In fact, Random House's entire involvement in electronic publishing belies their current legal position. Its own contracts document that Random House always previously secured specific grant of electronic rights from authors for works they wished to exploit in electronic formats. Authors who signed amended or additional contracts to cover electronic forms to my certain knowledge include Ken Burns, Michael Crichton, William Safire and the New York Times, the Audubon Society, and the LA Times as well as the puzzle-writing team of Burstyn and Tunick. With beautiful symmetry, where Random House has itself been the author of works licensed to others for electronic publication, it has defined such rights very narrowly in terms of form, platform, term and territory, as for example Fodor s guides or the Random House Dictionaries or Encyclopedia. Moreover, they have aggressively and successfully opposed any unilateral attempts of a licensee to extend the grant of rights in any way.
Somebody smells some easy money somewhere, almost certainly mistakenly.
I hope that Random House gets the trouncing in court that their hypocrisy and bullying so richly merit, but they probably won't. 2001 Excite Canada Inc. All rights reserved.