Writers Sue Content Database Publishers
Posted on August 15, 2000
A class-action lawsuit was filed yesterday in United States District Court on behalf of writers in the United States whose copyrighted works have been sold online. The suit, which seeks injunctive and monetary relief, targets several companies which specialize in creating large online databases of magazine articles and book excerpts, and in so doing, either infringe or facilitate the infringement of these authors' works for a profit.
The defendants in the case are Gale Group, Inc.; Northern Light Technology Corp.; Bell & Howell Information and Learning Co.; Thomson Corp.; and Thomson Business Information. The suit contends that the defendants displayed, copied, sold and/or distributed copyrighted works of authors without the copyright holders' authorization. In so doing, the suit claims, the defendants reaped substantial revenue and financial benefits from these continuous acts of copyright infringement.
Among the authors already included in the suit is Gerald Posner, a freelance writer whose works include Citizen Perot: His Life and Times. Posner said, ``These content providers have collected and stored our works and sold them for their own financial gain without paying us a penny. That is fundamentally wrong, and it interferes with our livelihoods.''
``This case is about the intersection of the Internet and the rights of writers,'' said Gary S. Fergus, a partner at Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison LLP, a San Francisco-based law firm, which, along with Hosie Frost Large & McArthur, is representing the plaintiffs. ``Piracy is no less egregious in cyberspace than it is elsewhere.''
The suite follows closely on the heels of the settlement with writers and UnCover, an online document delivery service that sold copyrighted magazine and journal articles over the Internet without the author's permission. UnCover pursued royalty contracts with many periodical publishers and paid copyright fees to publishers, but not to individual authors.
The $7.25 million settlement, preliminarily approved by the federal court in Oakland, California, requires UnCover to expand its copyright permission and royalty payment system to include individual authors as well as publishers, and to obtain certain specified forms of permission before delivery of such articles. UnCover will now also offer a licensing agreement with any author who requests it, paying royalties semi-annually.
The settlement also uniquely initiates a search for thousands of authors, poets and other academic and creative writers who may have had their works sold by UnCover in the past. Any authors who retained their copyright in any article delivered by UnCover between October 22, 1994 and July 12, 2000 may be eligible to participate in the settlement. A special settlement website was also launched where a potential class member can get complete information and submit their claim for a share of the settlement via the Internet.
In another issue between content databases and writers, The National Writers Union (NWU) and Contentville.com, a website founded by publisher Steven Brill, recently announced an agreement to compensate writers for works purchased by visitors to the website. Contentville.com offers a large amount of content for sale on its website in a variety of formats. Contentville began receiving complaints when writers noticed that their magazine articles and other content was being offered for sale on Contentville's website without their approval. The Contentville and NWU agreement utilizes the NWU's Publications Rights Clearinghouse (PRC) to assign and pay royalties to writers whose work is sold on Contentville. Additional information is avialable on the NWU's website.