Court Considers Digital Copyrights

March 28 -- Jonathan Tasini isn't exactly Metallica's drummer, but he's leading a rebellion similar to Lars Ulrich's attack on Internet music distributor Napster.

The president of the National Writer's Union is taking on several powerful publishing companies, accusing them of violating copyrights by republishing freelancers' work electronically without permission or additional compensation.

Like Metallica's assault on Napster's online vault of free music, Tasini and a host of other freelancers say they are fighting for their rights as the World Wide Web creates new ways of disseminating their work.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Tasini's case, seven years after it was first launched. Across the nation, thousands of freelance writers, artists, photographers and illustrators are watching closely how it all unfolds.

The case is the court's first real foray into the muddy terrain of who owns what in the online world.

Appellate Court Sides With Authors

At issue is the 1976 Copyright Act, which has no provisions addressing intellectual property on the Internet.

The authors claim the law protects the publishers' inclusion of copyrighted works in a "revision" of an initial publication, such as in the late edition of a newspaper, but does not permit the works to be printed in electronic databases. Further, the publishers' privilege to print the works is not "transferrable" and so, may not be invoked by the databases, they say.

But the publishers — including The New York Times Co., Newsday Inc., Time Inc., Lexis/Nexis and University Microfilms Inc. — claim that their right to reprint freelance work also gives them the right to distribute it to electronic publishers unless a contract prohibits it.

A federal district court ruled in favor of the publishers in 1997, but the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision in September of 1999. Last week, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against National Geographic in a similar case.