Gale Group on the Tasini Ruling

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

From:  http://www.galegroup.com/about/tasini.htm

June 26, 2001

Many of our customers and business partners are understandably interested
in our reaction to yesterday's Supreme Court decision in The New York
Times v. Tasini case.  Here is a statement from Allen Paschal, Gale Group
CEO.

The Supreme Court decision in The New York Times v. Tasini case brings the
issues of electronic copyright and intellectual property to the forefront.
However, its impact is far from clear.

Our understanding is that the decision will not have an immediate effect
on us or on our ability to offer our comprehensive online services to
libraries and educational institutions in the U.S. and elsewhere around
the world.  

We expect that the practicalities raised by the decision will take months
to sort out.  In the meantime, it's important to remember that the Tasini
judgement generally affects material written before 1993.  In the case of
Gale's 365-day rolling content from the New York Times, one of the largest
defendants in the suit, there will be no change. 

As the Supreme Court's ruling is implemented, we expect most of the burden
of managing the articles and other documents authored by freelance writers
to fall on the individual publishers which originally commissioned or
purchased the work.  As those publishers retain ownership of materials
they supply us, we will respond to the directives they send us concerning
their content.

Our hope is the contributions of freelance writers and authors will not be
deleted from the information pools we aggregate into our online services.
We would prefer to see a settlement between publishers and freelancers
that will enable freelance work to remain accessible though our databases.
To that end, we have a tested system in place to track usage of our
databases at the article level, making it simple for publishers to track
royalties generated on Gale Group products for specific writers.

While we hope that publishers will choose to negotiate with their
freelancers, this data represents a very small portion of our content
pools.

The Gale Group will of course comply with all rulings issued by the
Federal District Court.  And we will work closely with our publishing
partners to ensure that all rulings are fully implemented.

In the meantime, Gale Group will continue to do everything in our power to
maintain the comprehensiveness and diversity of content available through
our online services.  We expect to work closely with our peers in the
information industry to have our voices heard.

We pledge to our customers and business partners that we will communicate
with them in a timely and complete manner as the full impact of the Tasini
decision becomes clear.  

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