NWU: Supreme Court to Take On Electronic Rights of Writers

[Ann Okerson <aokerson@pantheon.yale.edu>]

>From the Press release at the National Writers Union:

http://www.nwu.org

"Today the US Supreme Court announced that it has agreed to hear the
September 24th 1999 landmark decision by the Court of Appeals (2nd
Circuit), Tasini v. The New York Times. The Appeals Court had ruled that
it is copyright infringement for a publisher to put a freelancers work
on-line or otherwise reuse or resell it without explicit permission. If
the Supreme Court upholds the ruling, publishers will be vulnerable to
potentially huge liability for past and current copyright infringement.
Defendant-publishers in the case include Newsday, Time Incorporated,
Lexis-Nexus, and The New York Times, among others."

See the New York times coverage at:

Supreme Court to Take On Electronic Rights of Writers
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/06/national/06CND-LANCE.html

November 6, 2000

By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 The Supreme Court agreed today to tackle an issue that
was scarcely imaginable when some of the justices were named to the
tribunal: whether publishers may legally put the work of freelance writers
in electronic databases without the authors' permission.

The High Court will review a ruling handed down in September 1999 by a
three-judge panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second
Circuit, in Manhattan. That panel unanimously overturned a lower court
that had agreed with the arguments of The New York Times Company, Newsday
and the Time Inc. Magazine Company, along with University Microfilms
International and the Mead Data Central Corporation, former owner of the
Lexis-Nexis data bases.

[SNIP]

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