NWU Files New Lawsuit And Launches Publicity Campaign

Posted on July 6, 2001

The National Writers Union, upset with publishers reactions to their victory in the Tasini case, have filed another lawsuit. The new lawsuit challenges the New York Times' recent effort to encourage freelance writers to turn over their rights to articles covered by the June 25th Supreme Court ruling in Tasini v. The New York Times. The suit will allege that the contract the Times is asking freelancers to sign as a condition to keeping their articles in the Times' archives is illegal and unenforceable.

"We offered to negotiate with the Times after the Supreme Court decision but the Times' answer, to all freelancers, was 'drop dead'," said Jonathan Tasini, president of the National Writers Union and lead plaintiff in the landmark case decided by the Supreme Court. "The Times' publisher Arthur Sulzberger chose to intimidate, frighten and assault the rights of freelancers and attempt to take away their right to compensation from the illegal use of their articles by The Times unless they sign away all their rights, past and future."

The NWU is also launching a publicity campaign against the Times which includes an advertisement which will appear in The New York Times on Monday, July, 9, 2001. The ad will run with the headline, "The New York Times says some news is no longer fit to print -- if it means paying writers". Jonathan Tasini also announced that a mass demonstration will be held in front of The New York Times on July 19th

Jonathan Tasini and the NWU have been encouraging publishers to settle with freelancers and use the NWU's Publication Rights Clearinghouse. However, The New York Times and other publishers claim that The National Writers Union does not represent all writers and therefore will not solve the whole problem. Instead of negotiating with the writers union, the Times and other publishers are purging the articles from online databases. The New York Times plans to pull over 100,000 freelance articles from Lexis-Nexis. The publishers also plan to appeal to congress to pass new legislation to allow them to continue to publish the freelance articles without having to negotiate new contracts.

On June, 25, 2001 the Supreme Court upheld a September 1999 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit, which found that The New York Times and other publishers had committed copyright infringement when they resold freelance articles, via electronic databases such as Lexis-Nexis, without obtaining permission or making additional payments to the original authors. This case now reverts back to the lower courts where damages will be determined.