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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 3161915" data-attributes="member: 10201">The bigger problem is that many (even just some?) of the articles were only bought for "first publication" rights. So, in order to reprint, TSR/WotC would need to renegotiate with all of the authors from whom they didn't buy full ownership of the article--and that's a *lot* of people. And a lot of them are probably hard or impossible to track down. Plus, that means considerable expense--the expense of finding all these people and talking to them, plus whatever they pay out for the reprint rights. Also, rumor has it that TSR didn't keep particularly great records, so even determining what rights the magazine had/has could be tricky. The CD archive was printed under the library archive exception, wherein it is not necessary to pay anything more for archival electronic compilations of periodical publications. However, there were a series of court cases right around the time that the Dragon CD came out, whose ultimate disposition i forget--but i think it was that the exception was meant to be explicitly only for libraries--the 'library' in the name wasn't just a descriptor, it was meant to limit such archives *only* to compilations created for libraries, not for general sale. In any case, i'm pretty sure that it's not an option any more, so they'd have to pay more for a new archive [than they did for the original print rights, and than they did for the existing Dragon CDs], unless the new contracts include explicit permission for electronic reprints. And even as early as the beginning of the run in question (#251+), i'd be surprised if automatic, no-fee electronic reprint rights were part of Dragon's standard contract.</blockquote>

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