Judge to review UnCover settlement files

[Irvin Muchnick <irvmuch@yahoo.com>]

JUDGE TO REVIEW UNCOVER SETTLEMENT FILES

A federal judge will review sealed files in the precedent-setting
class-action copyright infringement case *Ryan v. CARL* as part of his
consideration of a motion to open the records for public inspection. At a
hearing in Oakland on June 28, United States District Court Senior Judge
D. Lowell Jensen said that such a review was necessary in order to
determine whether the documents in question included properly protected
trade secrets.

Last month I moved to intervene for the limited purpose of unsealing
records pertaining to the execution of the $7.25 million settlement in
*Ryan*, a case involving claims by freelance magazine and journal writers
against the UnCover document delivery service. I do not seek to reverse or
alter the settlement itself. I am a freelance journalist and a former
assistant director of the National Writers Union who worked from 1997 to
2000 as a consultant for the *Ryan* plaintiffs' attorneys.

My request to unseal court files was prompted by the exposure of mistakes
made by *Ryan*'s settlement claims administrator, the Arthur Andersen
accounting firm, which recently was convicted on federal charges for its
role in shredding documents in the Enron scandal. According to the open
portion of the *Ryan* court file, Arthur Andersen received a fee of
$500,000. The first copyright class action on behalf of authors in the
history of American jurisprudence, *Ryan* led to a second similar class
action, currently pending in federal court in New York, against other
operators of electronic databases marketing freelance writers' previously
published articles. Though no longer involved as a litigation consultant,
I continue to investigate and write about this area. My commentaries on
*Ryan* and related authors' rights issues are collected at the website
"Electronic Rights & Wrongs,"
<http://www.geocities.com/irvmuch/home.html>. The site contents can be
viewed at <http://www.geocities.com/irvmuch/contents.html>.

I view Judge Jensen's action as a positive development and I look forward
to the court's review of the *Ryan* documents. My sincere thanks go to San
Francisco attorney Roy Gordet for his skillful advocacy of my motion.

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