Date: Tue, 6 Dec 1994 15:50:15 EST From: R. THOMAS BERNER Newsgroups: psu.college.comm Subject: DISPUTE OVER E-RIGHTS WRITERS UNION ACCUSES HARCOURT BRACE OF UNFAIR PRACTICES IN DISPUTE OVER ELECTRONIC RIGHT New York, December 5, 1994--The National Writers Union (NWU) today accused Harcourt Brace Professional Publishing of acting unfairly in a dispute over electronic rights. "Harcourt has taken a position that could ultimately force one of our members to produce revised editions of his books and yet receive no income from the sales of the new versions," said NWU President Jonathan Tasini. The dispute involves two accounting books written by NWU member Larry Bailey (one originally as a co-author with the late Martin Miller) an revised on an annual basis by him. Bailey is a professor of accounting at Rider College in Lawrenceville, NJ. Earlier this year, Harcourt notified Bailey that it intended to issue the works on floppy diskettes containing exactly the same content as the print versions. "Harcourt stunned Bailey by announcing that it did not feel legally obliged to pay him any royalties on the electronic versions of the books," said NWU National Book Grievance Officer Philip Mattera, who is handling the case. "The reason they gave was that in his contracts Bailey had signed over all rights to Harcourt and had agreed that his compensation would be limited to royalties on the books." Harcourt insisted that the disks were not books and thus not covered by the royalty provisions, Mattera added. "The books written by Bailey, which are used by professionals and require frequent updating, are among the types of works that users will be most eager to obtain in electronic form," Mattera said. "It's possible that within a few years the sales of the work will be almost entirely on disk. Given that his contract requires him to produce revised editions whenever Harcourt wants them, Bailey would end up doing continuing work with no compensation." Mattera said the NWU also takes issue with Harcourt's position because, at the time the contracts were signed in 1980 and 1985, there was no consideration of the possibility of electronic versions of the works. "The fact that Harcourt agreed to pay royalties to Bailey was an indication that the parties intended for him to get compensation from the continuing sales of the works," Mattera said. "It is absurd to think that Bailey would have waived his right to compensation from versions of the work presented in a different form." Mattera noted that after Bailey challenged Harcourt's position, the publisher offered to pay him royalties on the disks, but at a rate that was a fraction of the print royalty. Harcourt said it was doing s "because we value [Bailey's] contribution," reiterating at the same time the claim that it had no obligation to pay anything "Bailey and the NWU rejected the gift of substandard royalties offered by Harcourt," Mattera said. "Bailey did express a willingness to accep a reasonable reduction in royalties for a limited period, in acknowledgment of the costs of transferring the work to disk. But Harcourt insisted on a large and permanent reduction." Mattera said that the Bailey grievance is the latest in a series of cases in which the NWU has challenged the publishing industry over th control of electronic rights. Earlier this year, for example, the NWU brought (and settled) a grievance against Playboy magazine for re-usin a union member's article in a CD-ROM compilation without permission The NWU has also helped a group of its members bring suit against several publishers and online services for distributing electronic versions of articles they had written as freelancers. The suit, Tasini v. New York Times et al., is pending in federal court in New York. The 4,000-member National Writers Union works to protect the rights of freelance writers of all kinds, from journalists and technical writers to novelists and poets. Founded in 1983, it is affiliated with th United Auto Workers union. For more information, contact Philip Mattera or (718) 768-7752.