Free Republic

The 18 Senators Who Approve Breaking The Internet To Protect Hollywood from the not-cool dept Last fall, we noted that the Senate Judiciary Committee had unanimously voted to approve COICA, a bill for censoring the internet as a favor to the entertainment industry. Thankfully, Senator Ron Wyden stepped up and blocked COICA from progressing. This year, COICA has been replaced by the PROTECT IP Act, which fixes some of the problems of COICA, but introduces significant other problems as well. A wide cross section of people who actually understand technology and innovation have come out against PROTECT IP as written...

Las Vegas newspaper copyright enforcement company Righthaven LLC’s standing to file lawsuits is being challenged again, this time in Colorado. Righthaven since March 2010 has filed 274 lawsuits alleging copyright infringement against website operators, bloggers and message board posters. It sues over Las Vegas Review-Journal and Denver Post material. Its standing to sue is under attack in several cases and U.S. District Judge James Mahan in Las Vegas has said that under its lawsuit contract with the Review-Journal, Righthaven does not appear to have standing to sue. Mahan has rescheduled until next month a hearing on that issue. Defense attorneys...

Spiked Telegraph Posted on April 20, 2011 by pachiguy| 1 Comment Rebuilding Japan: Hitachi’s residents put faith in ‘family’ companyThe city of Hitachi, around 90 miles from Tokyo on Japan’s Pacific coast, has a name that roughly translates as “prosperous wealth”. By Malcolm Moore and Julian Ryall 8:26PM BST 18 Apr 2011 And for the last 100 years, since the Hitachi company was founded as a division of the local copper mine, the city’s workers have been well taken care of. Today, Hitachi is Japan’s third-largest technology company, an enormous group that makes industrial machinery, consumer electronics and even nuclear power...

Hugh Pickens writes "Judge Roger Hunt has unsealed the confidential agreement between Righthaven and the Las Vegas Review-Journal that has allowed Righthaven to sue over more than 250 charities, impoverished hobby bloggers, reporters, and the newspaper's own sources, for $150,000 each in damages and forfeiture of the sites' domain names, and the contents of the agreement could end up being ruinous for Righthaven's campaign of copyright lawsuits. The problem is that Stephens Media, the company that owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal, didn't actually assign any of the rights related to copyright to Righthaven except the right to sue — and...

A federal judge in Las Vegas on Friday unsealed the agreement for prosecuting copyright infringement lawsuits between Righthaven LLC and Las Vegas Review-Journal owner Stephens Media LLC. As expected, the Jan. 18, 2010, Strategic Alliance Agreement shows the previously-confidential deal calls for Stephens Media to receive a cut of Righthaven's lawsuit proceeds, minus costs. That cut is 50 percent. Over the objections of Righthaven and Stephens Media, Chief U.S. District Judge for Nevada Roger Hunt issued an order allowing the public to see the agreement allowing for copyrights from Stephens Media to be assigned to Righthaven for lawsuit purposes.

One year ago, U.S. newspapers and broadcasters could feel confident they controlled the news content they created. It was understood that competing and special-interest websites couldn't appropriate that content and post it without authorization. When such infringements occurred, they were dealt with swiftly and effectively with a simple phone call or email. Infringing websites typically had re-posted material out of ignorance they were violating the Copyright Act and agreed to remove the material or replace it with a link to the source newspaper or broadcaster. Then along came Righthaven LLC of Las Vegas, the self-appointed protector of the newspaper industry...

An Oregon nonprofit did not infringe on copyrights when it posted without authorization an entire Las Vegas Review-Journal story on its website, a judge ruled Friday. U.S. District Judge James Mahan said during a hearing he planned to dismiss, on fair use grounds, a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against the Center for Intercultural Organizing (CIO), in Portland, Ore. The lawsuit was filed last year by Righthaven LLC of Las Vegas, the Review-Journal's copyright enforcement partner that also enforces copyrights for the Denver Post.

Righthaven founder Steve Gibson is going after copyright infringers using the murky legal definition of fair use to power a sue-first strategy. Yet with sharing tools booming online, could clicking a Like button lead to a lawsuit? Every year billions in wagers are laid down in the gambling halls of Las Vegas. Last spring, however, one local company, Righthaven LLC, started a new game by betting on the unlikeliest of entities in the local courts — print media. By aggressively suing alleged copyright infringers, Righthaven has taken the shooter position in an consequential game of craps that is sure to...

We keep hearing about it—the “all-digital future”: easier, more convenient, no need to drive to the store. Download all the content you want instantly. Thus, iTunes, OnLive, Steam, and various other services were born. But this convenience bears a steep price. In our rush to embrace the all-digital future, we’ve sacrificed fundamental property rights. Time and again, record labels, software developers, and movie studios have expressed their displeasure with physical media. The overhead is too steep. There’s too much piracy. The second-hand market is immoral and equivalent to piracy. Technophiles love to debate the merits of streaming media, but it’s...

You have to go through Google because of posting rules.

Righthaven LLC -- a bottom feeding legal outfit -- has teamed up with the Las Vegas Review-Journal to sue 'mom and pop' websites, as well as nonprofit, political action, public interest, writers, and forum board operators for copyright violations. The strategy of Righthaven is to sue hundreds and thousands of these websites and counts on the fact that many are unfunded and will be forced to "settle out of court." All cases are being filed in a Nevada Federal Court and must be fought in this jurisdiction. You are not safe from Righthaven if you are out-of-state. - How Do...

Las Vegas-based newspaper copyright enforcement company Righthaven LLC is now doing business with Media News Group and has sued a blogger for alleged copyright infringement involving a column from the Media News-owned Denver Post. An attorney for Righthaven filed the suit Thursday in federal court in Charleston, S.C. This appears to be the first lawsuit Righthaven has filed in a federal court outside of Nevada, where since March it has filed 179 copyright infringement lawsuits.

On Tuesday, US District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez of Los Angeles, effectively pulled the rug out from underneath that planned defense of an X-BOX modder, arguing that fair use is “irrelevant” to violations of section 1201(a)(1)(A) of the DMCA, under which Crippen is charged.

division of the Teamsters union has signaled it's not going to be railroaded into paying the legal fees of Las Vegas online copyright enforcement company Righthaven LLC. The Cleveland-based Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, part of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters' railroad unit, was sued for copyright infringement Oct. 12 in federal court in Las Vegas by Righthaven.

A federal judge in Las Vegas is examining whether another Righthaven online copyright infringement lawsuit should be dismissed on fair use grounds. ~~snip~~ In the meantime, U.S. District Judge James Mahan has ordered Righthaven to show cause why another of its lawsuits shouldn't be dismissed on fair use grounds. That case involves the Center for Intercultural Organizing of Portland, Ore., which was sued by Righthaven in August after an entire 33-paragraph Review-Journal story about Las Vegas immigrants from June 28 was posted on the center's website, crediting the Review-Journal. The nonprofit says it was founded by Portland-area immigrants and refugees...

The libertarian position on intellectual property that is most commonly recited is perhaps the most extreme: the outright abolition of copyright as a relic of the past. Though certainly dramatic and not without some merit, the absence of some sort of copyright protection for creators reeks a little too much of Marxist collectivism by denying, if not vilifying, the profit motive. Hence, a more prudent reconciliation between Article I and Amendment I is in order. (Snip) It is the position of this paper to favor the freedom to express any idea over the exclusive right to reproduce an expression claimed.

The libertarian position on intellectual property that is most commonly recited is perhaps the most extreme: the outright abolition of copyright as a relic of the past. Though certainly dramatic and not without some merit, the absence of some sort of copyright protection for creators reeks a little too much of Marxist collectivism by denying, if not vilifying, the profit motive. Hence, a more prudent reconciliation between Article I and Amendment I is in order. It is the purpose of this essay to articulate a standard by which to promote, through practice, an expansion of fair use, specifically as it...

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved a bill that would give the Attorney General the right to shut down websites with a court order if copyright infringement is deemed “central to the activity” of the site — regardless if the website has actually committed a crime. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) is among the most draconian laws ever considered to combat digital piracy, and contains what some have called the “nuclear option,” which would essentially allow the Attorney General to turn suspected websites “off.” COICA is the latest effort by Hollywood, the recording industry and...

Copyright troll Righthaven this week promised to narrow its lawsuit campaign in the face of a courtroom defeat, when a judge ruled that a real estate website made “fair use” of a newspaper article from the Las Vegas-Review Journal. Righthaven is the lawyer-heavy company based in Las Vegas that sprang to life last spring for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that repost, or even excerpt, Las Vegas-Review Journal articles without permission. It has filed about 150 lawsuits, and settled dozens of them in its favor. But the company reached a snag when the Realty One Group fought...

The Las Vegas Review-Journal's copyright enforcement company no longer wants to litigate one of its more controversial cases: a complaint against the big political website the Democratic Underground. Righthaven LLC on Aug. 10 sued the website after a message-board poster copied to the site four paragraphs of a 34-paragraph May 13 Review-Journal story about Republican Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle titled "Tea Party power fuels Angle." The post by Democratic Underground website user "pampango" credited the information to the Review-Journal and included a link to the rest of the story on the Review-Journal website. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)...