Senate Candidate Sued By Copyright Troll 253
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the lesson-in-the-law dept.
from the lesson-in-the-law dept.
The Iso writes "Las Vegas based company Righthaven found two articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal about Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle reprinted on her web site without permission, so it did what it always does: bought the rights to the articles from the Review-Journal and sued the alleged infringer, seeking unspecified damages."
Re:The more the better (Score:3, Interesting)
Kind of "Biting the hand that feeds you" isn't it?
I wonder what their plan is - they're irritating a politician, who actually has enough contacts and power to damage the whole enterprise of suing people for large sums of money.
TFA is not very informative. (Score:4, Interesting)
In reality, how much would this possibly have cost? A print copy (if the articles are in print only) sitting in a doctors' office might get what.. 50.. 100 reads for the single copy? People get paper copies then give them away because they're just trash.. are they going to claim 100x the cost of the print times some "assumed number of page hits" as damages? I don't see that any reasonable estimate would be worth the time nor effort of buying a copyright then suing. They must be going for millions, when actual damages may be under $5000. Mmm.. gotta love them trolls.
I'm also curious why, when the articles were discovered and there was no permission given to copy them, why the owner of the site wasn't asked to take them down? Usually this is the first course, and if they don't, then you sue for damages. Do trolls not even have 1 shred of decency?
What is the name of the person in charge? (Score:3, Interesting)
What's the name of the person in charge of Righthaven? Seems to me that there is an evil, profiteering son of a bitch in charge of this hot mess of a company.
We need to start suing his ass.
Buying rights with the purpose to sue! (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's call this a very interesting business model. Or should I say bizarre business model. Maybe one should start making a list of companies with bizarre business models, this should be on the top.
Also the Review-Journal publication should be careful to keep track of which articles they have sold off the rights, otherwise they may end up on the receiving end of a law suit.
Otoh as this troll appears to only handle Review-Journal articles, and obviously can easily buy copyrights from this journal (I can't think of many papers that are so happy to sell the copyrights on their articles - this must be a complete transfer of copyright, not just a license), it sounds like they are a related company one way or another, and basically suing on behalf of Review-Journal just under a different name.
At first I misread the headline as "patent troll". This is not too different. But at least these copyright trolls sue people that really should know better - it is after all much easier to unknowingly infringe on patents than copyrights. Copying stuff verbatim without asking permission is silly, especially when done by a public figure.
Well, Yeah (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:TFA is not very informative. (Score:3, Interesting)
Righthaven has been at this for a number of weeks. Basically, they clearly don't understand how useful people linking to the LVRJ articles are, nor do they understand the application of proper liability. As far as Righthaven is concerned, if anyone anywhere copies three words from an article and links back to the original, that's bad. Techdirt's been following the situation [techdirt.com] pretty well. This post [techdirt.com] in particular highlights how ridiculous their stance is.
Knowing this, the AP/Yahoo don't want to risk a lawsuit by enhancing the article by doing something as simple as link to the LVRJ. Of course, it's you and I who suffer.
Re:is it really copyright trolling? (Score:3, Interesting)
he openly brags about his business plan being all about extorting settlement money which the victims generally would rather pay then spend more on legal fees
That might be a pretty fatal mistake. In a lot of jurisdictions, that would qualify as barratry. Even the RIAA make an effort to maintain the pretence that they want to end infringement and get fair recompense from pirates, and they're skirting dangerously close to the edge.
I really hope they try this in Texas, where barratry is a felony.
Re:They are sociopaths (Score:4, Interesting)
Is the only solution to force them to feel exactly like their victims?
This would generally make them feel like a victim, and tend to escalation of their attacks; because to a degree, they will see it as being retaliation; for example, the person who runs around mugging people for months ends up mugged himself; from there on, he'll continue mugging people, but he'll debiliate them in one way or another--knocking them out from behind, breaking a few bones, possibly killing them (though this would require a quite robust catalyst)--to prevent retaliation.
Re:is it really copyright trolling? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, it seems pretty sensible. Righthaven was not harmed at the time of publication. They clearly looked for an infringement and then brought the harm upon themselves.
On the other hand, it could be said that the Las Vegas Review-Journal had suffered harm, and Righthaven bought the rights, thus relieving LVRJ of the harm and taking it upon themselves.
Re:is it really copyright trolling? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think for barratry the lawsuits would have to be generally without merit. These copyright infringements seem perfectly real. There might be a defence against them in cases where the copyright material has been posted in user forums. Safe harbour defence would work. But where a blogger has posted a news story from the paper, in full, and the blogger is the one being sued, then there seems nothing legally wrong with persuing them in order to extract recompense.
this is all OK (Score:1, Interesting)
It's not crazy at all. Las Vegas Review-Journal have received payment for their intellectual work without having the trouble of searching for infringers or go to court. This money allows for their living costs, thereby allowing them to continue producing intellectual property of value.
Meanwhile the infringers, who have allegedly attempted to get something for nothing, like so many on here believe is their entitlement, will have their day in court.
Capitalism has its extraneous workloads (in this case, finding infringers and prosecuting them) and under capitalism, the workload can go to the lowest bidder. Unlike socialism where it just grows exponentially until it eclipses the productive economy.
Re:Buying rights with the purpose to sue! (Score:3, Interesting)
Takedown notices are only for the DMCA, where a service provider gets safe haven from prosecution for copyright infringement by a user of his service. He can keep his safe haven, so long as he does takedowns on request from copyright holders.
This is a plain old fashioned copyright matter. The creator of a website, has herself copied someone else's article. There is no requirement for a takedown notice.
If there were, it would of course give a free pass for copyright infringement to everyone on the internet, safe in the knowledge that they can copy other people's content, and couldn't face any penalty, as they'll get a warning first and can take down at that stage. With news, or blog articles, this takedown would come after the article has served it's purpose anyway.
This action isn't a troll at all. It's how the copyright law is supposed to work.
Blame...?! (Score:2, Interesting)
An image comes to mind of an old lady erratically weaving down the road at 7mph in her Buick Roadmaster and I deliberately run out in front of her (I know, inaccurate analogy)...
What goes around comes around.... (Score:5, Interesting)
There's some deep irony here. After the Nevada primary Angle changed her website to make her seem more consistent with the mainstream values of the Republican party. The Reid campaign, sensing an opportunity, archived her old website and put it online at http://www.therealsharronangle.com/ [therealsharronangle.com] This, of course, really irked the Angle campaign who attempted to use copyright law against the Nevada state Democratic party to squash the publication of the site.
Re:The more the better (Score:3, Interesting)
Not only did she NOT advocate any armed revolution, she said so.
She may have said "I hope that's not where we're going", but she sure did sound like advocating for it as a next step if the votes don't go her party's way: http://www.nationalreview.com/battle10/243092/new-harry-reid-ad-says-angle-over-line-second-amendment-rhetoric-elizabeth-crum [nationalreview.com]
"our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government, and in fact Thomas Jefferson said it's good for a country to have a revolution every twenty years."
"They're afraid they'll have to fight for their liberty in more Second Amendment kinds of ways? That's why I look at this as almost an imperative. If we don't win at the ballot box, what will be the next step?"
What if a Democratic candidate said something like this during elections in the Bush years? Would you have given them a free pass?
Re:is it really copyright trolling? (Score:3, Interesting)
Makes no sense at all in the reasoning for copyright, which according to the Constitution is "To promote the progress of science and useful arts." However it is real useful to step on people.
Well, a number of historians have pointed out that copyright (and patent) laws have never produced such progress. Historically, they have only been used to block progress. And it's quite clear that this is usually intentional.
This is pretty much all that copyright laws can do, since "progress of science and useful arts" requires information, and the only function of copyright is to prevent distribution of information. Copyright laws never require distribution of information; they only deal with when such distribution is prohibited.
We do have examples like the GPL, which does require distribution of information (specifically the source code to software). But this isn't anything mentioned in copyright law; it's a license provided by the copyright owner of their own volition.
It's quite likely that the people who wrote that "promote the progress of science and useful arts" phrase into the US Constitution were aware of the inhibiting effect that copyright and patent law usually has on such progress. They tried to restrict the use of copyright and patent law in the US to only actions that would produce progress. But the legal system has pretty much ignored that phrase, and the US has copyright law that's just as anti-progress as in the rest of the world.
Re:is it really copyright trolling? (Score:3, Interesting)
Copyright is about my right to publish.
My right to control publication can be infringed whether or not I make a profit.
Under what circumstances does society have an interest in granting you this artificial right? Generally, the justification is that without the ability to make money off of the work, fewer works would get created, because the would-be creators (not to mention the supporting roles such as editor, QA, audio/video technician, etc) would be busy doing something else that pays the rent and keeps food on the table. The goal is not (or rather, should not be) control in and of itself.
That right, by itself, is worth something. Hence the statuatory damages.
Is it worth $250,000? Is it worth the loss to society of the ability to make full use of the work?