Supreme Court, Freelancers' Settlement -- And Google

Here’s another nugget for connoisseurs of under-the-radar news: According to the Supreme Court website, the justices placed on the agenda of their Friday, November 14, 2008, conference a discussion of whether to grant certiorari in a case now known, mellifluously, as Reed Elsevier Inc., et al., Petitioners, v. Irvin Muchnick, et al., Respondents.

Once upon a time the case was called In re Freelance Literary Works in Electronic Databases Copyright Litigation. But that was before a slate of objectors, led by myself, challenged the terms of a global settlement of publishers’ decades of systematic infringement of the works of freelance writers. The settlement, brokered by three writers’ organizations, was approved in district court in 2005 but thrown out by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals last November.

CONTINUED in today's edition of Beyond Chron, the San Francisco online newspaper:


http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Supreme_Court_Weighs_Reviving_Freelance_Writers_Settlement_and_Google_Case_Lurks_6300.html