FREELANCE RIGHTS: Objection Deadline Extended

OBJECTION DEADLINE EXTENDED http://freelancerights.blogspot.com/2005/07/objection-deadline-extended.html

As expected, Judge George B. Daniels yesterday gave preliminary approval to the new-and-improved UnSettlement 2.0. As a result, there’s a new final approval schedule along with an extension for class members to object or opt out.

The events leading up to and during the hearing once again dramatize why freelance writers should, indeed, use this opportunity to object. For UnSettlement 2.0 is just as arrogant and full of baloney as UnSettlement 1.0.

DON’T WORRY YOUR PRETTY LITTLE HEADS, VERSION 2.0   http://freelancerights.blogspot.com/2005/07/dont-worry-your-pretty-little-heads.html

So what’s this “supplemental notice” all about?

“Shortly after the Court granted preliminary approval,” the plaintiff associations’ lawyers told Judge Daniels, “Plaintiffs learned for the first time that while the parties were still engaged in mediated settlement negotiations, one or more of the Database Defendants sublicensed to two new databases, Amazon.com and Highbeam Research.”

Mediator Kenneth Feinberg was summoned. The defendants “flatly refused” to improve the settlement fund. But they did agree to move from Category B to Category A all Subject Works whose copyrights were registered before the infringements by Amazon and HighBeam began, regardless of whether they were registered by the previous, and equally incoherent, settlement deadline of December 31, 2002.

This tweak is, in the first place, disingenuous. It is, in the second place, unclear. Who holds the information on whether particular infringements are C’s or B’s or new-and-improved A’s? Why, of course, the all-seeing, all-knowing claims administrator, reputed to be a distant cousin of Carnac the Magnificent.

And what about the possibility that authors of the junior Category C articles -- comprising over 90 percent, almost certainly well over 90 percent, of all the Subject Works -- will find that their claims have been reduced, perhaps even to zero, because the senior Category A and Category B already wiped out this puny $10-to-$18-million settlement fund? That possibility, which the settlement lawyers insist is remote (though without any independent supporting documentation), just got less remote.

http://www.muchnick.net HOME OF:

IRVIN MUCHNICK'S WRESTLING JOURNALISM ARCHIVE http://wrestling.muchnick.net

CRASS ACTION
Confessions of an Internet Avenger
http://crassaction.muchnick.net

FREELANCE RIGHTS
Objections to $10-to-$18-Million Copyright Class Action Settlement http://freelancerights.muchnick.net

FREELANCE RIGHTS BLOG
http://freelancerights.blogspot.com Received on Tue Aug 02 2005 - 01:05:30 GMT