[Coco] Republishing Magazines

[Theodore Evans (Alex)]

On Dec 26, 2003, at 3:58 PM, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:

> At 05:50 PM 12/26/03 -0800, tim lindner wrote:
>> Some photographers feel that the CD would constitutes a "New Work" and
>> thus new royalties need to be negotiated.
>
> This is how I feel. I have notified any publisher that my work was not
> included in the original contracts, and they could not re-use it.

How narrowly do you define republication?  Would a volume printed 
containing exact replicas of several issues bound together constitute a 
republication?  Would it matter if the issues were printed at half 
size?  How about if they used some kind of plastic film rather than 
paper?

> I have, of course, put almost all my 1970s-80s computer work in the 
> public
> domain (at least in the sense of 'copyleft'), but I would not 
> appreciate
> its re-use for a profit, as Nat. Geo. and others have attempted to do 
> with
> their authors/photographers.

One may be stuck with it.  It undoubtedly depends on how the particular 
contracts were written.  As far as the interpretation of the contracts 
go, if they allow for unrestricted republication, I'm afraid I would 
have to side with National Geographic or whoever else published the 
magazine.

> The articles I have written since the early 1990s were for a publisher 
> who
> tried to put them in the online edition. I demanded (and received) a 
> new
> payment for each of them.

It could be a matter of how your original contract was written, or it 
could be that they simply felt that it was better to simply avoid the 
issue.