A friend pointed me to this troubling story. Eric Weisstein’s Mathworld website, a virtual encyclopedia of mathematics, has been yanked off the web after a preliminary injunction granted to CRC Press, which charged copyright infringement. More than three years ago, Weisstein had signed a book deal giving CRC page images of his website; CRC published “Eric Weisstein’s CRC Concise Encylopedia of Mathematics” in November 1998. Now CRC claims he sold the rights to the website, not just a printed book; a court found the contract ambiguous on this point and granted CRC’s injunction.

Although I realize your eyes glaze over with dry discussions of mathematics, the issues have broader applicability to the relationship between publishing on the web and in print. The question comes down to whether the standard book contract clause granting the publisher the “right to reproduce in all media” is applicable to a preexisting website from which the book is derivative. If you’ve signed a book deal involving reproduction of any portions of a website you’ve authored (caveat Jorn Barger, for example, in the weblogging world, who has been talking about a Robot Wisdom book), make sure you explicitly specify what rights your book contract signs over!

This blink points to answers from Weisstein’s perspective to frequently asked questions about the dispute, and contains links to news coverage of the issues. Programmer and author John MacDonald’s comments at oreilly.com (of course, a publisher spanning the web and printed media) are interesting. [from Abby]