Most writers, myself included, have been willfully ignorant of the fact that our best clients have been selling our work to national electronic databases without our permission. The question of what permission publishers require for electronic reprints, and how much they should pay writers, photographers and other creative artists for electronic rights, is today's hottest publishing controversy. Consider the case of WIW member Carl Hoffman.
In December, Hoffman peeked into Uncover, a for-profit database run by the Colorado Association of Research Libraries. What he uncovered wasn't pretty. The database was selling reprints of articles he had written for Audubon, Islands and Smithsonian for $8.50 each, plus a $3.00 "copyright fee." Hoffman, holder of the copyrights, had never received any fees, nor had he ever received any request to distribute his work from Uncover.
Hoffman called Uncover. The publishers' representative said Uncover had negotiated a deal to pay Audubon. Smithsonian had refused an agreement, and "you shouldn't be able to receive anything anymore." They were working on a deal with Islands, she said, and Hoffman shouldn't be able to download those articles. But he could.
Two days after he talked to Uncover, he checked again. Suddenly, the Smithsonian and Islands articles were no longer available. Hoffman has yet to see a time for this unauthorized distribution of his work.
"Although I've known for almost two years that people have been selling my stuff, I never went to the electronic people directly because I was afraid that as a lone guy all they'd do is pull my work, which they did, Hoffman says. "I've always fantasized about just sitting tight and somehow catching them in act, and being able to make it a wider issue in the process Now, at least with Uncover, I'm not sure that's possible.
Now we don't have to go through this alone. WIW is joining other writer's groups, including the National Writers Union and the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), in pushing for electronic-rights agreements that both publishers and writers can live with.
The first step is to find out where our work is being distributed, and put databases and publishers on notice that we are no longer going to suffer.
Here is what to do: Check electronic databases. Do a keyword search for your name in the databases on CompuServe, America On-line, Nexis and any other databases you have access to. The ASJA recommends checking Uncover for free using the Internet: telnet to database.carl.org. If you're not on-l go to your local library and ask for help doing an electronic database search. Hoffman used the Montgomery County Library.
Print out a list of your on-line articles, noting the database and the on-line service where you found them. Check that list against the contracts for those articles with the original publishers.
If you are the copyright holder of the article (e.g., it was not work-for-hire) and you did not sell electronic rights (e.g. first North Amer rights only), send WIW the list of the articles you found on-line, along wit copies of the contracts (you can white out information on fees). WIW will wr the offending databases and publications on behalf of you and other writers, asking that you be paid the copyright fees and that they cease disseminating your work without permission.
The database search will take just a few minutes, but it will be the first step in protecting the rights of you and thousands of other writers. The mor writers who find evidence of unauthorized electronic distribution and send it to WIW, the better chance we'll have at ending these egregious practices and getting writers the payments they deserve.
WIW 733 15th Street, NW, #220 Washington, DC 20005.
Submitted by Jo Campbell jocee@shore.intercom.net
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