Seerat Sharif Chishti

BLIF15M004

Department of Library and

Information sciences
Legal Issues for News Databases

Media Librarianship
Contents
Background
Freelance copyrights
Errors, correction and legal action
Live court proceedings
The Newspaper Licensing Agency
(NLA)
Definitions
A daily or weekly publication on folded
sheets; contains news and articles and
advertisements.
OR
A typical newspaper is an aggregated
product, made up of contributions from staff
and reporters, freelance journalists, stories
from news agencies, syndicated features,
letters to the editors and so on.
Background
o Online archives of newspaper were
difficult and troublesome.
o In early ages of digital environment,
finding back issue of newspaper was a not
an easy task.
o Newspapers, preserved in public libraries,
were not easy to search and retrieve.
o Finding newspaper through BHI was also
time consuming process.
Background
o Cutting and clipping process was
considered useful for the preservation of
newspapers.
o All the processes of BHI and clipping
does not have any concerned with
copying of material
o That is why there was no concept of
copyrights.
Background
o When the contents of newspaper went under
technological change i.e from print to digital
format, libraries began to create full text of
newspapers, searchable electronic archives.
o Most libraries began to create online in
house digital text archives.
Background
o Many of the complaints were
recorded by the journalists about in
house digital text archives.
a. They have only text.
b. It was not easy to read.
Freelance copyrights

Copyright laws and understanding of contracts

is fundamental requirement for anyone
working in information management.
 The Tasini case
o In 1993, freelance writer Jonathan Tasini began
legal action against some newspaper
publishers.
o He said that publishers did not have any right
to online publish the contents of freelance
writers without their permission.
o The defense of publishers make argument that
the files held by LexisNexis was a collection of
literary work of published newspaper. And
such use was allowed.
The Tasini case
o In 2001, US supreme court gave the
case in the favor of freelance writers.
o Court’s opinion was ‘by considering
the electronic version of their
publications to be simply another
edition of the printed work, publishers
had pirated the rights of the freelancers.
The Tasini case
o In 2005, a final statement was recorded in
which a minimum $10 million and a
maximum of $18 million, less $3.8 million
for lawyer’s fees and administrative costs,
would be made available by the online
vendors and publishers to compensate
freelance writers rights has been pirated.
Errors, corrections and legal action
Errors, corrections and legal
action
o According to the amount of information
given in an average newspaper on daily
basis, a newspaper frequently involves
many errors.
o Some studies found that correction and
quality problems of today’s newspaper is as
same as the problems of newspapers in 60
years ago.
Types of errors
o Errors can be in the forms of facts or it
can be an error of identity.
o Many journalists rely on their own
archives for factual information.
o As new media such as Wikipedia are in
doubt for the factual information.
How to complaint?
o It varies from newspaper to newspaper that
how a newspapers deals with complaints
from the members of public.
o But usually there is likely to be some
dialogue between the editor an the
complainant.
o A magazine Guardian, publishes the
corrections and clarifications.
Remedies
o Remedies for correcting errors range
from publishing a letter to the editor to
printing a correction or clarification.
o Other can be involving a lawyer for
each party to reach to an agreement or a
case may be brought to court.
Role of a Librarian
o In 2003, Hansen, Paul and Neibergall found that,
in the USA, accuracy of news grows more worse
due to inconsistent applied correction policies that
can cause errors to be repeated.
o They found that there was no method to reveal and
correct inaccuracies routinely in reporting after
publication.
o It was the responsibility of the librarian to convey
any publish corrections to the online vendors.
Role of Librarian
o Librarian can also fix the correction to the
original story and resend it to the online
vendor.
o A contract was signed containing a clause in
which publisher justifies that the data is not
harmful and indemnifies the online vendor
against any action arising from the
newspaper content.
Role of Librarian
o Another role of librarian is to work as
an intermediary with the editors,
managing editor or deputies on
upcoming legal matters.
 Live court proceedings

o During live court proceedings newspapers

should not publish anything that might
prejudice the trial.
The Newspaper Licensing Agency (NLA)

o NLA is working as a collecting

agency for UK national and regional
newspaper.
eClips
o It works as online aggregators.
o eClips is a digital database of newspaper
articles aimed at the press cuttings and
media monitoring market.
o eClips was launched in March 2006.
eClips
o They directly take newspaper content from
newspaper production systems and
processed to present each article, as
originally published, in PDF along with its
image of the page showing the articles in its
original hard copy context.
o NLA is playing its major role in this regard
also benefiting the press cuttings agencies
and publishers alike.
eClips
o eClips currently provides contents
from national newspapers as well
as key regional and Scottish
national content.
Clip share
o It was launched in 2007.
o It works as a desktop research tool for newspaper
journalists and librarians.
o It delivers current and archived articles from the
London national, Scottish and regional newspapers in
the original context.
o The articles are made available as text, PDF or set in
the page as it originally appeared in print.