The threatened action follows last week’s US Supreme Court
ruling extending copyright protection for authors to include works
published on the internet and digital media. The court ordered
compensation to be paid to writers whose copyright had been
infringed, but it appears that in order to avoid incurring these
costs the New York Times has begun to remove more than 115,000
freelance articles from its news archives.
In a statement from the Author’s Guild, its executive director
Paul Aiken commented:
"The [New York] Times continues to show a
deliberate disregard for the possibility of acquiring proper
licenses to these works… The Times has gone to great lengths to
avoid sharing some of its database revenue with its contributors,
compelling many freelancers to retroactively surrender their
electronic rights to their prior work without additional payment if
they want to contribute to the newspaper now or in the future."
In addition, Guild president Letty Cottin Pogrebin justified its
action stating that
"The Authors Guild has taken this action to
protect the economic interests of our members and all freelance
writers…"
