Monday, March 31, 2008
The National Geographic Digital Archive Battle - Implications for Digital Magazines?
National Geographic continues to battle on the issue of the rights of a publisher to "repurpose" content in electronic formats versus the rights of the originators of the intellectual property. Back in 1997, National Geographic had produced the CD-ROM "Complete National Geographic". The rights of the freelance photographers were positioned against those of National Geographic, who claim that this is a collective work and representative of the original print edition.
The implications for "Digital Editions" -- which are also replicas of the print magazine -- are clear. If a CD-ROM version is a replica in physical format, a digital edition would enjoy the same status.
In the January 2007 Texterity Times newsletter article Court Rules Digital Editions are a “Privileged Revision” of Copyrighted Material we had talked about this ruling, but even then there was not a clear resolution to the question.
National Geographic says “We’ll go to the Supreme Court if we have to, because our archive is that important to us." If that's true, it could be many more years before a definitive answer is available to publishers. This case in reminiscent of the "ebook days" -- the Rosetta Books vs Random House case (http://www.rosettabooks.com/pages/legal.html) which hinged on the question of "what is a book?" And, this also was never clearly resolved either.
Bottom line: Publishers who are worried about the "rights issue" should update their agreements with writers and photographers to clearly define both parties rights when it comes to digital replicas on the web, in physical form, and now on mobile devices.
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