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May 2005

$18 Million Victory for Writers

Call him the $18 million man. After three years of negotiating on ASJA's behalf, former president Jim Morrison has achieved a remarkable victory for freelancers everywhere, getting an $18 million settlement to our long-running class action suit. Thanks to his efforts -- and those of representatives from the Authors Guild and National Writers Union -- writers whose stories appeared in online databases without their consent will finally enjoy a multi-million dollar payday.

The litigation began in August 2000 with cases filed by 21 freelance writers, including James Gleick, E.L. Doctorow, Letty Cottin Pogrebin and Gerald Posner, with ASJA, the Authors Guild and NWU as associational plaintiffs.

"Apparently publishers thought they could get away with putting people's work on electronic databases without paying freelancers -- but they were wrong," Jim says. "And they also claimed these rights weren't worth any money. That's not true either, since we now have an $18 million validation of just how valuable electronic rights are."

The settlement provides for three categories of payments: Those who wisely followed ASJA's advice to register their copyrights within three months of first publication will receive $1500 for each of the first 15 stories for an individual publisher, $1200 for the next 15 stories for that publisher and $875 for all subsequent stories. That's a rich reward indeed for spending $30 to register your work in a timely manner with the U.S. Copyright Office -- a process that's explained in detail on ASJA's Web site at www.asja.org/pubtips/copyrite.php.

And unless you register your stories within three months of publication, you're usually not eligible for statutory damages and attorney's fees if someone steals your stories, as I cautioned in my May 2004 president's letter, "The $150,000 Mistake Many Writers Make." However, in the settlement, writers who registered after three months will qualify for payments of $150 per story, or 12.5 percent of the original article fee, whichever is the greater.

What about writers who never registered at all? Although they normally would get nothing at all if they tried to file a copyright infringement case, the recovery provides for payments of $25 to $60 per story, depending on the original article fee.

"You may think, ‘It's only $25, why bother?' but it's very important to file claims," Jim says. "Each one only takes 30 seconds, so you could make thousands of dollars an hour by going online and making claims for all of your eligible articles. And the money you collect could pay your ASJA dues for years!"

Jim and I predict that some writers may make $5000, $10,000 or even $20,000 because they'll have so many claims in this category. To learn more about the settlement, go to www.freelancerights.com, a joint Web site set up by ASJA, the Authors Guild, and NWU. The publishers who are making payments include The New York Times, Time, Inc., The Wall Street Journal, and database companies like Dow Jones Interactive, Knight Ridder, Lexis-Nexis, and West Group.

During the lengthy negotiations, the secret weapon that helped achieve these rich results was ASJA's well-known PayCheck database, as Jim explains elsewhere in this newsletter.

"We hired economists to analyze what the electronic rights are worth, and the hammer we ultimately used to get the $18 million settlement was ASJA members' reports of what they'd been paid for these rights, since we're the only organization that collects this crucial information. That's why PayCheck is so vital -- and a real testament to the generosity of our members." Contributing to this unique resource is easy: Whenever you get a check from a publisher, just go to the PayCheck page in the members-only section of our site and take a moment to fill out the online form.

In recognition of Jim's own incredible generosity to ASJA, through his dogged commitment to seeing years of negotiations through to such a lucrative resolution, long after his own term as president ended, we'll be presenting him with a special honor at our annual conference: the 2005 ASJA Special Award for Extraordinary Service to Writers. Thanks, Jim -- you're our hero.

LISA COLLIER COOL of Pelham, New York, is president of ASJA. E-mail the president through www.asja.org/contact.php.