[Upd-discuss] More On Copyright Settlement

[Michael Hart]

MEDIA COMPANIES SETTLE WITH FREELANCERS

[If you scratch the surface on this one you will find that ONLY the
big-time commercial writers are benefitting from this settlement,
each article could net them $1500 in royalties. . .BUT. . .Average
Joe or Josephine who is not legally well connected enough to have
registered a separate copyright for each article will ONLY GET $60,
not really enough to pay for the effort of the lawsuits.  Just one
more case where copyright is being used for the rich to get richer
and to make the poor poorer.]

A settlement has been reached in a class action lawsuit between media
companies and freelance writers over stories included in electronic
databases. The class action suit was the combination of three separate
suits and represented defendants including the American Society of
Journalists and Authors, the Authors Guild, the National Writers Union,
and almost two dozen freelance writers. Defendants in the suit,
including Time, Knight Ridder, Reed Elsevier, and The New York Times
Company, agreed to pay between $10 million and $18 million for works
originally published between August 1977 and December 2002. Under the
terms of the settlement, writers who did not sign away electronic
publishing rights can apply for payments of as much as $1,500 for works
that have been added to electronic databases. Although many payments
will be significantly smaller than that, "some freelancers ... will
make six figures under this settlement," according to Jim Morrison, one
of the negotiators of the settlement and a past president of the
American Society of Journalists and Authors.
Wired Magazine, 29 March 2005
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,67063,00.html