FREELANCE RIGHTS: They're Still Hiding the 'License By Default'

NWU: ‘You Must Help Us Consummate This Historic Failure!’ http://freelancerights.blogspot.com/2005/08/nwu-you-must-help-us-consummate-this.html

Yes, folks, I've seen the collection of dross and drivel posted at the NWU website today under the headline "An Important Message from NWU President Colby and Former President Tasini." As they say in UnSettlementese, I'll be commenting "more fully later."

Basically, the NWU is panicked because claims are low, as well they should be. If the author associations don't pull off this settlement, then they'll lose their leverage for similar incompetent sellouts in the future. And what a shame that would be!

They’re Still Hiding the ‘License By Default’ http://freelancerights.blogspot.com/2005/08/theyre-still-hiding-license-by-default.html

Um, we can't, um, talk too much about this, um, but I guess I can tell you this much.

The objectors are considering hiring a team of retired Kremlinologists to help interpret today's statement by the National Writers Union president and former president (see this morning's prior post, "NWU: You Must Help Us Consummate This Historic Failure!"). We've heard that a
"director emeritus" of the CIA is looking for work.

Meanwhile, there's this. The NWU -- like all the associational plaintiffs and named plaintiffs and plaintiffs' lawyers and defendants -- is still hiding the
"license by default," the UnSettlement's killer provision.

Prez Colby and former prez Tasini say, "Ignoring the settlement is not in your interest." But much more important is what they don't say. Even if you don't file a claim, for whatever reason (including not just that you're ignoring the settlement but that you didn't understand it or you never knew about it during the short and botched notice window), the defendants are taking away your secondary rights. In perpetuity.

The Colby-Tasini contention that "as in most class action settlements for members of a court-approved class, either you make the choice or the choice will be made for you by default," is specious. This is an unprecedented abuse of the class-action system. And it will not stand.

Yo! Named Plaintiffs!
http://freelancerights.blogspot.com/2005/08/yo-named-plaintiffs.html

Today's statement by the NWU makes the extraordinary acknowledgment that the total of claims filed so far amounts to only $350,000. We don't know whether or not any or all of the named plaintiffs have yet filed their claims.

But we do know that many of these writers are in position to make off like bandits if the claim numbers remain depressed. That's because the claim awards would be increased "pro rata." In an April account of the UnSettlement in The New York Observer, named plaintiff -- and Authors Guild honcho -- James Gleick was chortling about his windfall, and the reporter was speculating (perhaps with Gleick as a background source, though he wasn't cited) that some named plaintiffs would collect in excess of $100,000.

What Gleick, and E.L. Doctorow and the others, would be giving the rest of the class in return is the giveaway in perpetuity of all the rights to our works to the hitherto chronically, systematically, willfully infringing defendants. Whether or not we filed claims.

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http://freelancerights.blogspot.com Received on Sat Aug 27 2005 - 00:15:15 GMT