R-J owner faces counterclaim in copyright lawsuit campaign

Las Vegas Sun ^ | September 28, 2010 | Steve Green

[abb]

The owner of the Las Vegas Review-Journal has for the first time been hit with a counterclaim over its online copyright infringement lawsuit campaign, with attorneys for the Electronic Frontier Foundation accusing the newspaper of entering a "sham" relationship with the Review-Journal's copyright enforcement partner Righthaven LLC -- and accusing Righthaven of copyright fraud.

Attorneys for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an influential Internet freedom of speech and privacy group based in San Francisco, filed the counterclaim Monday in federal court in Las Vegas against Review-Journal owner Stephens Media as well as Righthaven.

Righthaven is a company owned by Las Vegas attorney Steven Gibson and an affiliate of Stephens Media's parent company in Arkansas.

Righthaven detects online infringements to Review-Journal stories, obtains copyrights from Stephens Media to those stories and then sues websites where the stories had been posted weeks or months earlier by webmasters or third-party message-board and forum users. Through Monday, 141 suits had been filed against defendants in the United States and Canada.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says the lawsuit campaign threatens freedom of speech on the Internet as Righthaven generally sues without first asking that infringing material be removed from websites or be replaced with links as is the standard practice in the U.S. newspaper industry.

Besides recruiting attorneys to represent Righthaven defendants for free as a public service, attorneys for the EFF are representing the Democratic Underground LLC in a Righthaven lawsuit over the posting by a message board user of four paragraphs of a 34-paragraph Review-Journal political article.

The EFF attorneys filed their counterclaim in that case Monday, raising defenses previously raised by some other defendants including fair use; unclean hands and barratry (the alleged excessive incitement of litigation); and champerty (an allegedly improper relationship between one funding and one pursuing a lawsuit).

snip

[abb]

Of interest.

[abb]

ping

[smokingfrog]

Finally.

I hope LVRJ loses bigtime.

[muawiyah]

barratry ~ goes on all the time but ordinarily lawyers and judges like to keep it out of court, otherwise the pigeons would find out.

Glad to see someone brought that up ~ bet this case gets a new judge pretty soon, and then another new one, and another, and another, etc. There are no clean hands when it comes to barratry in the legal profession.

[Slings and Arrows]

The counterattack begins.

[abb]

http://www.eff.org/

[EternalVigilance]

Of interest.

Indeed it is.

[neutrino]

I hope LVRJ loses bigtime.

Agree completely. In fact, I would love to see LVRJ wind up in chapter 7.

[Ron H.]

barratry ~ goes on all the time but ordinarily lawyers and judges like to keep it out of court, otherwise the pigeons would find out. ....

Was thinking pretty much the same thing when I saw that word in the story. Much of what goes on in these kind of lawsuits and ambulance chasing style lawsuits as well. Judges are first and foremost attorneys so they will protect their own turf and profession with a vengeance.

[peyton randolph]

“Judges are first and foremost attorneys so they will protect their own turf and profession with a vengeance.”
***
That’s a leap in logic. Most judges were not ambulance chasers. Many represented business prior to going on the bench. You’d have a point if you limited your comment to Democrat judges who disproportionately come from the ranks of academia, criminal defense, and the personal injury bar.

[Nevadan]

re: I hope LVRJ loses bigtime.

I hope it does too. What is really ironic to me is that the LVRJ is actually a decent newspaper among a vast number of fish-wrappers across the country. It is not at all like the New York Times or Washington Post and their ilk. Its editorials tend to come from a conservative/libertarian point of view. I am so often impressed with the content of many of its editorials and believe that they should have a nationwide readership. Sure, people from all over can go to the newspaper website and read the paper on-line. However, since it “violates” copyright to even show a link to a great article or commentary from the LVRJ (if I understand what is now happening) without fear of a lawsuit, these articles now end up being read only by locals. The bottom line is that these lawsuits are not really about copyright infringement so much as a new source of money for the LVRJ and their lawyers at Righthaven. The LVRJ is suffering financially, as are most newspapers across the country. At the same time Las Vegas has been flooded with ambulance chasing attorneys looking for cases. (The Yellow Pages listings of lawyers in the local telephone book are massive.) These lawsuits are all about money, pure and simple. And the people involved at Righthaven and the owners of the LVRJ don't care how much they destroy the lives of others or limit free speech on the Internet. They just want the money.

[HiTech RedNeck]

They say that politics makes strange bedfellows. Has FR looked into asking the generally libertarian EFF whether it can also be a party in the countersuit?

[2nd amendment mama]

Ping

[basil]

I love it!

Hope they bankrupt those snarky folks!

[Ron H.]

You need to hone your reading and comprehension skills. I never said that MOST judges were ambulance chasers. If you re-read my comments you would see that I said like those in the ambulance chasing field just about all (as in the majority) are practicing attorneys no matter what area of the law they practice and yes many do actively practice barratry in order to stay in business since the profession is extremely over populated and represented with hungry licensed attorneys.

While I'm no lawyer I have been exposed to them (in my charitable volunteerism work over the many years) and their profession as well as sitting judges for far too many years to not have learned a few things about their chosen professions. There are many judges who serve with distinction but there are many that don't and they are first and foremost attorneys who protect their meal tickets at most any cost IMHO, either blindly or knowingly.

[EternalVigilance]

For fun, Google some of the following keywords together:

Stephens, Inc
Warren Stephens
Jack (Jackson) Stephens
Bill Clinton
Arkansas pension funds
Werthen Bank
Arkansas Development Finance Authority
Mena
Mochtar Riadi
BCCI
Indonesia
Abdullah Taha Bakhsh
Aga Hassan Abedi

AND, there’s THIS little tidbit...

Friday, September 3, 2010
Righthaven: Obama Ties To Copyright War Deepen

http://fintandunne.blogspot.com/2010/09/righthaven-obama-ties-to-copyright-war.html

[EternalVigilance]

These lawsuits are all about money, pure and simple.

Sure looks that way on the surface. But...

No matter the original intent for the formation of Righthaven, they now have one hell of a political weapon in their hands. I notice that the growing list of victims includes more and more gun sites, for example.

And the "hmmmm..." factor has grown since a law firm which includes a close Obama friend and quarter million dollar fundraiser bought Righthaven earlier this month. Someone who recently met personally with the alleged president.

Some of the most effective long time Obama opponents have been sued, by the way.

And yet LVJR stories remain up on the White House blog (unlinked, by the way) and on Harry Reid's website. Yet they've sued Sharron Angle, not Obama and not Reid.

Just thought it interesting...

[EternalVigilance]

[muawiyah]

After taking one "company" to the cleaners in a civil suit I was still somewhat surprised that the next time their lawyers came over all the attorneys I'd come to know over the years were now "somewhere else".

I presume they meant floating upside down attached to concrete blocks in the Potomac.

This is one of the reason so many lawyers want to win at any cost. There's nothing they won't stoop to.

[Nevadan]

That is indeed very interesting. I did not know that Righthaven had been recently bought. It does seem that Righthaven is being very selective in whom they choose to sue. Yet they have also sued The Democrat Underground. What would be the motivation for suing it? Maybe it is like the ACLU taking on occasional case on Right to show how “unbiased” they are?