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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1398919" data-attributes="member: 10201">Really?  That's why i didn't buy the CD-ROM.  Now, my recollection of the details at the moment is fuzzy, but i do recall for certain that the Tasini case was part of the issue. Anyway, there was a group of authors trying to either prevent the CD-ROM compilation, or get recompense for it. The authors complaint was that they had not authorized further publication of the works (at least some of the articles in Dragon were sold for first publication rights only, and almost all of the fiction), and this constituted a distinct publication. WotC's (or was it still TSR?) argument was that this was an "archival reproduction" (i think i've got the term right), and thus didn't require explicity permission, or additional payments. Problem is, that clause was at least originally intended for *library* backups, not commercial sales, and a lot of people think it's abusing the loophole to sell such works, except to libraries.  It's further complicated by the fact that, at least prior to Tasini v. NY Times, the law was behind the technological times, and didn't explicitly address this sort of thing--it had previously only really had to deal with microfiche and microform, media that didn't really have a commercial market anyway.I don't think they would want to make such an announchement, because (1) it might make them look bad to the public ("we did this bad thing, and we can't do it again") and (2) acknowledging the relevance of Tasini might make them more vulnerable to having to pay reparations/royalties to the suing authors ("yeah, we know this is illegal, but why should we pay them?")--legal repurcussions can easily get you long after the publication is sold out.Anyway, and this is only rumor, rumor has it that if they'd paid what the authors thought was reasonable recompense, and sold the CD-Rom at the price they did, they would've lost money even if they sold every last one. Which, if true, would mean that if the court case went forward and th authors won, i'd say that would have a pretty powerful squelching effect on further CD-Roms (not mayn companies actively pursue products that'll lose them money).Oh, as for sales and availability: i think two things hurt sales about equally: scuttlebutt about the court case (at least online) [i remember hearing from others who refused to buy it until there was a compelling claim that the authors had been fairly recompensed], and D&D3E--the changes in the new system were sufficiently radical that i suspect the appeal of a huge archive of older articles decreased significantly.</blockquote>

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