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Supreme Court to Hear Online Reprint Case
Markar writes "The Supreme Court has decided to hear a case involving on-line copyright issues. Freelance authors have sued for having their stories/articles stored in online databases and CD ROMs without their permission. The freelancers assert that separate permission is required to do so. Complete story is on Salon." This is a big issue for a lot of media outlets which have huge databases of old articles compiled by freelancers.
About actors in movies, and whether they should've gotten additional payments for re-releases on video would have depended on the contractual agreements made at the time they agreed to perform in the movie. Generally, under the present copyright act, an actor's contribution, if somehow copyrightable, would be covered by the "work for hire" provisions of the law, with copyright owned by whoever hired the actor. I would think though that whether an actor recieved further payments would depend on the actor's contracts with his or her studio, and not on any rights under copyright.
The case up for review, Tasini, is different in that the plaintiff-writers were all freelance contributors to newspapers or magazines, not employees, and thus there is no work for hire issue.
Tasini revolves around a provison of the copyright act aimed at periodical publications, privileging compilation publications (such as magazines or newspapers or encyclopedias), in the absence of an agreement to the contrary, to republish freelancers' contributions in later issues or editions or revisions of the publication, without incurring copyright infringement liability.
Very roughly summarized, the newspapers and magazines who have been sued in Tasini failed to secure electronic republication rights to the articles in question that were licensed to Lexis-Nexis and another firm, and so they are now trying to argue that the republication on Lexis-Nexis is merely a revision (as that is meant in the act) of the original paid-for publication of the freelancers' articles, and thus there is no infringement of the freelancers' copyrights.
I understand that it is now routine for freelancers to be required to agree to give up electronic republication rights, but six or seven years ago, when this case started, that was not so.
The Supremes don't often take Copyright cases, but when they do, the results are usually important. This one could turn out to be interesting. Considering who the defendants are, I would expect that we will hear quite a bit about this one before it is over: that's what happens when someone sues companies that buy ink by the barrel.
Ed
Standard dsclaimer applies. Not meant as specific legal advice, but for general info only. Talk to a lawyer if you need legal advice, and don't depend on a random posting you read on slashdot in making decisons, etc... Or you are a fool.