Defendant accuses Righthaven of misusing legal system

Even as Righthaven LLC made headlines for suing Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle last week, attorneys in another Righthaven case accused the firm of misusing the legal system to carry out its copyright infringement lawsuit campaign.

Righthaven, controlled by Las Vegas attorney Steven Gibson and the family of Arkansas investment banking billionaire Warren Stephens, has contracted with the Stephens Media LLC-owned Las Vegas Review-Journal to file copyright infringement lawsuits against 117 website owners and bloggers since March.

Random thoughts:

1. BARRATRY (it is a good concept)

2. BAD FAITH (also a useful concept)

3. The most important concept? Don’t screw around with someone with NOTHING left to lose! (especially someone also possessing a casual familiarity with belt-fed weapons)

One of the things you find out quickly when you end up in a job that requires auditing financial records of any kind is that there's always somebody coming along who thinks he's invented a new way to steal.

They're wrong!

The electronic age manifest as the internet makes this process possible ~ the "owner of a copyright" can search the net quickly and easily to see if his stuff has been copied.

20 years ago that wasn't possible unless you had access to a university level library periodicals collection. Then you could do research to see if someone was ripping off your stuff ~ easily done by hiring students.

So, why didn't this sort of thing take place? Well, for one, it was a tad cumbersome. Secondly someone had already done it and discovered that the second you take out after your audience you quickly lose that audience, and in the periodicals business, your friends ~

You also get watched more closely and one of your competitors will recognize the behavior as the sign of impending bankruptcy (or since this periodical is owned by a large financial interest with huge resources, simple liquidation and sale of the residual to some sucker).

Once your competitors know your status they'll begin reporting you to the USPS as someone who might maybe oughta probably be misrepresenting circulation figures ~ they also report that to ABC.

You lose advertisers ~ as well as subscribers ~ as word spreads of your impending dissolution.

So, there's nothing new about the Righthaven deal it's just that history has demonstrated time and again that it is UNWISE in the extreme.

Someone noted that the LVSun has some similar ownership, but they are not covering up this story ~ they are behaving the same as every other chief editor/publisher does when he detects a competitor failing.

FR needs some backup though, as long as the Demwits are in charge — I suggest compiling a search-engine-derived archive of basically identical violations of the copyright act that the plaintiffs haven’t done anything about, just to show that it’s an (possibly actionable) campaign against FR’s very existence, which it is clear that it is. Stuff removed here routinely doesn’t get removed elsewhere, and stays up for years. Either the plaintiffs are or are not interested in copyright enforcement. Thanks HAL9000.

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