Geneva J. Anderson on 19 Jul 2000 16:26:03 -0000 |
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[Nettime-bold] Contentville.com copyright followup |
The National Writers Union yesterday submitted a letter of complaint
to
Contentville.com on behalf of its writers. Below is a copy of the letter. More information can be found at www.nwu.org.
NWU has NOT yet gotten on board with an e-petition/letter on this
topic.
geneva
anderson
--------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Brill, President Contentville.com 1230 Avenue of the Americas 16th Floor New York, New York July 17, 2000 Dear Mr. Brill: I am writing to you on behalf of National Writers Union members who have contacted us regarding what could be serious copyright infringement by Contentville.com. Contentville.com's copyright policy states that "Except for materials in the public domain, all of the content of Contentville.com is the property of Contentville.com or its content suppliers and is protected by copyright laws." Contentville.com claims that it "will block access to and/or remove any material that it believes in good faith to be copyrighted." Yet several NWU members who retain copyright to their work have reported to us that Contentville.com is using their work without permission. At least one of our members has contacted you directly and alerted you to this fact; to date, she has not received any response and her work has not been removed from your site. As you probably know, under Tasini v. New York Times, a creator's work cannot be used in another medium (i.e., electronically or on a database) without that creator?s permission. We would prefer to resolve this matter without relying on legal action. Indeed, the Union has a solution that allows publishers and aggregators to use authors? work legally: the Publishing Rights ClearingHouse (PRC). Similar to ASCAP and BMI which ensure songwriters get royalties, the PRC obtains permission from writers to license their content and then makes payment to them when their work is sold. To make use of the PRC, Contentville.com would simply enter into a collective licensing agreement with the Clearinghouse, negotiate a royalty split, send us a check on a quarterly basis, and we would then distribute payment to the writers. The National Writers Union represents more than six thousand members. Of these, there could literally be thousands whose work is being used illegally at your website, not to mention thousands of other writers. I very much hope that we can talk soon and work out an agreement whereby Contentville.com will be protected from liability and writers will be fairly compensated for their work. Please feel free to contact me or Dian Killian, the Journalism Division Organizer, to discuss this matter further. Sincerely yours, Jonathan Tasini President, National Writers Union (UAW Local 1981) cc.: Catherine Seda Copyright Agent of Contentville.com |