Brits Weigh In Again -- UnSettlement 'Is Surrounded by Controversy'

The only decent coverage of the UnSettlement by writers’ organizations continues to be published abroad. The September issue of Freelance, the newsletter of the London Freelance branch of the National Union of Journalists in the U.K., has a new piece by Mike Holderness headlined “©laim & ©ounter ©laim” (http://media.gn.apc.org/fl/0509copy.html?i=flindex&d=2005_09). This follows up Mike’s account in the July issue, “$18M for freelances? Not enough, say some” (http://media.gn.apc.org/fl/0507copy.html?i=flindex&d=2005_07).

In his update, Mike notes that the settlement “is surrounded by controversy. As far as the Freelance can discover, the negotiations took no account of the situation of writers outside the US and Canada, though the 84-page agreement does explicitly say we can join. Separate actions by groups of Canadian writers may recover much more for them than it offers for all English-language writers, worldwide.”

Furthermore:

[I]nternational law says that all authors shall hold copyright "without formality". In some cases US law recognises that non-US authors must be treated as though we have registered. But that's not what the agreement says.