The man who fought The New York Times over freelancers’ rights talks about archives, money and history.

Over the weekend, Jonathan Tasini, president of the National Writers Union and lead plaintiff in the landmark electronic rights case, Tasini vs. The New York Times, gave a rousing speech at the Graphic Artists Guild annual awards dinner.

Not surprisingly, Tasini spoke about the legal rights and financial protections for freelance artists. About 10 years ago, Tasini, who has freelanced for, among others, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal, began a long and successful fight against the Times, asserting that the newspaper was usurping freelancers' rights by electronically reproducing articles without offering any additional payment. In June 2001, voting 7-2, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with him.

Since the ruling, the results have been remarkable. Almost overnight, the Times and a number of other databases also named in the lawsuit, including Lexis/Nexis, Newsday and Time Inc., began purging their files of freelance work. The result was huge gaps in electronically archived stories that had originally appeared in mainstream or alternative newspapers.

Virginia Graham, a librarian at The Philadelphia Inquirer for nearly 10 years, says that at least two or three times a month, she gets a phone call from a freelancer, once based in Philadelphia, now relocated to another city, who can't find their work within the public newspaper databases.

"They'll call me and say, 'I know I wrote it, but I can't find it,'" Graham says. "Fortunately, we usually do have their stories on our in-house database and I can find them there. But now we're being forced to be both a watchdog and the police. I think it's kinda ridiculous."

Dick Cooper, the research service manager for Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., says that because of the Tasini ruling, nearly one-third of the documents generated by freelancers for the Daily News and the Inquirer have now been removed from public view.

"The problem crops up when a reporter is on deadline, and they've asked us to find an article that may have appeared in the Times or The Washington Post," Cooper says. "Chances are you will not find those pieces. Clearly, it's a Catch-22. The benefit [of the decision] is to the individual writer because their rights of ownership have been protected. But on the larger scale, it causes a huge gap in our public memory. Every part of the public record has been taken off public view."

"I take great advantage of the Internet and I think it's great to have all that information right there," she says. "And, if I were to freelance actively again, I still wouldn't demand more money to be in an electronic archive. But, then again, I never expected to get rich as a writer -- and I guess I never will."

Update: On Oct. 24, the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia Local 10 voted 340-188 to rescind the layoffs of 10 part-time Inky editorial assistants. The ratified agreement also gives Guild members protection from pending layoffs in advertising and other company-wide improvements.