Freelance Writers’ Class Action Settlement: A Tree Falls in the Media ForestIrvin Muchnickbyline‚ Mar. 12‚ 2007Last Wednesday, at the Ceremonial Courtroom of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Lower Manhattan, the latest chapter played out in one of those important stories, involving the economic interests of major media companies, that you never seem to read or hear about. This was the oral argument hearing in an appeal by a group of freelance writers, led by myself. We’re objecting to the approval two years ago, in U.S. District Court in New York, of a massively comprehensive settlement of a set of class action cases. The consolidated case bundled claims that just about every newspaper and magazine publisher in the land, along with their electronic database company partners and licensees, had been blatantly and systematically infringing freelancers’ copyrighted works for, oh, the last 20 years or so. |