DU being sued by Righthaven for copyright infringement

[sixmile]

(edited for copyright purposes-proud patriot Moderator Democratic Underground)

http://www.rfcexpress.com/lawsuit.asp?ID=62274

from the lawsuit:

RFC Case Number: C-R10-1356D
Court Case Number: 2:10-cv-01356-RLH-RJJ
File Date: Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Plaintiff: Righthaven LLC
Plaintiff Counsel: Joseph C. Chu, Steven A. Gibson, John C. Coons of Righthaven LLC
Defendant: Democratic Underground, LLC
David Allen
Cause: 17:501 Copyright Infringement
Court: Nevada District Court
Judge: Chief Judge Roger L. Hunt
Referred To: Magistrate Judge Robert J. Johnston

http://m.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/aug/10/5-more-websit... /

'Las Vegas Review-Journal Publisher Sherman Frederick likens copyright infringement of his newspaper's online content to the hypothetical theft of a classic Corvette from his front yard.

But in the real world, Frederick and his copyright enforcement partner don't appear to be making many friends among Corvette enthusiasts.

On Monday, the R-J's copyright enforcement partner, Righthaven LLC, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the owner of the www.corvetteforum.com website.

That suit, one of five federal cases filed by Righthaven on Monday in Las Vegas, listed as defendants Internet Brands Inc. of Los Angeles and Internet Brands Chief Marketing Officer Chuck Hoover.

The suit says an R-J story from June 20 called "Reid machine dwarfs Angle" was posted on the Corvette website without authorization.

The story on Nevada's U.S. Senate race appears to have been posted by a website user named "71stang99." Full credit was given to the R-J in the post, which included a link to the story on the R-J's website.

A message for comment on the lawsuit was left with Internet Brands, a publicly-traded company that posted $28.1 million in second-quarter revenue and that runs more than 100 websites.

(snip)

FromLBN:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[derby378]

1. WTF??

A long time ago, another organization I was part of received a similar order to cease and desist because we were supposedly misrepresenting copyrighted research or something like that. Our lawyer told their lawyer to pound sand. Their lawyer never bothered us again.

[Hawkeye-X]

4. That's what we pay DU for - legal issues.

I'm sure their legal eagles will be pointing out that the LBN is carefully crafted to follow the fair use law, and that the R-J a-holes are shooting from the hip and trying to snare $$ - it'll fail, and I'm hoping as a result of their idiocy, the corporation will have no choice but to liquidate their entire holdings.

Maybe DU can use Reid to lean on them to tell them to knock it off.

Hawkeye-X

[Hawkeye-X]

2. Hell, maybe by the end of this lawsuit, DU could own R-J

and turn it to a liberal newspaper for everyone!

Guess they don't understand the "fair use" law.

But most likely it'll be dismissed and encouraged to go after FreeRepublic.com which is notorious for failing to moderate their own people.

[joeybee12]

6. RJ is a right-wing rag...yeah, you're right...I'm glad those nuts running RJ

are suing...they'll lose allt he suits and go out of business...I've read worthless newspapers in my time, but the RJ takes the cake.

[virgogal]

3. Delete

[mcollins]

5. That is just crazy. nt

[RandomThoughts]

7. Nothing from DU is listed there?

[mike r]

8. Some targets of Righthaven lawsuits fighting back:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/aug/04/some-target... /

[joeybee12]

9. Good...shut the RJ down...it's crap...n/t

[Warpy]

10. This is one reason it's vitally important to post four or fewer paragraphs

as a teaser, followed by the link to the original article. I know it's frustrating to have to pare down a real gem of an article, but that's what the link is for, to take you to the whole thing along with the advertising on the site, which is how it all gets paid for.

Likely this will get tossed like others have.

In the meantime, some of us will kick in some extra dough if we have to.

On edit, it looks like R-J is an outfit that specifically trolls left of center sites for copyright infringement suits. Paying them to go away should be out of the question because they're always going to come back.

[Brother Buzz]

16. Not specifically left of center sites, Free Republic got stung too

<snip>
Free Republic was sued for copyright infringement in the 1990s by the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post in a case that was closely watched because, at the time, it wasn’t clear if copyright law applied to the nascent Internet sphere.

In 1999, a federal judge sided squarely with the newspapers, finding freerepublic.com had no “fair use” exemption to post thousands of the newspapers’ stories online so readers could comment on them.

On July 20, the freerepublic.com message board was filled with “here we go again” comments after users of the site learned it had been sued again, this time by Righthaven. In the new Righthaven case, the stories weren’t posted directly by freerepublic, but by users on its message boards.

<snip>

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/aug/04/some-target...

[liberal N proud]

18. Exactly

And those that don't should be deleted promptly.

[Subdivisions]

11. This is happening all over the Internet. And they're coming after sites like

this with a determined vengeance.

I belong to several sites whose lists of sources we can no longer link to or excerpt is steadily growing.

[FSogol]

12. Shouldn't be hard for the Admins to show that they do have policies for:

"precluding or attempting to preclude the posting by others of copyright-infringing content" and "did not institute any proactive policy of monitoring or attempting to monitor the posting by others of copyright-infringing content" and "did not institute any proactive policy of deleting or attempting to delete the posting by others of copyright-infringing content."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules.html

[KurtNYC]

13. Conrad is right: "blackball them. We (bloggers) generate a ton of back links to sites and generate t

raffic."

Lawsuit aside, their content should be blackballed. Let 'em sink.

[hobbit709]

14. Let's see now, they buy the copyright so they can go fishing for money?

I hope they lose their shirts.

[LoZoccolo]

15. This is also why people shouldn't copy the whole Tom Tommorow /This Modern World/ comics in posts.

There is no need to post the entire comic strip on DU when a link to Salon would suffice. There hasn't been any legal action so far but I don't think it should be invited; it would eat up a lot of the funds used to keep the site up.

Also, people are on shaky grounds when copying pictures of characters from the strip.

[bvar22]

19. You mean like this?

credit Tom Tomorrow
http://www.credoaction.com/comics/2010/06/sensible-libe... /

[Ignis]

28. Just like the daily toon round-up threads, right?

Strangely, no one started to bang the copyright drum until Mr. Tomorrow introduced Chuckles the Woodchuck.

Why is that, exactly?

[LoZoccolo]

29. It's just like how I pretty much only alert people who I disagree with. n/t

[Ignis]

30. Unsurprising, but refreshingly honest.

[kenny blankenship]

17. Nuisance bullshit suits, Filing for Dollars

I will contribute to DU's legal fund, when/if they post a link for it.

[slampoet]

32. In Rhode Island filing a lawsuit to squlech free speech is a felony.

Maybe this law needs to go Federal.

[seattleblue]

33. How would that solve this issue?

The copyright law is federal and you can't use "free speech" to violate it.

[Nye Bevan]

34. Oh the irony.

Passing a law to make filing a lawsuit over *anything* would itself be a horrible "squelching" of free speech. I cannot believe that such a law exists.

[dipsydoodle]

20. duplicated itself so deleted by moi.

.

[dipsydoodle]

21. Is LLC

Limited liability company ? Not sure of your terminology and acronyms over there other than sack of shit.

[sixmile]

23. Yes, LLC = Limited Liability Corporation

eom

[Blue_Tires]

22. This is so far beyond the pale i can scarcely fathom it...

Stephens Media is the #1 all-time example of the bottom-line, profit-first, hypocritical, psychotically short-sighted corporate mindset that started to infest print and broadcast journalism back in the 90s... Ten years ago my professor in J-school said these jackoffs would be the death of the industry, and he was right about that and damn near everything else...

If Stephens Media is so concerned about use of their low-quality content, then they need to make the shit subscriber-only and secure behind seven proxies...Do they *REALLY* want a war with the collective force of the online community?? Good luck with that...

Any other media conglomerates thinking of having their legal staff do the same thing, may the Gods help them...Half of the journalists from 5-6 years ago already lost their jobs or changed careers; the other half could be out of work in a matter of months.

[JDPriestly]

24. If they make their material openly available to all on the internet,

seems to me that they invite fair use of it. If you leave your Corvette out on the street with the top down and the keys sticking in the ignition for a couple of weeks, it quite likely will no longer be where you left when you return to pick it up. You have basically abandoned it.

Should people copy and post more than the permitted four paragraphs on Du? No. But who is to prevent someone from the Las Vegas newspaper from printing one of its own articles on DU and then suing. It's unlikely but possible that could happen. It is also possible that someone who is hostile to what DU stands for could post something from the Las Vegas newspaper on DU and then alert that newspaper to the copyright infringement. So, this sounds like a nuisance lawsuit.

DU is pretty careful about copyright infringement as far as I know. If you are quoting from the blog of a friend or someone who has given you permission to copy something, be sure to say so.

By the way, when my husband was teaching remedial English at the junior college level, students sometimes copies essays from the internet. It was easy to spot them. I'm saying that because we may not recognize something that as copied when it is. DU couldn't either.

It's easy to forget to source a quote. We need to be careful about it.

[Blue_Tires]

27. that's my point -- it's extortion plain and simple

if copyright was really what they cared about, then the LVRJ and their sister papers would have closed, subscriber-only sites...But then they'd lose the click-through and ad revenues since for the past few years, web content has been the only surefire revenue generator for newspapers (at least it was when I still worked at a paper 5 years ago)...

Not only that, but with this shyster casting THIS wide of a legal net on the little fish, there MUST be a whale somewhere that has linked back to their content (mega corporation, state government, celebrity, etc.) -- But they are nowhere to be found...

And under his current twisted legal definition, can't he twist it another quarter-turn and sue google if he really wanted??

Either this clown needs to be slapped down or the law has to be changed...He's doing the legal equivalent of sticking up people in poor neighborhoods

[zorahopkins]

25. So Is It A Good Thing That DU Is An LLC?

Is it a good thing that DU is a Limited Liabiity Corporation?

Doesn't that really mean that it is DU (and not the owners of the DU website) that are being sued?

Is this a time when it may a good thing that corporations are treated as "person"?

[Pavulon]

Correct. While I am not an attorney

I have an LLC I use to consult and any time I engaged in anything that could have generated liability (machine shop stuff) I always did business as the company. It had assets but not my personal stuff.

[JoeyT]

31. As far as I understand the law (and IANAL)

They can sue DU, but not Skinner.
If a company sued for a trillion dollars and won, the money could ONLY come from DU. They couldn't go after Skinner personally, even if DU couldn't cover the trillion dollar judgment.

Of course my understanding of the law should be taken with a really big grain of salt, since I thought excerpting for criticism and the like were covered by fair use. I would've also thought that a company couldn't buy the rights to a work and sue people that violated their ownership of a work before they actually owned it.

[seattleblue]

35. If the person/newspaper had the copyright they can sell it

along with all the rights that go with it. From what I can tell this is a holding company set up by the newspaper to pursue these suits. If someone counter sued and was successful the paper would be protected.

[TransitJohn]

26. The Las Vegas R-J does this to sports message boards too.

The dinosaurs have lawyered up to try to steal money from people practicing fair use.

http://www.mwcboard.com/www/forums/index.php?showtopic=...

[DailyGrind51]

36. Well, at least it wasn't "Lefthaven"!