Five major organizations of writers, graphic artists and photographers have united to denounce The Boston Globe's attempt to cram an unfair contract down the throats of its loyal freelance contributors. The organizations are the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), Authors Guild, the Association of Media Photographers (ASMP) the Graphic Artists Guild and the National Writers Union.

The contract attempts to do the following:

1. Let the Globe get away with making many uses of a contributor's work while paying for it only once. This unfair practice is in direct conflict with the spirit and intent of US and international copyright laws.

2. Coerce the authors and artists into retroactively ceding to the Globe - with no additional payments - rights to work previously published in the Globe. This would enable the Globe to seize material from contributors that potentially is worth millions of dollars. It also is a desperate backdoor attempt to bypass a recent United States Appeals Court decision. The ruling known as the Tasini decision stated that publishers who made additional uses of a contributor's work without contractual permission were in violation of the copyright law. And the Globe's new contract does nothing to remove the newspaper's liabilities.

3. The coercive message continues with a "take it or leave it" demand by the Globe that contributors either sign the unfair contract as is, or never contribute to the Globe again. The spirit of give and take negotiations, as envisioned by the framers of the copyright law, has been elbowed aside by the Globe's preference for the "spirit of take."

The ASJA, Authors Guild, ASMP, NWU and the Guild, on behalf of their 18,000 members, urge the Globe to rethink its remarkably unfair and misguided contract. Professional, reliable, self-respecting artists, writers and photographers will not sign these contracts. The editorial quality that Globe readers have come to expect will suffer. The liability caused by years of wholesale usage without permission will not evaporate. It is a wrongheaded attempt to build a bridge to the 19th century. And it is shortsighted since technology now enables true, painless revenue sharing.