Reply #106: Las Vegas Sun Story on EFF and DU fighting back

[RamboLiberal]

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.

-----

"This case is a particularly abusive instance of a broad and aggressive strategy by Stephens Media, working in conjunction with its 'little friend' Righthaven as its front and sham representative, to seek windfall recoveries of statutory damages and to exact nuisance settlements by challenging a fair use of an excerpt of an article that Stephens Media makes freely available on the Internet, and which it encourages its users to 'Share & Save' at least 19 different ways," the EFF attorneys wrote in their counterclaim.

-----

The Democratic Underground response then charged Stephens Media has its own copyright problems, alleging: "employees of Stephens Media have cut and pasted excerpts of copyrighted materials to which Stephens Media has no license or copyright rights on multiple occasions."

-----

The Democratic Underground counterclaim also said that in another Righthaven lawsuit, Righthaven attorneys said that excerpting the first two paragraphs -- or three sentences of a 28-sentence story -- would have been fair use even though that use exceeded 10 percent of the story.

In the Democratic Underground case, five sentences or less than 10 percent of the 54-sentence story were re-posted, the attorneys said.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/sep/28/r-j-owner-faces-counterclaim-copyright-lawsuit-cam/

Also check this one out those of you that understand law & courts. Attorneys attack Review-Journal copyright suit arrangement. http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/sep/27/attorneys-attack-review-journal-copyright-suit-arr/