RANT 'O THE WEEK: Possibly the most screwed-up Writer-versus-Publisher lawsuit ever
In my last rant I went on at length about the Google Book Stealing Plan. (You can tell I'm not bitter about it or anything.) You can read that rant here. Enough about that. There is another interesting court case, still snailing along after almost ten years, of interest to mostly magazine article writers. I don't expect any action from you or me. This one is only interesting as a look at human personality.
What happened is that a lot of magazine publishers sold a lot of their articles to a lot of online archive-and-resell outfits. There was one trivial problem: the magazine publishers didn't have the right to do this. Magazine article writers were careful in those days to sell "First" rights and not "reprint" rights unless for added money.
Writers, a lot of writers, hundreds of writers, (update: actually about a thousand, I'm told), sued a half-dozen magazine publishers. (And, remember, a publisher might publish dozens of magazines.) But there was a trivial problem: many of the authors had never actually registered their copyrights. Nevertheless, the authors—those who had registered and those who had not—were all lumped together into a class-action lawsuit. Now it gets complicated. Follow closely as this will be on the exam:
The lower court ruled in favor of the authors. The publishers agreed to create a pool of $18 million to cover all the fees to be paid to authors. Authors who had registered their copyrights would receive a certain fee. Those authors who had not registered their copyrights would get a very slightly smaller fee. So far so good and everyone, including the publishers was happy.
Oops. I lied. Ten people were not happy. Yes, ten of the authors who had not registered their copyrights asked an appeals court to set aside the lower court decision. They objected to receiving a smaller fee than they would have received had they registered their copyrights. They were turning down 90 cents in hopes of receiving a dollar, so to speak.
Let's make this clear: The losers, the publishers, coughed up $18 million to use to pay the judgement against them. They did not appeal the decision. No, it was some few of the winners who objected, wanting to win slightly more—even if that meant tossing the whole case into the garbage-disposal and waiting ten more years for a possibly, possibly, slightly-better result.
The appeals court agreed and threw out the entire decision. Hundreds of authors, some of whom were owed thousands, in some cases tens of thousands of dollars, were aghast. And furious. I know one of the—let's call them disputees—personally and she was more or less run out of one national writers' organization on a rail. In my opinion she deserved it. I have no dog in this fight—nobody ever stole my work and resold it, at least not in this particular case—but this was the most perfect, pure example of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory that I have ever witnessed.
Well, the authors appealed to the Supreme Court. Yes, that SCOTUS, the Big One. And the Supreme Court, a few days ago, overturned the appeals court decision to toss out the case and sent the whole thing back to lower court to start over. Their argument was that, under the law as existing now, copyright exists from the moment of creation and the registration process is a bureaucratic technicality. To prorate the awards based upon proper registration was acceptable as an incentive to properly register the copyright, the Supreme Court decided, but to entirely deny someone the protection of the law for not filling in the form was wrong.
There is human emotion even at this stratospheric legal level: The newest Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor, then sitting on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit for New York, sided with the majority that overruled the original court decision. Yet sitting now as a Supreme Court juustice, ruling on her own previous ruling (is that even legal? I guess so; they would know), ruled this time in favor of overturning her prior opinion. Weird or what?
I'm guessing we'll see some result in another ten years or so. Meantime, there is an $18 million nest egg sitting in escrow awaiting some decision.
SCHOOL
NEWS: Some of the things I am planning (that cursed "P" word again!) are:
Nothing this week. I am seeing a small uptick in registrations for the new year. Maybe people are recovering their will to live after a disastrous 2009. That or we are all bored to tears by too much snow outside and online classes look good about now.
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Grammar for Writers and Editors
Writing is communication: whatever else writing does, however beautiful it is, if it does not communicate, it does nothing. To communicate, the words need a structure that enables the writer to convey his or her ideas to the reader in a way the reader can understand. Grammar provides that structure.
Greeting Card Writing: Short, Doable, Profitable
Could you use extra money, writing in a field that's still largely untapped and undiscovered?
Haiku and Zen Poetry
Learn the most important techniques in the composition of haiku and Zen poetry.
How-To Articles: Quick and Simple
Tap into the knowledge you already have inside your head from daily life and make money.
Nonfiction Freelance Writing Business
The course is intended to teach you how to MARKET yourself and how to run the BUSINESS of nonfiction writing on a freelance basis.
ESSAY: Starter Guide to HTML
Whether it's converting Word documents to HTML for use on a web site or blog, or just sprucing up your web site, some simple tricks and some easy HTML code can be yours to use. All it takes is a little practice.
Note: For more information, consider taking our course Web Presence for Writers
My web designer says not to use Word to create HTML—even though it has a "Save As HTML"option. What's up with that?
Your web designer is telling you the way it is. Microsoft is a company not noted for caring a whit for any conventions on the Web. Their "save-as HTML" option must work somewhere, for someone. I guess. But it's useless for the most part. I notice that my Dreamweaver professional web-design program has "Clean Up HTML" and also "Clean Up Word HTML" options but the few times I ran the latter I had to scrap the results and start over.
Since I do both Word and HTML and flip 'em back-and forth all the time, some tips:
Click here to read the entire essay and to gather all those tips.
WEB LINKS:
Speaking of social media, here is shameless self-promotion. If you don't like it, send me your own best web links.
ASJA, the American Society of Journalists & Authors: National professional organization for published nonfiction writers. I edit the web site. (But there is a separate webmaster who does the technical things. I literally edit the words.) Huge site, of which you may see only the small 'public' part. If youhave published nonfiction articles or books, and been paid for those as a freelancer, not as a staff writer, let me know and I may be able to sponsor you for membership.
VacationFunFlorida: a travel/tourism web site run by a friend of mine. There is also a cheap ebook available listing free and cheap things to do in Florida. I know both the authors personally. Click here for a separate blog.
TampaBayOnTheCheap: sort of like the one above, but for just the Tampa Bay area. Updated whenever I get to it, which is supposed to be at least weekly. Click here for a separate blog. I have to go now and do the weekend events.... |
