RE: Ruling on Tasini Case

["De Beer, Jennifer" <jad@maties.sun.ac.za>]

Hello,

A cursory reading of the NY Times article posted earlier to this list
suggests that only freelancers that _sell_ their works to publishers are
affected by this ruling. "...the Supreme Court said free-lance writers may
control whether articles they sold for print in a regular newspaper or
magazine may be reproduced in electronic form."
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Free-Lance.html?ex=994485
244&ei=1&en=56d5cb000908ea72 Scholars, who tend to not receive
remuneration for journal articles submitted, are by that act entering into
a different type of contract. I imagine one would need to read the exact
wording of the court ruling e.g. their definition of 'freelancer' or
'regular newspaper or magazine' to clarify matters. But my guess is that
the ruling would not extend to scholars, authors of monographs, and such.
What makes the matter "major news" would be that it sets a precedent for
others to argue their respective cases.

Regards,

Jennifer De Beer

PS: hope this msg reaches the list; switching ISP, so digital life is
currently unstable.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Denise Nicholson [mailto:nicholson.d@library.wits.ac.za]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2001 12:59 PM
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: Re: Ruling on Tasini Case
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> How will this ruling affect libraries and their digitisation 
> projects?  
> Will permission now have to be sought from the authors instead of
> publishers?  Secondly, does this ruling affect all authors, 
> e.g. scholarly
> and others - not just freelancers?
> 
> Thanks
> Denise Nicholson