The lawsuit, brought by Jonathan Tasini, the president of the US National Writers Union and other freelance writers against the New York Times and other publishers, was the culmination of a seven year court battle over authors’ rights in a digital age. The key question was how to apply laws developed for paper resources to new technologies. The court ruled 7-2 in favour of the writers.
In a statement, the chairman of the New York Times, Arthur Sulzberger Jr, said: “Historians, scholars and the public lose because of the holes in history created by the removal of these articles from electronic issues of newspapers”. The New York Times has said it will begin to delete all of the electronically archived freelance material it stores that is covered by the scope of the decision. However, most modern material will be unaffected by the decision since publishers now routinely seek express permission to publish works in multimedia.
Mr Tasini told news agency Reuters that the ruling was, “a huge victory…we’re obviously very pleased. This has been a long fight for the rights of all creators. Now the task is to have the media industry sit down to negotiate a settlement”.
In UK law, the copyright position is very similar. If you have consent to use a writer’s work in an off-line publication, it does not follow that you have permission to reproduce the work on-line. Accordingly, when commissioning work for any publication, it is common to find a clause in the contract that allows reproduction in other media.