This is a link to American Writer, the magazine of the National Writer's Union. The Fall 2005 issue, on which you should click, is entirely devoted to Copyright infringements and the role of the Nation Writers' Union in defending its members. The "cause celebre" of the Union is the recent settlement of a class action suit (Literary Works in Electronic Databases, MDL No 1379), in which 21 writers and three organizations, the NWU, the Authors Guild and the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) filed suit against 13 publishers of electronic databases and 36 periodical publishers for selling database rights they didn't own. Currently, pending a court hearing on September 27, 2006 in New York City, between $10 million and $18 million are proposed as settlement fees. Freelance writers are currently urged to search the official web site to see if their articles are among those listed and/or to see if their publishers are on the list. Then they are instructed to fill out a claim.
While the potential rewards are small, (an infringed article that was never registered with the US Copyright Office and that sold for between $50 and $999 would yield the author $25), the time involved is minimal and worth the "30 second effort."

Of course not all writers are pleased with the settlement offer. Irvin Muchnick, a freelance writer and former staff member of the National Writers Union, is the architect of a class action by a group of writers who asked a federal judge in April 2005 to vacate preliminary approval of the $10-$18 million setlement figure. His daily diatribes on his web site: freelancerights.muchnick.net reflect his main arguments that the size of the restitution is too small, the provisions for notifying writers are inadequate and release of future claims agains publishers is too vague and too broad.

Regardless of who "wins" the settlement dispute, the fact remains that writers will be compensated for articles that appeared on electronic data bases without their permission.

The bottom line is that the NWU "will not tolerate continuing infringements. We're prepared to continue to fight and fight harder."

This is a summary from a freelance writer's perspective of the situation following the Tasini ruling. Written in 2001, not too long after what was hailed as a "victory" for freelancers, the author reveals that the opposite may in fact be closer to the truth. As early as 1993, the date of the original Tasini suit, publishers began to issue "all-rights" contracts to freelancers in which they sign away any and all rights (including those yet to be discovered) to their work. Jim Morrison, president of the American Society of Journalists notes: "As a result of Tasini, publishers increasingly are attempting to pay writers the same--or even lower--rates for all rights than they traditionally paid for first print rights." In addition, rather than trying to contact freelancers whose articles they may have sold to Lexis Nexis, the New York times instead "purged" electronic data bases with which they had done business of all freelance contributions.
The article includes an interview with Charles Petit, an intellectual property and publishing lawyer, who points out an interesting stance of the Court with regard to copyright in general, noting:"The Court has clearly stated that information does NOT 'want to be free:
     Congress' adjustment of the author/publisher balance is a permissable expression of the 'economic philosophy behind [the Copyright clause],'i.e. the conviction that encouragement of individual effort [motivated] by personal gain is the best way to advance public welfare.'"

The bottom line for writers, according to the Petit, is to arm themselves with information. "read your contract. Make sure you understand it, If there's an ambiguous term make the publisher define it in writing. None of this is news; unfortunately, most of it is all too seldom done."