Posted on 08/12/2010 3:55:05 PM PDT by Kieri
Righthaven, the company "grubstaked" by the Las Vegas Review Journal, which is basically going around suing any and every site that posts any of its content, continues to up the ante in abusing copyright law. Every week, it's filing more lawsuits. We've actually been hearing from some of the sites that have been sued, and many are lawyering up to fight Righthaven, because the claims are getting increasingly ridiculous. Righthaven appears to not take into account any of the context of the pages on the sites it's suing. For example, many of the sites it's suing involve users -- not the site owners -- posting content in forums. In those cases, the site owners are almost certainly protected by the DMCA safe harbors (assuming they've set themselves up with the Copyright Office for DMCA safe harbor protections). That doesn't seem to be stopping Righthaven, though, which is making some fascinating (and blatantly wrong) legal claims.
For example, one of its recent lawsuits is against the political forum Democratic Underground, where a user (not the site owner), quoted a mere 4 paragraphs of a 34 paragraph story -- and included a link to the full story. No matter, Righthaven sued. As it does in all of these lawsuits, it's demanding $75,000. The number is carefully chosen, because it's less than what going to court will likely cost. The idea is to just get people to pay up, even if the legal claims are bogus. Beyond the $75,000, it's laughably demanding that the domain name of the site be turned over as well.
Righthaven tries to avoid the obvious DMCA safe harbor issue with the following:
"The defendants' failure to institute any proactive policies intended to address the posting by others of copyright-infringing content on the website constituted and constitutes the defendants' willful blindness to copyright infringements occurring on the website ..."
Nice theory. Too bad that nowhere in copyright law does it require service providers to have such proactive policies, and in the various lawsuits where this has been challenged (I'm looking at you, Viacom/YouTube, and you, Veoh/Universal Music) courts have pretty much laughed out loud at the suggestion that sites have any legal requirement to proactively police user generated content.
Given the fact that Righthaven seems to be suing more sites every week (it's about to crack 100, if it hasn't already), it seems like the plan is to basically just sue everyone that a Google search turns up, no matter how dubious the legal merits might be -- and hope that enough sites settle before this operation is put out of its misery. Nearly everything about this setup is questionable. The fact that it doesn't issue DMCA takedowns or alert sites before suing, while legal, can't look good in court. It suggests, quite clearly, that the copyright holder did not make use of clear tools at its disposal to "minimize" any harm. Courts generally don't like that. On top of that, suing site owners for actions of forum users won't look good either. Nor is claiming infringement on just a small snippet of a much longer article that includes clear attribution and a link back. It's difficult to see how anyone at Righthaven can legitimately claim "harm" here.
The only "good" that may come of this is that Righthaven is really doing an excellent job demonstrating what a laughingstock copyright has become.
Is anyone going to challenge these thieves in court?
For the same reason they are wanting to own Free Republic, too.
Extorted money.
This kind of thing has gone berzerk, especially with the US Copyright Group (aka DC law firm) issuing extortion letters to anyone and everyone they even *think* would have downloaded a file using a torrent. Pay $1500 and we won’t sue.
This has got to stop.
Righthaven management is now looking and saying "is there a site with any readership that we haven't sued yet? Why not? I want suits filed by morning!"
Have they heard of SCO?
It is a bunch of lawyers playing a can’t lose lottery. They throw basketfuls of darts at multiple targets and collect big for every one that hits a target while costs of threats or filings re miniscule in comparison. In the old days, before judges were men who had taken Critical Legal Studies in Law School these cases would have been disallowed and there would be no payoff. Someone would have to have a real law-based case to get a hearing. Now all the lawyers and judges are graduates of the Crit courses which teach them how to use the Law to destroy society-as-it-is and that it is right to do that. Everything is allowable and because cases are allowed into court in the first place juries believe that they are legitimate cases and treat them as such.
Would they sue the users who use the "record now, read later" options, or maybe they'd instead go after the organizations dedicated to aiding the blind who run sites that reformat internet text so that it's easier to read with that software.
Bet they have already.
The odds are good that even if the lawyers win at court against the blind folks, which is rather the history of this sort of thing, Congress will act to dispose of the problem ~ namely those law firms ~ no matter which party runs the place
Since they are doing this in a "lawyer mill" fashion, they are setting themselves up for some major "frivolous litigation" damages. Perhaps even disciplinary action. A "lawyer mill" generally has a team (usually non-lawyers) churning out form "cookie-cutter" lawsuits based on a common act. Here they seem to have a computer algorithm looking for any quotes from the Journal then if it finds one a lawsuit gets filed. The only thing the lawyer does in the initiation process is sign the pleading.
the various bars need to be able to shut down entire law firms not just disbar lawyers.
Pushback is going to be legislativly ugly.
Ping
This sounds like what the mother of Drew Brees was doing not long before she went off to the Rockies and committed suicide. She was shaking down restaurants and demanding they turn over their domain names and, basically, hoping they simply paid the litigant off and not realize she was just scamming them.
The way to get back is to countersue and INCLUDE every organization whose content is used by the Las Vegas Review Journal, as well as the Review Journal itself. Why, if FR, DU, etc. are to blame for what individual posters post then it should be concluded, by their logic, that Righthaven is suing on behalf of the AP, United Features Syndicate, etc.
At some point, someone is going to come back to the LVRJ and tell them to stop this nonsense and that’s where this will all end.
I wonder if it's possible to obtain some sort of injunction against an entity (Righthaven) that is obviously behaving in a haphazard manner.
You just posted a full text article. Better hope Righthaven doesn’t buy the rights to it...
It’s a thought.......
Is Righthaven a holding company? I did some search and all I can find is lawsuits by them. Do they have a website?
Is Righthaven a holding company? I did some search and all I can find is lawsuits by them. Do they have a website?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.