Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Natl Geo copyright case decision upheld

Confessions of a Mad Librarian has a good post on the Faulkner v. National Geographic Enterprises Inc. copyright case, which was recently ruled on by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The case regards the rights of freelance writers/photographers versus those of publishers. This court and the lower court both ruled in favor of the National Geographics. Misseli writes:

The big issue appears to be context. In Tasini, the republished works of the freelancers were made available separate from the other published material (whether through web archives or aggregated databases like Lexis/Nexis and Factiva). For Faulkner, the court has found that the circumstances of the digitization AND display made the CD-ROM compilation functionally equivalent to a microfilm of the magazine and thus non-infringing.

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