Righthaven hit with third fair use loss over R-J material

A Kentucky man did not infringe on a copyright when he posted an entire Las Vegas Review-Journal column on a message board without authorization, a federal judge ruled today.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Philip Pro in Las Vegas on fair use grounds is the third fair use loss for Righthaven LLC, which sues over Las Vegas Review-Journal and Denver Post material. Earlier losses over Review-Journal material involved entire and partial R-J stories.

Pro today dismissed a Righthaven lawsuit against Wayne Hoehn on grounds that Righthaven lacks standing to sue over Review-Journal material, as already determined by another federal judge in Las Vegas.

Perhaps just as significantly, Pro’s ruling found Hoehn’s post of the column on the madjacksports.com site was protected by fair use as Hoehn did not profit from the post, the column was largely informational as opposed to being creative and that Righthaven presented no evidence that Hoehn’s posting of the column harmed the market for the column.

The Review-Journal column at issue, by then R-J Publisher Sherman Frederick, was called "Public employee pensions – we can’t afford them."

But Pro, in looking at the details in the amended lawsuit contract, found Righthaven still lacks standing as Stephens Media still maintains too much control over the copyrights it assigns to Righthaven. Under case law, a party filing copyright infringement suits has to have exclusive ownership of copyrights and Righthaven still doesn't have that, Pro found.

"Even assuming that the May 9, 2011, clarification (to the contract) can change the jurisdictional facts as they existed at the time of the filing of the suit, it still does not correct the deficiencies with respect to lack of standing," his ruling said. "It does not provide Righthaven with any exclusive rights necessary to bring suit."

WUH-WUH. Righthaven both didn't get what it paid for and it lost its resulting lawsuit.

Abb posted on Monday, June 20, 2011 4:15:00 PM: “Early copyright history derived from efforts by authority to control the spread of the printing press. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law IMO, the internet will eventually moot copyright altogether. The toothpaste is out of the tube.”

Careful on this one. Copyright laws and patent laws are not only an important part of the American legal system but also an important part of capitalism. If people can’t profit from their invention or their writings for a limited period of time, as specified in the Constitution, it will severely limit the profit motive for authors and inventors. Our Founding Fathers created a system that nurtured free enterprise and the original reasons for copyright and patent laws are important.

On the other hand, fair use is an important exemption from copyright law. It is absolutely essential that people who want to comment on something be able to quote enough of it to prove why they disagree, and in some cases that means the entire text. That is what is at stake here — copyright is legitimate, but abuse of copyright to prevent criticism of somebody’s ideas is totally wrong.

What Righthaven is doing is especially egregious because the operation doesn’t even suffer any “damages” until the reassignment of copyright, and it’s nothing but a sham set up by the newspaper to collect damages.

It looks like Righthaven will be destroyed by this ruling and that is a very, very good thing.

I’m late to the discussion. You probably already know this, but I just learned that the obamas and Steve Gibson of right haven all worked at the Chicago law firm at the same time. Michelle and Steve did intellectual property law.

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1144773/pg1

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