Avelon Hill board games, SPI, etc, etc, etc.