[lbo-talk] Bush loses Bob Woodward

[Jerry Monaco]

On 9/30/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sep 29, 2006, at 8:08 PM, Jerry Monaco wrote:
>
> > The case was a copyright case....  and it was called  Harper and
> > Row v. Nation Enterprises 471 U.S. 539 (1985), if any one is
> > interested.
> >
> > What Harper hit the Nation for was extensive quotation of the book
> > and thus they claimed that the Nation violated their copyright.
>
> Ok, right, but as I recall Harper was pissed off that The Nation had
> broken an embargo. It was a commercial dispute that took the form of
> a copyright complaint. Lemme email Victor Navasky for a comment.
>
> Doug

Yes, Victor will tell you that Harper & Row would not have sued if they
weren't angry in the first place.  The point is that they would not have
grounds for a suit without extensive quotations and violation of
copyright.  Publishing companies can't enforce embargoes except against the
booksellers with whom they have a contract.

It was a bad decision in my opinion but that is "intellectual" "property"
for you.

The other point is that the New York Times was careful not to quote
extensively from the Woodward book and thus there would be no grounds for a
legal case against the NYT as far as I can see.

What ever civil action would have to take place between the publishing
company and what ever bookseller violated the contract that specifies the
embargo.

All that I am saying is that, as far as the NY Times is concerned no laws
were broken.  As far as the original Harper v. Nation case is concerned,
Harper fought the case so that embargoes such as this could be enforceable
in some way.  Since even the NY Times doesn't quote from a books extensively
when they are in "prepublication" I would say that the publishing companies
"won" that right.

I wasn't correcting you just explaining the history.

Jerry
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