Authors Guild, 'NYT' Reach Freelancer Pact
Calvin Reid -- Publishers Weekly, 8/6/2001
The Authors Guild and the New York Times have reached an agreement that ends the newspaper's ad campaign that called on freelancers to waive their rights to compensation in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling requiring publishers to get permission to reuse past freelancer articles electronically (News, July 2).
As part of the agreement, the Authors Guild has agreed to drop its motion for a restraining order against the NYT to prevent the paper from using its Web site to ask freelancers to waive their rights. However, the guild's lawsuit and a separate suit by the National Writers Union (News, July 16), also aimed at halting the NYT's appeals to freelancers, continues. In exchange for dropping the motion for a restraining order, the NYT has agreed to halt its ad campaign calling on freelancers to waive their rights to compensation. In addition, the NYT's "opt-in" Web site (www.nytimes.com/freelancer) has added a sentence that better informs writers of the consequences of waiving their rights, and the site has included a link to still more information on the Authors Guild Web site (www.Authorsguild.org).
Kay Murray, general counsel and assistant director of the Authors Guild, told PW, "We recommend that writers don't waive their rights. They can lose rights to past, present and future compensation." Murray dismissed the Times's efforts to delete articles from its database: "they can't hide from the past. But we've established a dialogue and we hope it will continue."
Toby Usnik, a spokesperson for the NYT, called the agreement "a compromise over our communication with freelancers. We still maintain our 'opt-in' Web site and phone lines." But he told PW, "we're focused on the larger issue of restoring articles to the database," and said that the NYT has been in negotiations with lawyers for Tasini and the NWU "in an attempt to bring about a reasonable negotiated settlement." Usnik said that "a steady flow" of freelancers (more than 500 freelancers) had used the site so far to waive their rights.
