Posted on 07/21/2010 12:09:10 PM PDT by JerseyHighlander
| Story |
| Newspaper Enlists Startup To Police Web For Copyright Violations |
| Wendy Davis, Apr 22, 2010 07:13 PM |
As part of a copyright crackdown, a startup called Righthaven has filed five lawsuits against Web sites that allegedly lifted articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
In recent weeks, Righthaven has sued the nonprofit group NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), the association Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, real estate agent and blogger Matt Farnham, gambling site MajorWager.com and the company MoneyReign, which allegedly runs the site casinoreign.com. The lawsuits allege that the defendants reposted articles, or portions of them, from the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Righthaven asserts in court papers that it obtained exclusive rights to reproduce and distribute the newspaper's articles from its parent company, Stephens Media, owned by Las Vegas Review-Journal president Sherman Frederick. Righthaven is run by intellectual property attorney Steven Gibson, who previously brought other, unrelated cases on behalf of Stephens Media. While some newspaper executives have vocally complained about infringement online, copyright lawsuits over news items remain rare. What's more, when cases are filed, they tend to be against defendants who compete for readers, as happened when Gatehouse Media sued Boston.com or Dow Jones sued Briefing.com. The Righthaven cases, by contrast, are against companies that are not in the news business. The cases seemed to have come as a surprise to some of the defendants. Farnham, the realtor who was sued last week for allegedly posting portions of two articles to his blog, says no one ever asked him to remove the material. "I would have taken it down in a heartbeat," he says. Farnham adds that he was only trying to share items that he believed would interest people searching for real estate. "I thought it was a compliment to the paper that I wanted to get that information out," he says, adding that his posts linked back to the newspaper. "I had honest intentions."
NORML executive director Allen St. Pierre says that the site has posted portions of articles and links back to the original sources for 10 years without receiving any previous complaints from publishers. "We really are flummoxed," he said, adding that no representatives of the Las Vegas Review-Journal asked him to remove the material before suing. "Had we received a notice we would have taken it down, we would have apologized, and we would have asked them what size NORML T-shirts they wanted," he says. St. Pierre adds that NORML plans to contest the lawsuit. "We think there's a much larger principle at hand here regarding access to information," he says. He also says the organization received no income or discernible traffic from the alleged infringement. In addition, he says, NORML's news items come from another drug reform organization, MAP Inc. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act does not require content owners to send publishers takedown demands before suing unless infringing content is uploaded by third-parties. The copyright statute also provides for damages ranging from $750 to $150,000 per infringement, regardless of whether the newspapers can show they lost money as a result. That holds true even if the infringement is relatively insignificant, says Seattle-based Internet law expert Venkat Balasubramani. "There's no de minimus exception," he says. While the Web sites could attempt to argue that they made fair use of the material, doing so could be an uphill battle if the sites reprinted significant portions of the articles verbatim, without adding original commentary.
Frederick declined to comment on why Stephens Media transferred the copyrights to Righthaven or whether the company planned to do likewise for any of the other newspapers in its chain. But Righthaven's Gibson indicated that more lawsuits were on the way. "Righthaven's copyright ownership portfolio is increasing," he said. "It certainly is attuned to dealing with copyright infringement that occurs in the electronic environment." |
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In the new mass filesharing suit brought in Washington, DC, on behalf of a filmmaker, Achte/Neunte v. Does 1-2094, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Citizen, and two ACLU organizations have filed an amicus curiae brief supporting a motion by Time Warner to quash the subpoena. EFF commented: 'We've long been concerned that some attorneys would attempt to create a business by cutting corners in mass copyright lawsuits against fans, shaking settlements out of people who aren't in a position to raise legitimate defenses and becoming a category of 'copyright trolls' to rival those seen in patent law.'"
And reader ericgoldman notes a case that arguably falls under the same umbrella: "Sherman Frederick, publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, wrote a blog post declaring 'Copyright theft: We're not taking it anymore.' Apparently upset that third-party websites are republishing its stories in full, the newspaper 'grubstaked and contracted with a company called Righthaven ... a local technology company whose only job is to protect copyrighted content.' Righthaven has brought 'about 22' lawsuits on behalf of the newspaper, including lawsuits against marijuana- and gambling-related websites. Frederick hopes 'if Righthaven shows continued success, that it will find other clients looking for a solution to the theft of copyrighted material' and ends his 'editorial' (or is it an ad?) inviting other newspapers to become Righthaven customers. A couple of months back Wendy Davis of MediaPost deconstructed some of Frederick's logic gaps."
bookmark.
THE NEW FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: The right to control access to information, and the ability to suppress any discussion of the content of such information.
Seems reasonable.
I believe this is one area where they'll have trouble with their lawsuit against FR...
I don’t believe Facebook activism is generally useful, I changed my facebook image to green, and yet the Mullahs still control Iran.
However, there is a Facebook group up to spread awareness about the lvrj and RightsHavenLLC,
http://www.facebook.com/pages/stop-the-LVRJRIGHTHAVEN-witch-hunt/131089883577553?v=wall&viewas=0
The NO freedom of the press.
Do these rules only apply to right leaning sites or all sites?
PING
A business model based on the principle of guys who resell the golf balls they retrieve from dredging the water traps on golf courses after hours. Or the street hustler in my old neighborhood who sold little flags and flower bouquets that he had gathered the night before from the cemetery.
I suspect that's the main criteria ~ that the party republished substantial parts of an article without surrounding it with discussion material, and they have money.
Suing people without the means to pay the damages is, for the most part, a foolish pursuit particularly if you are a lawyer with time to spare!
Ping
Thanks for the post!
Thanks for the post!
I wonder who is funding Righthaven?
“Accordingly, in order for a copyright owner to proceed under the DMCA with ‘a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law,’ the owner must evaluate whether the material makes fair use of the copyright.”
Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/08/judge-copyright/#ixzz0uLYcojtC
Did an evaluation take place?
Why on Earth would they have a problem with this? He linked the piece to their website. It helps get publicity for them.
From the article:
Farnham adds that he was only trying to share items that he believed would interest people searching for real estate. “I thought it was a compliment to the paper that I wanted to get that information out,” he says, adding that his posts linked back to the newspaper. “I had honest intentions.”
I have never seen anything except blog postings posted here in full so why are they suing?
That is not a defense. If they publish on their own sites, they are liable to be sued. I have no sympathy if they were publishing full articles, or a significant portion of them. I do sympathize if they only posted small excerpts with links to the sources, which should fall under fair use.
Sites like FR, DU, etc., do NOT fall under this. The publishers need to send specifically-formatted DMCA takedown notices for content added by users. The DMCA is generally a bad law, and even the takedown notice provision has been abused (it needs strict minimum penalties for fraudulent notices), but in general the requirement of the notices is one of the few good things about the law. It is supposed to protect site operators from getting sued over the submissions of users; otherwise, it would be too dangerous for anyone to run a site that facilitates public discourse.
just found this article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal and posted in its entirety on Craigslist Pakistan...
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