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Books by Louis Reyes Rivera
Who Pays The Cost (1978) /
This One For You (1983) /
Scattered
Scripture
Bum Rush the Page
(co-editor) /
The Bandana Republic (co-editor)
Sancocho: A Book of Nuyorican Poetry by Shaggy Flores
(edited by Louis Reyes Rivera)
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Internet Copyright Settlement Alive
NYTimes vs. Tasini Update
By
Louis Reyes Rivera
Just last month,
the U.S. Supreme Court, in an 8-0 decision, has reversed
a lower court decision regarding NY Times vs. Tasini,
in effect, upholding the $18 million proposed settlement
of a copyright infringement suit between Internet
publishers and freelance writers. Considered a landmark
case, Tasini (so named after former National Writers
Union President Jonathan Tasini and involving Newsday,
Inc., Time, Inc., and others) centered on whether or not
publishers can reuse articles, after having paid for and
published a freelance assignment in their periodicals,
by archiving and disseminating those articles on their
web page (i.e., crossing over from print to electronic
media) without permission from the authors (i.e.,
without renegotiating additional payment).
Considered a major
breakthrough for the NWU, the Supreme Court (in a 7-2
decision) had previously affirmed the copyright
privileges of freelance writers, holding that a
newspaper could not, in effect, re-license the works of
freelance journalists whose works were first
commissioned for a given periodical into that
publisher's electronic database. Subsequent to that
decision, the parties negotiated a settlement which
included a varying scale of recompense based on whether
or not the authors had actually registered their works
for copyright protection.
On the grounds that
the settlement was essentially unfair (authors whose
works had been duly registered would get much more than
those whose works had not been registered), several
groups of writer-plaintiffs objected and appealed the
settlement before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals;
in turn, that court rejected the settlement on the
grounds that the court had no jurisdiction of a suit or
settlement involving unregistered works; in so deciding,
the appeals court had placed tremendous importance
on authors registering for copyright protection.
All parties thus
affected (plaintiffs, respondents and objectors to the
settlement) joined to appeal the 2nd Circuit Court's
rejection (i.e., Reed Elsevier v. Muchnick). This
past March, the Supreme Court disagreed with the lower
court and unanimously ruled (8-0) that the settlement
was appropriate. Justice Sonia Sotomayor did not vote on
this latest development—she was the judge who had
initially heard the case in district court and held
that, based on the 1976 Copyright Act, the publishers,
in posting those articles on their web page archives,
were within their rights to do so.
Finally,
says current NWU President Larry Goldbetter, this latest
reversal “is bringing the $18 million pay day just a bit
closer for those authors who filed claims and are a part
of the settlement," adding that "a final settlement of
this case, with all of its limitations, [represents] a
victory for our union."
The case now goes to the Appellate
Court for finalization based on the merits of the
appeal.
For related
articles: Supreme Court:
Supreme Court and
National Law Journal
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Black
Tech Review
Issues
& Views on Blacks in Cyberspace
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 25 March 2010
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