• by June 26, 2001

(AP) - In a copyright battle affecting tens of thousands of articles, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that free-lance writers have online rights to their work. Some publishers prepared to quickly pull affected files off their databases.

In a 7-2 ruling, the court said the writers can control whether articles they sold for print in a regular newspaper or magazine may be reproduced in electronic form.

The court said compilation in an electronic database like Lexis-Nexis is different from other kinds of storage, such as microfilm. That means publishers must get the author's permission before posting the work online.

The case was returned to a lower court to determine what measures were needed to comply with the ruling. But within hours of the ruling, the New York Times Co. and Time Inc. said they would start deleting files from their databases to avoid any liability.

David Brown, general counsel for the Newspaper Association of America, said other newspaper publishers were likely to follow suit.

The case was filed in 1993 by free-lance writers against The New York Times, Newsday and Time Inc.

The fight went to the heart of the Internet's basic appeal _ how much information is available at the click of a computer mouse. At issue was how to treat copyright works when technological advances change the way information is available in ways neither the writer nor the publication foresaw.

Large publishers said that if they lost, they would probably remove a lot of material from electronic view rather than fight with writers over permission and fees.

The case turned on whether electronic reproduction of a newspaper or periodical constitutes a revision of the original print edition. Under copyright law, publishers do not need authors' permission to produce a revised version of the original edition.

The case largely affects articles, photographs and illustrations produced a decade or so ago, before free-lance contracts provided for the material's electronic use.

While the court handed a clear victory to writers, questions remain about how the ruling will be implemented. The judges suggested that the two sides may be able to reach a settlement or that Congress could pass a law covering the issue.

"What follows now is a series of business decisions," said David Korzenik, a media lawyer at the New York firm of Miller & Korzenik. "Right now, the decision presents a tremendous practical problem for everyone. The publishers have no one place to go to get the rights to these works."

Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., chairman of The New York Times, said the company would soon begin "the difficult and sad process of removing significant portions from its electronic historical archive."

A company spokeswoman said more than 100,000 articles would be deleted, mainly features from the travel, book review and magazine sections.

Jonathan Tasini, president of the National Writers Union, the main plaintiff in the case, dismissed the publishers' argument that it would be too difficult to make an agreement that would apply to all free-lancers. His group is trying to assemble a clearing-house operation for those rights.

"It's a very typical thing for two parties in a position like this to negotiate a class settlement," Tasini said. "I find it saddening that they would take this position. These kinds of statements show that we are not partners - we are only partners when it's good for them."

The case is New York Times v. Tasini, 00-201.

- The Associated Press