Magazine's archive online

I read an article in Mediabistro.com about Harper’s magazine putting articles from its 157 year archive online. This brings up licensing issues (what use(s) did the authors licence to Harper’s?) and also highlights the time and effort required for rights clearance activities. Harper's VP, public relations Giulia Melucci is reported to have said "In an ideal world we would have contacted all 40,000 writers living and dead." Presumably we can take from this that they didn’t.

Image by Geff Rossi on Flickr CC-BY-NC-ND