is 'an increasing trend to
more and more publications being owned by fewer larger and larger companies that
tend to be international media conglomerates. They are connected corporately
with an enormous array of enterprises that might be interested in secondary use
of materials'."

To get secondary rights, "the National Writers Union has created a new agency
called the Publication Rights Clearinghouse (PRC). Based on the music industry's
ASCAP [American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers], PRC will track
individual transactions and pay out royalties to writers for secondary rights
for previously used articles. For $20, freelance writers who have secondary
rights to previously published articles can enroll in PRC. These articles become
part of a PRC file that is licensed to database companies." Several companies
participate, including UnCover, both a fax reprint service and the world's
largest database of magazine and journal articles.

9.3. Multimedia Convergence

Because of computerization and communication technologies, previously distinct
information-based industries, such as printing and publishing, graphic design,
the media, sound recording and film-making, are converging into one industry.
Information is their common product.

Wilfred Kiboro, Managing Director and Chief Executive of Nation Printers and
Publishers Ltd, Kenya, made the following comments during the ILO Symposium on
Multimedia Convergence held in January 1997:

"In content creation in the multimedia environment, it is very difficult to know
who the journalist is, who the editor is, and who the technologist is that will
bring it all together. At what point will telecom workers become involved as
well as the people in television and other entities that come to create new
products? Traditionally in the print media, for instance, we had printers,
journalists, sales and marketing staff and so on, but now all of them are
working on one floor from one desk."

Journalists and editors working on-screen could go directly from text to page
make-up, which eliminated the need for rekeying and shifted preliminary
typesetting functions from the production to the editorial staff. In book
publishing, digitization has speeded up the editorial process, which used to be
sequential, by allowing the copy editor, the art editor and the layout staff to
work at the same time on the same book.

Employers try to convince us that the use of new information a