SHARING WORRIES: Investors fear liability will hit media stocks;Court decision on free-lancers is the issue.(Brief Article)

Pensions & Investments, April, 2000 by Fulman, Ricki

Investors fear media companies in their portfolios face huge potential liabilities following a court decision over using free-lance copy on the web. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it is a copyright infringement for a publisher to put a free-lancer's work on the web or otherwise re-use or re-sell it without the free-lancer's written permission.

The landmark decision by a three-judge panel came in a case brought by the National Writers Union against The New York Times. Other defendants were Newsday Inc.; The Time Inc. Magazine Co.; Mead Data Central Corp.; and University Microfilms International. No one has put a dollar figure on how large the liabilities might be, but in the filing for a rehearing to appeal the decision, Bruce P. Keller,...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.