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Media Freelancers’ lawsuit bolstered by high court ruling



Pulitzer Winner Fills An Open Slot as U-T

Political Cartoonist

A Supreme Court decision upholding freelancers’ electronic copyrights will likely propel a class-action lawsuit with a similar argument against the San Diego Union-Tribune and related parties, said one of the plaintiffs.

The case that had gone before court justices was filed in 1993 by Jonathan Tasini and a group of freelance writers and accused media groups of violating copyrights when companies use the freelance work online without permission.

In September, a lawsuit was filed against the Union-Tribune and online databases to which the paper sold the content, said Miriam Raftery, a local freelance writer who was one of two named plaintiffs in the suit.

When the Supreme Court consented to hear the Tasini case, the local plaintiffs put their suit on hold to await the decision.

Justices voted 7-2 on June 25 to uphold a decision made in 1999 by the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

Now that the decision has been made, both sides are still making their own decisions on how exactly to proceed.

“I can only assume that it’s a positive step,” Raftery said. “We hope that we can resolve this issue as painlessly and as positively as possible and to provide some fair compensation for writers whose copyrights were infringed upon.”

Hal Fuson, vice president and chief legal officer for the U-T’s La Jolla-based parent company, The Copley Press, Inc., said the Supreme Court’s decision left a lot of specifics unanswered , including how much money would be paid and how it would be divided. The lower courts will still have to make those decisions, Fuson noted.

Including the issues of certifying the local lawsuit as class-action, then unraveling the various questions within it, all parties involved are in for a long legal fight, he said.

It could turn out to be far more profitable for both parties’ lawyers than the freelancers, Fuson said.

Since January, the U-T has been requiring that all freelancers sign over their electronic rights when they sell their work to the paper, and that policy isn’t going to change, he said.

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Sound Bites:

The Union-Tribune, whose firing of longtime cartoonist Steve Kelley became public in May, has announced Kelley’s replacement. Steve Breen, who was previously with the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey, will begin at the paper on July 9. Breen, 31, won a Pulitzer in 1998 and has a syndicated comic strip, “Grand Avenue.” Conservative talk station KCBQ-AM has started a new feature, “My Views on the Q,” that makes daily 60-second feature commentaries available for free for qualified groups or spokespeople. Stevens Media Productions recently completed production on a corporate video for XtraCash ATM, Inc., a subsidiary of Canadian company Amicus Financial. The San Diego Press Club’s deadline for its annual “Excellence in Journalism” awards is at 5 p.m. Tuesday, July 10. The San Diego Convention Center has been booked for the Press Club’s awards banquet on Oct. 11. The Mingei International Museum recently found out a book it created to accompany a recent pottery exhibit, “Ceramics of Shimaoka Tatsuzo,” is one of two finalists in the Fine Art category of the Independent Book Publishers Book Awards.


Signings:

Locally based Marston+Marston, Inc. signed contractor and network company Chula Vista Electric Co., San Diego Workforce Partnership, San Diego Association of Realtors, the NTC Foundation and San Diego Regional Energy Office, a nonprofit energy information clearinghouse.

The deadline for the next Media & Marketing column is July 5. Rodrigues can be reached at (858) 277-6359, Ext. 107, or via e-mail at trodrigues@sdbj.com.

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