Thomson Corporation's Piracy Record: Not Fit to Print in The Toronto Star, Either

BY EMAIL <lettertoed@thestar.ca>
AND FAX -- 416-869-4322

As the Thomson Corporation applies the finishing touches to its acquisition of Reuters, the record should show that, to the freelance author community, Thomson is one of the world's foremost copyright criminals. Thomson's Gale Group family of article databases, formerly known as Information Access Company, built its businesses with full knowledge that it had no right to remarket many of the works originally published by its newspaper and magazine licensors. Blissfully and arrogantly, it continued and expanded these practices even after a 2001 US Supreme Court decision, Tasini v. New York Times, definitively ruled that they were illegal.

Further, documents produced by me for a US District Court in New York establish that, as far back as 1995, Thomson/Gale executives lied to writers about the ability of their technology to track the sales of individual articles from its databases. (One was Morris Goldstein, then the division's CEO; another was Christine M. Gordon, who at last word was still senior vice president for copyright and licencing.)

I lead a slate of objectors to a 2005 copyright class action settlement, in which Thomson is one of the principal defendants, and which was negotiated by three American writers' organisations. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to rule soon on our appeal. Wisely, Canadian author groups steered clear of that terrible deal and counseled their members to opt out.

Irvin Muchnick

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Someone is jamming our comments posts with spam, so I'm going to turn on the moderator control. There hasn't been that much legit comment traffic anyway, but rest assured that everything except obvious junk will go through.

The Future of Copyright Deception at IAC/ThomsonGale/Reuters

Now that Canada's Thomson Corporation has completed its acquisition of Reuters (http://freelancerights.blogspot.com/2007/05/uber-pirate-thomson-corporation-eyes.html), Information Today's Barbara Quint reports that there will be management changes at "the ubiquitous full-text aggregator the Gale Group."

Ubiquitous indeed. Ubiquitous, omnipresent, and contemptuous of the law. According to Info Today, Ronald Schlosser, the CEO of Thomson Learning, which includes the Gale Group division, is set to retire as soon as the Thomson-Reuters merger finishes jumping through the regulatory hoops. What I want to know is whether Christine M. Gordon, Gale's senior vice president for copyright & licensing, has survived yet another reorganization. From offices in Foster City, California, and now Farmington Hills, Michicago, she has directed gross malfeasance through more administrations than J. Edgar Hoover.

For the full background, see:

"Introducing the Crimes of Thomson/Gale/Information Access Company"
http://freelancerights.blogspot.com/2005/06/introducing-crimes-of.html

"The Crimes of Thomson/Gale/Information Access Company [Part 1]"
http://freelancerights.blogspot.com/2005/06/crimes-of-thomsongaleinformation.html

"The Crimes of Thomson/Gale/Information Access Company [Part 2]"
http://freelancerights.blogspot.com/2005/06/crimes-of-thomsongaleinformation_20.html

"The Crimes of Thomson/Gale/Information Access Company [Part 3 and Final]"
http://freelancerights.blogspot.com/2005/06/crimes-of-thomsongaleinformation_21.html

"Harper's Archive Online: A Little Historical Nugget"
http://freelancerights.blogspot.com/2007/04/harpers-archive-online-little.html

Oh, By the Way, the Infringements Continue

As we await the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on the objectors' challenge of the copyright class action settlement, I get variations on two common, and related, questions.

First question: "I submitted paperwork to the claims administrator asking for my works to be taken down in return for reduced claim awards. That was in the summer of 2005. Yet here we are, nearly two years later, and my articles are still being resold without my permission on the defendants' database products. Why?"

The reason is that, during the pendency of the appeal, "business as usual" prevails. The blatant infringers of the defense group are proceeding just as they did when the cases were originally filed years ago, just as they did throughout the settlement negotiations, and just as they will continue to do until somebody stops them. They are pirating yours and others' works, again and again and again, and they are even adding to the universe of infringements, and to the number of products and applications by which they infringe, each and every hour of each and every day.

Which leads to the second question: "Why isn't anybody seeking an injunction to stop these knockoffs?"

The answer is that opt-outers can (and perhaps one day soon one of them will) seek injunctive relief. However, the rest of us are part of the technically "pending" settlement. (We objectors, of course, are also inside the settlement, for the express purpose of getting it either improved or scuttled.)

The outrage of unabated infringements, a full six years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Tasini v. Times, is one of the worst of the many black marks against "our" authors' organizations in this shabby affair.

As a matter of law, the so-called associational plaintiffs -- the Authors Guild, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the National Writers Union -- had no standing to negotiate damages on behalf of the class, for they themselves suffered no damage. They did have standing to seek an injunction -- yet the record shows that they never did so. Nor did they take any of the other steps that one normally associates with litigation, such as getting the defendants to make a formal response to the original complaint. Instead, they have spent the intervening years sitting around and jawboning. Meanwhile, the infringers went on their merry way, multiplying, accelerating, and expanding their illegal practices.

Defendants Give Appeals Court Further Assurance on Jurisdiction Issue

The objectors and the parties of the copyright class action settlement agree on one thing: The federal courts do have jurisdiction over a settlement involving holders of both registered and unregistered copyrights. (The latter have claims for which they could potentially sue, but for which they cannot actually file suit until they register with the Copyright Office.)

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has raised questions about jurisdiction, and the three-judge panel focused on it during part of the March 7 oral argument.

Last week, on May 17, defendants' lead counsel Charles Sims sent a letter informing the court that a day earlier another appellate circuit, the Ninth, affirmed the jurisdiction of non-registereds for settlement purposes in another case, Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc. and Google, Inc.

The ruling in our appeal is expected soon.

Couldn't Haven't Put it Any Better Myself

"We're not against the technology; we're just against the technology being used to lock up rights."

This is Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, in today's New York Times, talking about the organization's criticism of a new clause in Simon & Schuster's contract with authors. S&S is seeking to void the customary reversion of rights to authors when book sales trickle to near-nothingness. Under the new language, the publisher could hold off on reversion so long as there is still a threshold of traffic in newfangled print-on-demand formats.

I applaud the Authors Guild's position. I also question how it squares with its role in the sellout copyright class action settlement that our slate of objectors has appealed. Like its partners in pusillanimity, the National Writers Union and the American Society of Journalists and Authors, Aiken's group specializes in locking the barn door after the horses have escaped.

Plugola Central: WRESTLING BABYLON Featured in 'Alex Marvez's Weekly Look at Pro Wrestling'

An interview with Irvin Muchnick, author of WRESTLING BABYLON: Piledriving Tales of Drugs, Sex, Death, and Scandal, is the focus of this Friday’s syndicated column by Alex Marvez.

“Alex Marvez’s Weekly Look at Professional Wrestling” is distributed by the Scripps Howard News Service and appears regularly in the Knoxville News Sentinel, The Oklahoman, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, and other newspapers. This week’s column about WRESTLING BABYLON can be viewed online at, among other places, the site of the Rocky Mountain News at http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/other_spotlight/article/0,2777,DRMN_23960_5542743,00.html.

A fuller transcript of Marvez’s interview with Muchnick is posted at the site of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, http://www.wrestlingobserver.com/wo/news/interviews/default.asp?aID=19590.

In addition to writing the syndicated wrestling column, Marvez covers the National Football League’s Miami Dolphins for his home newspaper, the South Florida (Ft. Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel. He is the current president of the Football Writers Association of America.

WRESTLING BABYLON is the country’s bestselling wrestling book. For more information, see http://wrestlingbabylon.com. The WRESTLING BABYLON Blog is http://muchnick.net/babylon. Media inquiries: media@muchnick.net.

Uber Pirate Thomson Corporation Eyes Reuters

In a new round of media merger mania, the Thomson Corporation is seeking to take over Reuters, just as Rupert Murdoch has made an offer to buy Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal.

The former development prompted the submission of the letter below to Britain's Financial Times, which has declined to publish it.

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To freelance authors, Canada's Thomson Corporation -- now exploring the acquisition of Reuters -- is more than just a global electronic information giant; it is also one of the world's foremost copyright criminals. Thomson's Gale family of article databases, formerly known as Information Access Company, built its businesses with full knowledge that it had no right to remarket many of the works originally published by its newspaper and magazine licensors. Blissfully and arrogantly, it continued and expanded these practices even after a 2001 US Supreme Court decision, Tasini v. New York Times, definitively ruled that they were illegal.

Further, documents produced by me for a US District Court in New York establish that, as far back as 1995, Thomson/Gale executives lied to writers about the ability of their technology to track the sales of individual articles from its databases.

I lead a slate of objectors to a 2005 copyright class action settlement, in which Thomson is one of the principal defendants, and which was negotiated by three American writers' organisations. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to rule soon on our appeal.

ASJA: 'Newspapers Are Big Online.' And Your Point?

The American Society of Journalists and Authors, in the latest edition of its periodic newsletter Contracts Watch, notes an internal industry study showing that there were 3 billion page views of newspaper website pages in the first quarter of 2007.

"So when you hear how practically unimportant the web is to papers," Contracts Watch comments, "let them know their own news -- and negotiate accordingly."

Fair enough, as far it goes. What Contracts Watch leaves unanswered is why ASJA -- along with the other associational plaintiffs, the Authors Guild and the National Writers Union -- didn't "negotiate accordingly" when they struck their sellout copyright class action settlement. We're left to conclude that the organizations' raison d'etre is to huff and puff before ultimately hanging their members, and all writers, out to dry.

Contracts Watch is distributed via email and viewable at http://asja.org/cw/cw.php?id_number=87.

Our slate of objectors has appealed the approval of the class action settlement. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has taken briefs and heard arguments, and will rule in the coming weeks or months.