“The central issue on this appeal is whether newspaper publishers are entitled as a matter of law to republish in electronic databases freelance articles they have acquired for publication in their newspapers — without compensation to the authors and without their consent. In our view, they are not.”
That's the key passage in yesterday's Supreme Court of Canada judgment in the case of Heather Robertson vs The Globe & Mail. They did it. She said they had no right to. They said, sue me. She did, and the court found for her.
Most of the coverage is going to tell you this is a new-technology case, and indeed several of the judges thought it was. It's a lot more simple than that, and that sentence sums up what matters. If a work goes on selling, those who provided the value in the first place are entitled to a share of the revenue.
Those who tell you there's a public-access issue at stake here, they have another agenda they are pushing. Even if they are judges.
