FW: Wired News :Writers Fight for E-Rights

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

>From Wired News,full article available online at:
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,42538,00.html

Writers Fight for E-Rights  
by Kendra Mayfield  

2:00 a.m. Mar. 22, 2001 PST 

Tens of thousands of freelance writers, photographers and illustrators
eagerly await the outcome of Tasini et al vs. The New York Times et al,
which, after seven years in lower courts, will finally be argued before
the Supreme Court next week. The landmark lawsuit brought by members of
the National Writers Union against The New York Times Company, Newsday
Inc., Time Inc., Lexis/Nexis, and University Microfilms Inc., charges that
these publishers violated freelance contributors' copyrights by
republishing their work electronically without permission or further
compensation....

Like the music industry's fight against Napster, the National Writers
Union is fighting to compensate artists for their work, Tasini said. But
this time, the players have switched.  "The bottom line is that creators
need to be paid fairly," Tasini said. "The difference here is that the
thieves are the publishers."

Some noted historians have sided with the publishers, including
documentary-film maker Ken Burns, Pulitzer-prize winning authors Doris
Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, and historian David Kennedy, among
others.

These scholars are concerned that if the Supreme Court rules in favor of
the writers, publishers may delete any past works that could provoke new
lawsuits. Archives of new stories would be incomplete, with holes in every
newspaper's database....

Despite the threat of higher costs and decreased access to research
material, both the Association of Research Libraries and the American
Library Association have sided with the Writers' Union. Both contend that
electronic data does not need to be deleted as long as the courts require
publishers to pay past and continuing royalties.

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