Posted on 06/14/2011 3:54:47 PM PDT by redreno
A federal judge in Las Vegas today issued a potentially devastating ruling against copyright enforcer Righthaven LLC, finding it doesn't have standing to sue over Las Vegas Review-Journal stories, that it has misled the court and threatening to impose sanctions against Righthaven.
Because he found Righthaven doesn't have standing to sue, Chief U.S. District Judge for Nevada Roger Hunt dismissed Righthaven's copyright infringement lawsuit against the Democratic Underground.
(Excerpt) Read more at vegasinc.com ...
One would think the contract itself will be enough to take Righthaven to the Nevada Bar Association. This is a company that created itself for one reason, and the LVRJ conspired to do this instead of hiring their own lawyers to sue for them.
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Can’t believe it took this long for the courts to come to this conclusion. I hope all of those that settled out of court can also sue these jerks... I’d like to hear that the Bar Association is investigating these scumbags as well.
Even the ACLU gets it right sometimes.
Bookmark.
Copyright troll Righthaven zotted by a federal judge. That’s gotta hurt!!
At least it sets a precedent.
Who knows. If had been FR first, we might have lost.
For that reason, I guess I can live with DU winning this one.
Righthaven needed to be stopped.
“So the issue of fair use remains unresolved and although Righthaven is very likely and rightly out of business, Stevens Media can pick up where they left off.”
Yeah, but Stevens Media was a contractual party to the fraud committed by Righthaven, even retaining 50% of any booty.
My guess is Stevens Media will soon be so busy fending off a whole slew of lawsuits against them that they won’t have time to sue anyone else for anything, ever. Stevens Media may be lucky to survive the legal tsunami coming their way!
bttt
This is indeed the case where Righthaven will get sued by anyone that settled with them.
The precedent is pretty straight forward. In the 1980’s Universal sued Nintendo over Donkey Kong being similar to King Kong. Unfortunately Universal, when making the 1976 version, sued to get King Kong established as a public domain IP. It was so decreed.
So when Universal went to sue Nintendo? Howard Lincoln did his homework and found this out. Now tons of companies settled with Universal that had obtained Donkey Kong licenses from Nintendo so they wouldn’t be sued under the same threat. When Nintendo won Universal ended up settling a very expensive set of legal fees from like 70 something companies that had licensed Donkey Kong that they attempted to force a bad settlement on.
The blowback from this is two fold. They lose their case and the legal matter that they’re litigating, anyone that they forced into previous settlement is going to come back at them with a vengeance.
“...DU winning this one.”
DU isn’t the only winner....freedom is, too.
For that reason, we all win!
Righthaven—the journalistic equivalent of the Westboro Baptist Church.
Righthaven was particularly abusive since the only way Righthaven could collect “damages” was an after-the-fact reassignment of copyright. If the courts had upheld this, we would have had Righthaven look-alikes crop up all over the United States.
Unfortunately, we have copyright laws dating back to the days of cold type which don't take into account the existence of mimeograph machines and photocopiers, let alone current internet practices which make it extremely easy for third parties to widely distribute the work of people without paying for it in any way. Copyright and patent laws are a legitimate part of a capitalist economy, but they were never intended to stop fair comment and criticism, which a big part of what Free Republic is all about.
Our laws have to be updated to reflect the modern reality of electronic distribution of intellectual property, whether it's music or movies or news articles and commentary. Unfortunately, that's probably going to end up being done by the court system instead of the legislative process. Since black-robed judges are not equipped to set policy, we run the risk of very bad decisions.
At least this decision seems to be a good one.
There any chance you can get your money back from these bastards?
I'll be damned. You think maybe they are showing a teensy bit of bias?
Not what one usually sees around here but bad cases make tough bedfellows (or something).
Indeed! Please Jim, sue these bastards!
Think of it as supporting the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) instead. DU is just a poster child for the concerns of the community at large. To get the job done, EFF needed to represent a naughty victim with credibility in the liberal community. But the position they take is very conservative and could well be a spark of enlightenment for some ( that standing to sue can't be auctioned off to the highest bidder, that copyright has limits, etc).
However, EFF is not a conservative organization. EFF represents a liberal perspective descended from the kind of liberalism embodied in the founding of this nation. It's just not a faux liberalism filtered through a pile of stinking socialist statist agendas...
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