According to the Washington Times:
This case was brought in 1993 by six free-lancers, led by Jonathan Tasini, president of the National Writers Union, against Lexis/Nexis, the New York Times, Newsday, Sports Illustrated and University Microfilms.
They are contending that the federal Copyright Act requires newspapers and magazines to obtain permission from authors each time they republish articles beyond later editions of the same issue.
A trial judge who initially heard their case ruled for the companies and against the writers.
Later, a lower appellate federal court ruled for the writers, reversing the original court's decision.
The companies have appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the writers' position would require them to destroy decades of articles that have been stored electronically, on the Internet and elsewhere.
The publishers contend that "some 100,000 articles may have to be permanently deleted at an enormous cost and investment of time" and that CD-ROM collections might have to be recalled.
Their attorney, Harvard professor Laurence Tribe, said that would be "disastrous for the nation's libraries, academic institutions and publishers."
Filing a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the companies were historians Ken Burns and Doris Kearns Goodwin.
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