5 ms·

Some of my written work was once pirated by a coporation. In 1984, when I was 13, I wrote an article on revising the AD&D combat tables, sent it in to Dragon m

by tjic 16y ago

Some of my written work was once pirated by a coporation. In 1984, when I was 13, I wrote an article on revising the AD&D combat tables, sent it in to Dragon magazine, and it was published the following year. Before it hit print, I was given a contract to read and sign. The contract specified that I was selling "first serial rights" only, and retained all rights for republishing, putting in anthologies, etc. I signed the contract, and got a $100 check. 20 years later, Dragon released a CD-ROM compendium of all content. My article was included, without my permission. This was not "initial" serial rights - this was a republishing. I sent an email saying "you owe me additional payment". They wrote back saying "no". I filled out a small claims court form in MA, submitted it along with a $40 processing fee, and waited. A few weeks later I was given a court date. I showed up. The Hasbro magazine rep (Dragon was published by TSR, which had been acquired by Wizards of the Coast, which had been acquired by Hasbro) did not show. I won the case by default. The court mailed the judgement to Hasbro. A month later Hasbro mailed me a check for $2,000, in accordance with the judgement.

TheSOB88 16y ago
Awesome. Sadly, this person is getting advice to "lawyer up" when it's really unnecessary to even get a lawyer involved. In these types of cases lawyers would just complicate things.
- steviesteveo 16y ago
  Actually this is one of the types of case, that is one person is clearly and obviously in the wrong but absolutely refuses to admit it, where having a lawyer is particularly helpful.
  - electromagnetic 16y ago
    A lawyer isn't necessary, file a small claims action against them in your local area. If you're a writer you claim jurisdiction where you work (like the poster of this thread did), which generally means the other person will never be able to get there. They're either hiring a lawyer/paralegal to go to court or they sit and wait for the court to order payment. Personally, I'd be filing small claims against them on the order of a thousand dollars or so and include a claim for expenses. Good chance it's job done and you got the cash.
- run4yourlives 16y ago
  This case seems so cut and dry though that a lawyer is hardly necessary. Small Claims court will do the job perfectly fine.
ja27 16y ago
I'm pretty sure that cases like this is why that CD-ROM compendium was pulled from the market. Ironically, it's probably a collector's item now. It's actually quite frustrating, because there are a number of magazines that want to publish back issue electronic archives, but can't because in they never imagined that they'd want to republish articles electronically and there's no practical way to chase down all the authors, artists, photographers and potentially the advertisers to get the rights. I know one magazine publisher that just shrugged his shoulders and gave up. There are decent-quality scanned copies of every issue on the torrents now, but he isn't pursuing any action to stop it.
- dmm 16y ago
  Reasonable copyright term limits would go a long way towards solving this issue.
  - tjic 16y ago
    This has nothing to do with copyright law. I sold the first serial rights for $100. I would have sold all rights for $120 or so. ...but they never asked.
    - dmm 16y ago
      If it weren't for copyright law they could anything they pleased, so this has everything to do with copyright law.
    - ejames 16y ago
      > ...but they never asked. That's rather the problem - asking every person who holds the rights can be genuinely difficult. In your case, the original magazine was published years ago. Even if the publisher had kept your contact information - and didn't lose it when the got bought out by another company, and THAT company didn't lose it in the next level of buying out, etc. - the contact would no longer be accurate all those years later. Even if they did somehow manage to contact you, it's possible that you wouldn't have responded to the letter asking for rights anymore than they responded to your letter asking for payment. There could be this same problem for every article in every issue for the entire span of the magazine. Hasbro could have noticed somewhere along the path to you initiating court procedures and have offered a quick payment of $120 to make you happy instead of the $2000 default judgement, but a corporation as large as Hasbro probably gets a lot of complaints, some of them nuisance complaints or crank calls. It's quite possible that the $2,000 they had to pay was cheaper - maybe even dramatically cheaper - then the filing and/or legal footwork involved in accurately determining that it was necessary to pay you. And when determining what you need to do in order to comply with a law is very burdensome or difficult, I would say that it's fair to call that a problem with the law. A good law should make it easy to obey the law - not easy in a moral sense where it's a low standard, or easy in the loophole sense that you won't get caught anyway, but easy in the accounting sense that accomplishing non-nefarious, law-abiding objectives should cost small amounts of money in overhead activities.
plorkyeran 16y ago
They ran into a lot of legal issues with that CD. Supposedly KenzerCo got the rights to all the pre-3.0 D&D stuff so that they could make Hackmaster by agreeing not to sue.
tzs 16y ago
I'm kind of surprised that worked, since at first glance this would seem to be a copyright case, which no MA court has jurisdiction over.
- camiller 16y ago
  Take another glance... This could probably be argued under contract law as the defendant having exceeded the use they contracted.
gallerytungsten 16y ago
This is a great story, and the outline of it parallels my own experiences with small claims court. When big corporations mess with you, small claims is a very effective way to level the playing field. Here is some additional information on the process. You have to find the "registered agent" for the company, which can usually be looked up online at the Secretary of State site for the state where the company is located. If they are out of state, serve the complaint by certified mail, with return receipt.

by tjic 16y ago

TheSOB88 16y ago

Awesome. Sadly, this person is getting advice to "lawyer up" when it's really unnecessary to even get a lawyer involved. In these types of cases lawyers would just complicate things.

steviesteveo 16y ago
Actually this is one of the types of case, that is one person is clearly and obviously in the wrong but absolutely refuses to admit it, where having a lawyer is particularly helpful.
- electromagnetic 16y ago
  A lawyer isn't necessary, file a small claims action against them in your local area. If you're a writer you claim jurisdiction where you work (like the poster of this thread did), which generally means the other person will never be able to get there. They're either hiring a lawyer/paralegal to go to court or they sit and wait for the court to order payment. Personally, I'd be filing small claims against them on the order of a thousand dollars or so and include a claim for expenses. Good chance it's job done and you got the cash.
run4yourlives 16y ago
This case seems so cut and dry though that a lawyer is hardly necessary. Small Claims court will do the job perfectly fine.

ja27 16y ago

I'm pretty sure that cases like this is why that CD-ROM compendium was pulled from the market. Ironically, it's probably a collector's item now. It's actually quite frustrating, because there are a number of magazines that want to publish back issue electronic archives, but can't because in they never imagined that they'd want to republish articles electronically and there's no practical way to chase down all the authors, artists, photographers and potentially the advertisers to get the rights. I know one magazine publisher that just shrugged his shoulders and gave up. There are decent-quality scanned copies of every issue on the torrents now, but he isn't pursuing any action to stop it.

dmm 16y ago
Reasonable copyright term limits would go a long way towards solving this issue.
- tjic 16y ago
  This has nothing to do with copyright law. I sold the first serial rights for $100. I would have sold all rights for $120 or so. ...but they never asked.
  - dmm 16y ago
    If it weren't for copyright law they could anything they pleased, so this has everything to do with copyright law.
  - ejames 16y ago
    > ...but they never asked. That's rather the problem - asking every person who holds the rights can be genuinely difficult. In your case, the original magazine was published years ago. Even if the publisher had kept your contact information - and didn't lose it when the got bought out by another company, and THAT company didn't lose it in the next level of buying out, etc. - the contact would no longer be accurate all those years later. Even if they did somehow manage to contact you, it's possible that you wouldn't have responded to the letter asking for rights anymore than they responded to your letter asking for payment. There could be this same problem for every article in every issue for the entire span of the magazine. Hasbro could have noticed somewhere along the path to you initiating court procedures and have offered a quick payment of $120 to make you happy instead of the $2000 default judgement, but a corporation as large as Hasbro probably gets a lot of complaints, some of them nuisance complaints or crank calls. It's quite possible that the $2,000 they had to pay was cheaper - maybe even dramatically cheaper - then the filing and/or legal footwork involved in accurately determining that it was necessary to pay you. And when determining what you need to do in order to comply with a law is very burdensome or difficult, I would say that it's fair to call that a problem with the law. A good law should make it easy to obey the law - not easy in a moral sense where it's a low standard, or easy in the loophole sense that you won't get caught anyway, but easy in the accounting sense that accomplishing non-nefarious, law-abiding objectives should cost small amounts of money in overhead activities.

plorkyeran 16y ago

They ran into a lot of legal issues with that CD. Supposedly KenzerCo got the rights to all the pre-3.0 D&D stuff so that they could make Hackmaster by agreeing not to sue.

tzs 16y ago

I'm kind of surprised that worked, since at first glance this would seem to be a copyright case, which no MA court has jurisdiction over.

camiller 16y ago
Take another glance... This could probably be argued under contract law as the defendant having exceeded the use they contracted.

gallerytungsten 16y ago

This is a great story, and the outline of it parallels my own experiences with small claims court. When big corporations mess with you, small claims is a very effective way to level the playing field. Here is some additional information on the process. You have to find the "registered agent" for the company, which can usually be looked up online at the Secretary of State site for the state where the company is located. If they are out of state, serve the complaint by certified mail, with return receipt.