Advocacy AlaCarte: WHY ARE 'ASSOCIATIONAL PLAINTIFFS' IN BED WITH LEXISNEXIS?
The American Society of Journalists and Authors is an “associational plaintiff” of the $10-to-$18-million copyright class action settlement and -- perhaps not coincidentally -- the settlement’s most vocal defender. (For his part, Gerard Colby, president of another “associational plaintiff,” the National Writers Union, told the Canadian Press wire service, “I would have handled it very differently.” Wonder what that means?)
Whether ASJA, NWU, AG (Authors Guild), or any other alphabet-soup organization has any business foisting itself off as a representative of a class of plaintiffs in this lawsuit is problematic. After all, none of these entities was itself harmed by the defendant database companies and first-print publishers. These organizations are merely self-appointed advocates of writers’ rights, and their pipsqueak of a preliminary settlement is ample proof that their advocacy can be either more or less effective.
The real question is, Is it legally binding?
With respect especially to ASJA -- whose stock-in-trade is the hyping of supposed insider perks and networking opportunities for writers -- this question is far from academic. For we now know that since some time in 2004, during the planning of ASJA’s annual writers conference in New York in April 2005, ASJA has been riding LexisNexis, one of the industry’s biggest and most longstanding bad guys, as enthusiastically as Red Pollard rode Seabiscuit.
“On a Tight Deadline and Need 20,000 Premium Resources at Your Fingertips? LexisNexis AlaCarte!” gushes an advertisement on the ASJA home page (http://www.asja.org/). The click takes you to http://www.lexisnexis.com/alc106127lp/?referrer=asja_banner1_lp, where you’re invited to visit the company’s “Tech Center at the ASJA Conference for more information on a Special 2 for 1 Offer for conference attendees.”
As with so much in the smoke-and-mirrors world of ASJA, there could be less to LexisNexis AlaCarte than meets the eye. As a non-member myself, of course, I didn’t qualify for the Special 2 for 1 Offer. But I still was able to register with the service. That is to say, I provided credit card information in return for free access to LexisNexis bibliographic citations, the gateway to chronic full-text ripoffs of writers’ copyrighted works. (If you choose to order the full text of a particular article, you’re charged $3 on a pay-per-view basis.) AlaCarte is similar to the company’s other public-access product, LexisNexis by Credit Card, though AlaCarte does appear to have some superior tools, such as search by publication source, making it more like those other new popular serial infringers on web platforms, HighBeam and FindArticles.
This is not a product review, however. This is a report that an associational plaintiff has a direct business contract with a principal defendant. Moreover, the relationship dates back not only to prior to final approval of the settlement, but to months prior to the announcement of the submission to the judge of the preliminary settlement.
Obviously the settlement parties should make a full disclosure to the court without delay. I won’t hold my breath. (The deadline for filing objections to the settlement is July 15. The final “fairness hearing” is slated for July 28.)
You might think the brain surgeons at ASJA would have the discretion to recognize this blatant conflict of interest and breach of process. But then, you wouldn’t fully appreciate the mysterious culture of “the nation's leading organization of independent nonfiction writers,” whose members can be admitted only after meeting “exacting standards of professional achievement.”
Outrageous.
info@muchnick.net
http://freelancerights.muchnick.net/
http://freelancerights.blogspot.com/
Whether ASJA, NWU, AG (Authors Guild), or any other alphabet-soup organization has any business foisting itself off as a representative of a class of plaintiffs in this lawsuit is problematic. After all, none of these entities was itself harmed by the defendant database companies and first-print publishers. These organizations are merely self-appointed advocates of writers’ rights, and their pipsqueak of a preliminary settlement is ample proof that their advocacy can be either more or less effective.
The real question is, Is it legally binding?
With respect especially to ASJA -- whose stock-in-trade is the hyping of supposed insider perks and networking opportunities for writers -- this question is far from academic. For we now know that since some time in 2004, during the planning of ASJA’s annual writers conference in New York in April 2005, ASJA has been riding LexisNexis, one of the industry’s biggest and most longstanding bad guys, as enthusiastically as Red Pollard rode Seabiscuit.
“On a Tight Deadline and Need 20,000 Premium Resources at Your Fingertips? LexisNexis AlaCarte!” gushes an advertisement on the ASJA home page (http://www.asja.org/). The click takes you to http://www.lexisnexis.com/alc106127lp/?referrer=asja_banner1_lp, where you’re invited to visit the company’s “Tech Center at the ASJA Conference for more information on a Special 2 for 1 Offer for conference attendees.”
As with so much in the smoke-and-mirrors world of ASJA, there could be less to LexisNexis AlaCarte than meets the eye. As a non-member myself, of course, I didn’t qualify for the Special 2 for 1 Offer. But I still was able to register with the service. That is to say, I provided credit card information in return for free access to LexisNexis bibliographic citations, the gateway to chronic full-text ripoffs of writers’ copyrighted works. (If you choose to order the full text of a particular article, you’re charged $3 on a pay-per-view basis.) AlaCarte is similar to the company’s other public-access product, LexisNexis by Credit Card, though AlaCarte does appear to have some superior tools, such as search by publication source, making it more like those other new popular serial infringers on web platforms, HighBeam and FindArticles.
This is not a product review, however. This is a report that an associational plaintiff has a direct business contract with a principal defendant. Moreover, the relationship dates back not only to prior to final approval of the settlement, but to months prior to the announcement of the submission to the judge of the preliminary settlement.
Obviously the settlement parties should make a full disclosure to the court without delay. I won’t hold my breath. (The deadline for filing objections to the settlement is July 15. The final “fairness hearing” is slated for July 28.)
You might think the brain surgeons at ASJA would have the discretion to recognize this blatant conflict of interest and breach of process. But then, you wouldn’t fully appreciate the mysterious culture of “the nation's leading organization of independent nonfiction writers,” whose members can be admitted only after meeting “exacting standards of professional achievement.”
Outrageous.
info@muchnick.net
http://freelancerights.muchnick.net/
http://freelancerights.blogspot.com/
posted by Irv Muchnick at 7:30 AM
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