I was having internet problems two days ago, so this message I composed couldn't be posted. It repeats some of what some other people have said, but I thought it had some additional info that y'all might find interesting or relevant, so here it is.
silentspace said:
Back on topic though, I'm not sure I agree. If someone wants to buy a Dragon CD, why does he not want to give Jolly their money? They have no problem giving the publishers their money, the office staff, the cleaning staff, the landlords the publishers are paying rent to, etc. Why not to Jolly as well?
Perhaps the buyer is looking at it as a matter of, "If I want magazine X's issues 1-100, do I track down the original print runs for all 100 issues, track down reprints for all 100 issues, or grab the electronic "reprint" on CD-ROM? Which is easiest for the consumer? Uses less paper? Takes up the least amount of space? Has a search function to find the exact article you want instead of waiting for the "index issue" printed every couple of years?
If an electronic version of the magazine on CD-ROM is really no different than a paper reprint, why should the authors and artists get any more compensation for that material? Why is it that a company that wants to issue a collection of magazines -- a product that consumers want and would be very handy -- can do so without a peep from the contributors if they just reissue the magazines in paper form (possibly adding a nice set of slipcases, possibly not), but as soon as those magazines are compiled into an electronic format, it's a massive copyright violation?
This sort of thing leaves the company with four options.
(1) Rerelease the mags in paper. Very expensive to produce, older issues were hand-typeset and would have to be scanned and made print-ready for modern machines, uses a lot of paper, takes up a lot of space on shelves and in the warehouse, a very niche item, very high price for the consumer (you're basically paying for every issue of the mag, with prices adjusted for inflation ... for the Dragon archive that's $5 times 250 issues = $1,250) which few can afford.
(2) Rerelease the mags in electronic format. This entails getting the magazines scanned and put on CD. Not too expensive. Small shelf footprint, small cost for the consumer, much more effective as a product.
(3) As #2, but according to your reasoning (tracking down all the authors), the company should also have to contact every single author/artist that ever created something for the magazine and get their permission to use that material again in what is essentially an electronic reprint. The company has to pay those who demand money or not include their material, and leave out material from contributors who can't be located. This requires editing the scanned files (more work, more expense). Suddenly the electronic version isn't complete, and is therefore less valuable to those interested in buying it. And how are they to know if their favorite article or story from issue #Z is included in the archive? Should a big master list be made of every single thing that's in or not in the magazine compilation, just so the consumer knows exactly what he's getting? More work, more expense ... higher cost to the end consumer.
(4) Not reprint the product at all.
Option 1 is impractical.
Option 2 is ideal.
Option 3 is impractical and isn't much of a benefit to the consumer.
Option 4 is easiest.
Because of some contributors complaining (i.e., option 3), WotC had problems making the Dragon CD-ROM. As far as I can tell, that's why there is no Dungeon or Polyhedron CD-ROM (i.e, option 4). Who is hurt? The consumers.
{Again, I don't know much about the industry, but as I said earlier, I don't think the writers will be asking for "millions" as some think. They may not even ask for anything. And some of their contracts are probably written so that they
can't ask for anything.}
Certainly some of the older contracts have WotC/TSR owning everything outright (I ran into this question when I was TSR webmaster and was putting old issues online ... I needed Legal's approval on which article went up based on which ones we owned outright, mainly those written by people on staff at the time). Finding out which contracts apply and don't is another time-consuming (and thus expensive in terms of man-hours) problem.
And if you just assume 4 authors per issue (not counting some authors who have articles in many issues, I'm talking 4 new authors per issue), that's 1,000 authors over the course of 250 issues. 1,000 letters to send out asking for permission. And given your initial contract was probably betwee $100 and $300, and only assuming a 10% "reprint fee" charged by each author, that's still $10,000-$30,000. And then there are the artists, who are going to number at least as many as the authors, and probably for a similar expense. Suddenly this reprint is going to cost you $20,000-$60,000, and you'll only know how much after tracking down a bunch of people. And some of them will refuse and you'll get an incomplete product that the consumers will complain about. In any case, $20k-$60k is no small amount of money, even for WotC. That's 1-3 salaries, depending on what they're doing at the company. And under the watchful and evil eye of Hasbro, no department is going to happily fork over that kind of money easily.
{I do see the problem with finding some of the writers from the old days, but really, how big of a problem is that? So what, they have to make a few phone calls?}
How about I give you names of 5 authors and/or artists from, say, Dragon #50. You try to track them down and tell us how easy it is. Not everything is just a Google search away. People move, they change names, they change careers, they disappear, they die.
