Supreme Court Okays CD-ROM Reproductions Of Magazines In Annoying Formats Only
from the the-less-useful,-the-better dept
A few years ago, in a famous case, the Supreme Court ruled that newspapers and magazines that put out CD-ROMs containing searchable databases of their archives violated the copyrights of freelance authors who never approved that their content be used that way. The publications were told they would need to pay the freelancers again to publish this kind of archive, which is a bit of a shame. The Court's argument was that this really was a "new" use of the content. This has scared off many publications from putting out electronic archives if it includes the work of freelancers from an age before electronic republishing rights were included in any contract. This has resulted in publishers putting out CD-ROMs that are annoying to use. Both National Geographic and the New Yorker tried to skirt the earlier ruling by publishing CD-ROMs that display the old magazines as scans of the magazine, rather than as searchable databases. You can't copy and paste the text. You can't jump easily from article to article or issue to issue. Basically, they've tried to make it act as much like the old magazine as possible, to fit in under the earlier ruling. However, some freelance writers still didn't like this and sued National Geographic. Both the federal court and the appeals court ruled against them, saying that republishing the scans was perfectly fine -- and now the Supreme Court has refused to hear the case, meaning we can all look forward to other annoying to use CD-ROM archives of old publications -- at least until the copyright runs out on these articles (as if that will ever happen).
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No Subject Given
Woohoo.
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Re: No Subject Given
Or until some copyright owners, afraid of their content going into the public domain, convince Congress to extend the timeline again. Because nothing incentivizes a dead man to write more like the fact that the content he wrote 100 years ago is still protected.
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Re: No Subject Given
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A inch
We need the mile it's time to start taking it. Google has been very forthcoming in keeping at pushing for legislation along these lines. I would hope that maybe the public library system could see how that integrating into an on-line source of every written work could help to advance society a touch. Of course there can always be fees...
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It's All about Disney
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No Subject Given
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Copyright to protect writers
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why don't they...
surely these freelancers have more to lose from not being published than the likes of National Geographic has to lose from not publishing a few works from freelancers.
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So... when will it be illegal to use OCR software?
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'F is for Freelancers.
I rather read articles of authors that WANT TO BE READ, than read something from some greedy whiner.
I highly recommend that publishers just skip or black out the crap that doesn't get approved by their authors.
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Re: It's All about Disney
This is what frustrates me the most;
The character of Mickey Mouse that Disney claim to be protecting is a trademark. This is a completely different issue from the copyright of movie where Mickey first appeared, and letting that or any early film fall into the public domain would -not- result in open-season on the Mickey Mouse trademark.
The character of Mickey Mouse, along with the ears logo, Walt's name and the distinctive Disney font, will continue to be protected as a trademark of Diskey for as long as Disney want and defend it/them as a trademark. Confusing the issue of trademark and copyright is a total red herring.
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I'm on the writers' side
I think that the main point is in the "new way" it is published. Consider this: you sell a story to a company for publication in a magazine, and they decide to also make a radioshow with that text. Surely you expect to get paid for this 'new way' of using your story.
And the fact that the company doesn't want to pay the freelancer is just a sign of greed on their part. Because they sure as hell will charge you, the customer, for the CD/DVD publication and the added functionalities!!
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The Courts got it Worng!
The Publishers are in business to make money. Hopefully by doing something useful. Knowing what they might profit from their magazine, they made a deal with a Writer for some portion of those expected profits, at that time.
Later, they imagine a whole new Pile 'o Profit unforeseen back when. What makes this current Profit 'Useful' - in part - is the value of the writer's work back then. Why should the writer not share in the new-found value of his work?
There's surely many other factors related. If the disks are used only as promotional items, or are priced very low for consumers, then there's not such a big profit issue for publisher or writer.
Why not publish in a more convenient, more responsive mode, price the product appropriately, and give a proper share to All involved? {{Greed?}}
As far as Cut&Paste, Screen Capture, OCR, etc., who thinks that the Publisher is not also taking measures to defeat such, or that they would be unlikely to to go after 'pirates' that do such things?
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National Geographic as reference
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Corporate copyright should be less Re: It's All about Disney
Government works are often public domain.
The more wealthy the copyright holder is, the shorter the copyright should last. People who became wealthy generally manage their resources well, or have figured a way to skirt ethics, or started with enough money to have a further advantage. This encourages wealthy people to manage their resources well.
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