Freedom Press – the publishers of the U.Ks only regular anarchist (well anarchist with a capital A) newspaper are in danger of folding after having to settle a copyright claim out of court with a freelance photographer.
As well as the newspaper, Freedom run a bookshop and a publishing wing as well as providing office space on their premises for a number of radical organisations, including SolFed, Advisory Service for Squatters and Corporate Watch. Like the rest of the movement they are woefully under-resourced.
David Hoffman, the photographer, took exception to the fact that a number of his shots from the 80s and 90s were used in the book 'Beating the Fascists' – Red Action's rather one-sided account of the success of Anti Fascist Action. One photo was used as the cover shot.
Freedom are adamant that they weren't aware that the photos, supplied by the authors, were being used without permission. However as they told SchNEWS "legally we didn't have a leg to stand on". So they settled out of court for £4,000, leaving them virtually cleared out.
What is more of a mystery is why an allegedly sympathetic photojournalist would try to bankrupt an organisation like Freedom. Hoffman has form for this – going after a drugs charity earlier this year won him £10,000. It's not clear that he'll ever be paid as the charity (D.A.R.E.) went bust shortly after.
In response to the crisis and in an effort to rescue the paper – Freedom have called an emergency meeting Sunday, August 12th from 3pm at the London Action Resource Centre, 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES.