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In reply
Dr Machemer has touched on one of the most critical questions of the new Information Age: the assigning of multimedia rights and the impact on authors and medical journals. The first question that needs to be asked is, To whom is the author transferring the rights? This would apply to any request, be it for audiotape, videotape, CD-ROM, or other technology. Dr Machemer does not specify whether he was transferring the copyright to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, to some other organization, or to a private company involved in CD-ROM production. If he transferred the copyright to the Academy, and the Academy subsequently published his paper in its official journal, then there probably would not be a conflict since the Academy would hold all rights, both print and electronic.The author would have a real problem if the rights were transferred to a third party, since most publishers