A default rule applies if the parties do not agree to the contrary. These principles include the ability of the parties to vary the effect of the provisions of Article 2A, subject to certain limitations including those that relate to the obligations of good faith, diligence, reasonableness, and care. My days have been filled in the past three years with story after story of similar treatment endured by scores of writers. We are not truly free to contract, nor certainly to vary an all-rights contract. We are free in the same sense slaves are free.
Slaves can refuse to work-and be beaten or imprisoned or flee to an uncertain life with no work.
That is not freedom by any common sense standard in a civilized and moral society. I agree with this written-contract requirement, as the Court did in Tasini et al. In fact, the new uses result in entirely new anthologies or collective works in which hundreds of thousands of articles are separately filed, indexed, segmented, located, downloaded and read without written authorization from the articles' authors. Despite the intent of 1976 Act to restore and protect authors ' rights in their writings and to limit publishers' abilities to usurp authors ' rights, the written-contract requirement has been severely undermined, at least, in the Southern District of New York. The Committee should also know that similar lawsuits by photographers are pending against National Geographic, although the case has been stayed pending a ruling by the Second Circuit in the Tasini appeal.