Catherwood LibraryILR School

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday in a 7-2 decision that a group of newspaper and magazine publishers couldn’t infringe on the copyrights of freelance writers by publishing their articles in electronic databases without consent. In her majority opinion, Justice Ginsburg reasoned that calling up individual articles on a computer divorces it from its original context, and therefore does not constitute a re-printable “revision” under the Copyright Act of 1976. While the National Writers Union, the lead plaintiff, is pleased with the decision, the chairman of the New York Times Company regrets that the company will have to remove “significant portions from its electronic historical archive.”