Sunday,
September 26, 1999

YES!

The Tasini case (Tasini v. New York Times Co.) -- the decision by an East Coast court that writers were not entitled to redress when their works were reprinted in various electronic media, notably including CD-ROM -- has been overturned on appeal, with instructions issued by the Second Circuit for the trial court to issue judgment in favor of the authors.

This is flipping fabulous news. What it means is that publishers who produce electronic reprints of material (say, oh, a certain West Coast gaming company that's producing a CD-ROM compendium of their gaming magazine) must pay writers a reprint fee or negotiate terms for use of the writer's work in an electronic medium.

But don't publishers do that already, you wonder. Ha, and ha again. Electronic media is a relatively new thing in publishing, so there aren't a lot of rules and regulations about use of a writer's work in it. Now, the Tasini case started when the New York Times tried to take advantage of the nebulous status of e-media by claiming that Times writers had already given the Timesthe right to reprint their stories and articles. Which the writers had -- in print media, not electronic media. This is a big difference -- in print media, there is usually a time limit to how long a publisher retains reprint rights. Once that time limit is up, the writer can sell the piece again somewhere else.

Electronic media (the net, eBooks, CD-ROMs, etc.), however, is a whole 'nother animal. Something available in e-media (say, a collection of stories on a website or on a CD-ROM) can theoretically stay "in print" forever. This means that the writer cannot sell that piece anywhere else -- it can't be used as the basis for a book or movie, can't be reprinted anywhere else, can't make MONEY for the writer. And there can be a lot of money in reprints -- frex, my reprint payment for "Heramaphrodite" when it was reprinted in Crossing the Border, came to twice what I was originally paid for the piece, plus royalties.

So a smart writer really, really wants to keep an eye on reprint rights, and especially e-media reprint rights since they can be worth a lot of money. However, the Times was trying to do an end-run around paying for these rights by claiming that they'd already paid the writers for reprint rights, and didn't the writers realize that reprint rights extended to all media, including the electronic kind?

Bah, and bah again. Unfortunately, the first time this was taken to court, the ruling was in favor of the newspaper. Now that the appeal has tipped things in the writers' direction (and believe me, there was much rejoicing), the newspaper will probably try to take it to the Supreme Court. Stay tuned to see who'll win this one, Bat-fans.

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