Disney sued for photocopying
In an illustration that some companies still "just don't get it" -- even if they are in a similar business -- the publisher of a faxed daily newsletter has sued the Walt Disney Co. for $2.1 million in damages.

The suit alleges that Disney knowingly made multiple photocopies of the newsletter and distributed them to its various Southern California offices, as well as to other Disney offices in the United States and Canada -- all while paying for only one $445 subscription.

The newsletter, Multimedia Wire of Bethesda, Md., was tipped to the practice by an employee in Disney's accounting offices who was annoyed that the company would "regularly pursue others for copyright infringement when its own personnel often used the work of others without permission."

The source provided Multimedia Wire Publisher Chris Sherman with the internal distribution list for the newsletter, which showed names of more than 30 executives at various offices who should receive the newsletter (along with a helpful note about a secretary to contact to get included on the list).

An article in the Washington Post about the suit stated that Disney is "legendary for vigorously cracking down on unauthorized use of it creations."

Sherman said that he had attempted to negotiate some type of arrangement with Disney, but was rebuffed, which led him to file suit.

For more information on the lawsuit, see Multimedia Wire's Web site at http://www.mmwire.com/lawsuit.html.

-- dmc

Bit bucket ...
Thirty: Dave Webb was a man of great passions -- sailboats fascinated him so much, he once started a boat chandlery. He got so excited about photography while running a camera store in his native Lansing, Mich., he hired on as a staff photographer at the Lansing State Journal (where, during his 17-year career, he won numerous awards). He was so entranced by newspaper computer technology that he put himself through the courses that Digital Equipment Corp. offered on the TMS/CMS products, which led to a job as the systems manager at the Arkansas Gazette in Little Rock in 1984. In 1986, when a start-up designed to support TMS/CMS equipment was just getting on its feet, Webb came aboard Newspaper Systems Support and Engineering Associates (Nsse) as a support manager at the company's headquarters in Carlsbad, Calif. By 1989, when display ad makeup system supplier Camex decided to get into the front-end business and buy Nsse, Webb was named business unit manager. Shortly thereafter, Camex was gobbled up by DuPont Printing and Publishing, and Webb and his partner George Sugar bought the business from DuPont, rechristening it Newspaper Systems Group. We won't even go into his fondness for bicycles and BMW motorcycles, or for his wife Edna or his three children and three grandchildren. A man of great humor (he once described the Newspaper Systems Group exhibit at NEXPO as "the booth with the short, balding, bearded fat guys"), David E. Webb died Aug. 3 at age 58 after a brief bout with liver cancer. ...

Composing room guys: At the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Michael Pearson has been named systems and technology director. Most recently a consultant, Pearson is the former information systems manager for the San Francisco Newspaper Agency, the technical operations director for the New York Daily News and the technical operations manager for the Chicago Tribune. Pearson began his career as a printer at the Houston Chronicle. ... At the Hawaii Newspaper Agency, Adam Horwitz has been named pre-press manager. Formerly the pagination manager for the San Diego Union-Tribune, Horwitz was also composing room manager at the paper and before that, had been in the composing room at the Santa Barbara News-Press. ...

Ossifers: Newly elected officers of the Atex Newspaper Users Group (Anug) include Bob Edmonston, Boston Globe, president; Randy Jessee, Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, Va., vice president (program); Dave Wagner, Seattle Times, vice president; Paul Williams, Patriot Ledger of Quincy, Mass., treasurer; Dave Hard, Philadelphia Newspapers, secretary; Lee Gagle, Toledo Blade, membership chairman; Cindy Smith, Pennysaver Corp., Yorktown Heights, N.Y., director and past president; Jim Perine, Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, director (elected); Dixie Foster, Columbus Dispatch, director (appointed); Seamus McCague, Irish Times, director (European Atex Users Group); Neil Thew, Illawarra Newspaper Holdings, director (Australasian Atex Users Group), and Paul Schulman, The Record of Hackensack, N.J., wire editor. ... At the Scitex Graphic Arts Users Association, a number of people have been elected to posts, but the only one you'd know would be Tom Cusack of the Star-Ledger of Newark; he's the organization's vice chair for the annual meeting. ... At the Society of Newspaper Design, Jim Jennings (a newspaper consultant based in Lexington, Ky.) will ascend on Jan. 1 to the role of president of the society. Newly elected officers for '96 include Neal Pattison (managing editor of New Mexico's Albuquerque Tribune), first vice president; Lynn Staley (design director of Newsweek magazine), second vice president; Ed Kohorst (design editor of the Dallas Morning News), treasurer, and Jean Moxam (assistant managing editor for art and design of the Kansas City Star), secretary. ...

Real bits: Warming my old chair at the San Francisco Examiner is David Dalton, who was recently named editorial systems director. Dalton, a longtime copy editor who also served as systems editor of the Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolina, had moved to the Bay Area to do Macintosh support for non-newspaper companies and answered an ad in the paper to become a Macintosh support person in the newsroom. But before he even started, Chris Caneles gave notice to become the director of information systems at the Fresno Bee. After a few weeks of Dalton handling everything, he was given the systems director job. (Actually, I think they threw out my chair -- which I inherited from the publisher's office when they were changing furniture in 1981 -- shortly after I left.) ... Speaking of things Hearstian, at the San Antonio News-Express, Kathy Foley has been brought in to handle the library and new technologies; Foley is the former deputy director of news research at the Washington Post. ...

Times trends: At the Los Angeles Times, S. Keating Rhoads has been named senior vice president of operations and technology. Rhoads, who previously had just operations (production and such), will bring together the three branches of Times technology -- business systems, publishing systems and editorial systems -- into one group for the first time (this means that the editorial systems people no longer report to Deputy Managing Editor Terry Schwadron). Rhoades reports to Publisher and CEO Richard Scholsberg III on systems issues and continues to report to Executive VP and General Manager EuGene Falk on operations issues. Before the Times, Rhoads was a longtime finance and operations executive at Times Mirror's Morning Call in Allentown, Pa. ...

New media mavens: At Usa Weekend, Dierck Casselman has been named digital editor; Casselman, the former assistant managing editor for design of the Detroit Free Press, has spent the last 2¢ years as professional in residence at the University of Nevada at Reno. ... Taking Casselman's place at the school will be Randy Cox, the free-lance designer who was for many years the AME for graphics and photography at the Hartford Courant. ... At McClatchy Newspapers of Sacramento, Howard Weaver has been named to a strategic planning position concentrating on electronic publishing; Weaver was the longtime, Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of the company's Anchorage Daily News in Alaska. ...

Vendor vibrations: At Atex Publishing Systems Corp. of Bedford, Mass., Keith Randall, marketing communications executive, bid adieu after an 11-year stint with the company. Randall is starting his own marketing communications firm; his first client will be Digital Equipment Corp. ... At DataTimes Corp. of Oklahoma City, the archiving and on-line database company, James Battistoni has been named president of the DataTimes Online Services division; Battistoni had been a senior executive with Houston-based Insource Technology, a consulting firm. ... At ECRM of Tewksbury, Mass., Peter Bush has been named sales manager for the Middle East (he'd handled overseas sales and support for the now-departed Hyphen Inc.), Nicole Toffier has been named sales manager for France (she'd been with Atex France for 12 years) and Michael Glanville has been named European marketing manager (based in England, Glanville formerly was with Dainippon Screen, Linotype-Paul and Crosfield Electronics). ... At Freedom System Integrators of Wichita, Kan., Jesse Stansbury has been named sales manager for the West Coast; Stansbury had been with System Integrators Inc. and Atex. ... At Gannett Media Technologies International Inc. of Cincinnati, Michael Tucker has been named product manager; Tucker had been with Cascade Systems of Andover, Mass., and previously with Information International and Camex. ... At HighWater Designs Inc. of Bedford, N.H., Tony Ford has been named vice president of sales; Ford had been the executive vice president in charge of Hyphen Inc. ... At HSC Software of Carpinteria, Calif. (it's outside Santa Barbara and it's the company that makes those cool Kai Power Tools plug-ins for Photoshop), Michael Tchong has been named vice president of marketing; Tchong was the founder and publisher of Macweek magazine and most recently ran Intersteller, a San Francisco-based consulting firm. ... At the Knight-Ridder/Tribune Photo Service in Washington, Harry Walker has been named deputy photo director; he comes from the Kansas City Star, where he worked as features photo editor. ... At Managing Editor Inc. of Jenkintown, Pa., Linda Bruce has been named director of sales and marketing (formerly her name was Linda Mosser and she had been marketing manager). Longtime MEI employee Peter Kelts has been promoted to training and support manager. And two new hires at MEI: Christine Cahill (training and support specialist) and Sharon Hamill (marketing and support specialist). ... At Monotype Systems Inc. of Rolling Meadows, Ill., three new customer support representatives have been named: Don Waddell (formerly with the Casa Grande Dispatch in Arizona and before that, Atex and Harris), Mike Burnett (formerly with Autologic, Varityper and Xerox) and Mike Rzasa (who had been with the Stuart News in Florida and before that Hell and Atex). Also at Monotype, Brad Fanshier has been promoted to graphic systems support manager (he'll handle the MGS product line) and John Phelan has been named West Coast sales representative (he'd been with Hyphen, Tegra/Varityper and Alphatype/Berthold). ...

Confabs: Graph Expo 95 will be Oct. 8-11 at McCormick Place in Chicago. More than 450 trade show exhibits in pre-press, printing and "converging technologies" will be available. Converge by calling (703) 264-7200. ... Ifra95, the European newspaper technology trade show and conference, is Oct. 9-12 in Amsterdam. Session topics include "On-line services -- what they are and what they could become," "Digital transmission of advertisements," "The printed newspaper has a future," "Computer-to-plate" and "Operating systems and the editorial department." For more information, contact Ifra in Germany at (011) {49} (61 51) 70 05-0. ... The Midwestern regional Quark XPress Users International meeting will be held Oct. 10 in Chicago (concurrent with Graph Expo). Call (603) 430-8910 for the quirks. ... The Society of Professional Journalists will have its annual convention Oct. 11-14 in St. Paul, Minn. A sample of session titles: "How to survive in journalism: a crash course in personal stress management," "Survey says: Polling fundamentals," "On-line newspapers," "Publishing under fire in a shattered world," and "Computer-assisted reporting success stories." For more info, contact SPJ at (317) 653-3333. ... "On-line publishing for magazines and newspapers" will be held Oct. 12-13 in New Orleans; call (212) 421-9410 for information. ... A conference called "How to market publishing services on the Internet" will be held Oct. 18-19 in Washington. Speakers include Frank Daniels III of NandO, Tom Mohr of the Star Tribune of Minneapolis. Barry Parr of Mercury Center and Susan Russo of Hearst New Media & Technology. For details, call (201) 256-0211. ... The Internet and World-Wide Web Information Conference is Oct. 19 in San Francisco. Topics include "Introduction to marketing on the Internet," "Understanding the basics of HTML" and "Publishing on the Internet and World-Wide Web." Check out more by calling (800) 682-5078. ... The Fall Folio Show, sponsored by Folio magazine and PRE magazine, will be Oct. 23-26 in New York. Keynote speakers are Patrick McGovern, chairman of International Data Group (PC World, etc.) and Nicholas Negroponte, director of the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With more than 150 sessions and a trade show, quite an event. Call the Cowles folks at (203) 358-9900 for the Folio facts. ... Fall Internet World '95, sponsored by MecklerMedia (publishers of Internet World magazine), is Oct. 30-Nov. 2 in Boston. Tracks on Internet publishing, Internet Web and Internet industry and commerce are promised, along with a two-day track on Internet advertising co-sponsored by Adweek magazine. Mail Meckler at iwconf@mecklermedia.com or use the old-fashioned phone at (203) 226-6967. ... Multimedia '95 -- "the future of multimedia" -- will be Nov. 5-9 in San Francisco, sponsored by ACM (the Association for Computing Machinery -- the largest computer society in the world). Topics include "Graphic design for user interfaces of multimedia and on-line products or services," "Information highway: a construction survey" and "Background for digital libraries: information retrieval and hypertext." E-mail information is available at osteller@acm.org; Web site is http://acm.org/MM95/ and the phone is (212) 626-0605. ... The Simba Online Conference '95 will be Nov. 6-7 in Washington, D.C.; call Cowles at (203) 834-0033 for details. ... #

"I did accidentally stumble into the Netscape general store. Desperate to buy something, I tried to order a T-shirt ($12). Viewed objectively this should be obscene. The web browser company goes public. The principals become zillionaires in a matter of hours. Still, they'd like me to send the $$ for a T-shirt with their logo. But, by this time, the bit was between my teeth. However, when I tried to place the order, the system was down. Impulse gone."
-- Fred Goss, What's Working in Direct Marketing, wherein Goss tries to buy something on the Internet.

From THE COLE PAPERS, October 1995, Copyright © 1995, All Rights Reserved.