Defendants fight back against Righthaven copyright lawsuits(DU & EFF)

[RamboLiberal]

Even as Las Vegas online copyright enforcement company Righthaven LLC continues to file new lawsuits, work appears to be piling up for its attorneys as additional defendants retain law firms to either fight back in court or represent them in settlement talks.

In what could be a showdown over Righthaven's lawsuit campaign, two attorneys for the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation have signed on to represent the Democratic Underground LLC in one of the high-profile Righthaven lawsuits.

Righthaven is a Las Vegas company that detects online infringements to Las Vegas Review-Journal stories, obtains copyrights to those stories and then sues over the retroactive infringements. At least 129 copyright infringement lawsuits had been filed through Friday. The owner of the Review-Journal has participated in the lawsuits by investing in Righthaven and providing it the copyrights at issue.

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/sep/20/defendants-fight-back-against-righthaven-copyright/

[gateley]

1. Gentle reminder - We don't have to wait for a fund drive to donate to

our "home away from home". I'm guessing some $$$ to help with legal fees would be welcome.

:hi:

[Mz Pip]

2. I really don't get

the whole "retroactive" component to this. How can you sue someone for posting something that wasn't copyrighted to begin with? And ifit's already on the Internet?

I hope Righthaven loses and has to retroactively repay everyone they shook down.

[RamboLiberal]

4. Here's something encouraging from judge

-----

Navarro in her ruling wrote: "The defendant has reasonably asserted that the plaintiff’s conduct may have constituted an implied license and that the defendant may have properly inferred that the (copyright) owner consented to the use, especially in light of the established and accepted custom of users freely and openly sharing certain information posted on the Internet."

The plaintiff's conduct the judge referred to, according to the Lewis and Roca attorneys, is that: "The Las Vegas Review-Journal offered the allegedly infringed work (story) to the world for free when it was originally published. It encouraged people to save links to the work or to send links to the work to others anywhere in the world at no cost and without restriction. The Las Vegas Review-Journal website also enables third parties to 'right click' and copy the text of articles on the site. Accordingly, based on this implied license, the allegedly infringing copy was, in fact, authorized by the Las Vegas Review-Journal and therefore, is not an infringement."

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/sep/20/righthaven-judge-review-journal-implied-license-de/

In another Righthaven case against a website that writes about skyscrapers.

And what also frosts me is the stories remain free on the LVRJ websites yet they have gotten away with getting $2.95(fee for an archived story) for each hit on the offenders website where excerpt of a story with a link to LVRJ.

And the LVRJ publisher is super arrogant on these lawsuits. IMHO his paper will be history in a few years if he refuses to keep up with how website postings actually drive readers to his miserable rag of a newspaper.

[marybourg]

8. The stories were copyrighted as soon as they were written. The copyright

belonged to the newspaper. The newspaper transferred them to Righthaven for the purpose of the suits.

[RamboLiberal]

10. Yes but actually Righthaven buys the copyright

We've noted a variety of creative defenses being tested in response to lawsuits from Righthaven. One attempt was to claim that Righthaven had no standing, because it did not hold the copyright when the actual infringement occurred. That's because the way Righthaven works is it searches for copies of parts of articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal (or the new newspapers who just signed up) and only then buys the copyright in question for the purpose of suing.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100901/13171810862.shtml

Thing is the more reputable media sources who want to protect their copyright send cease and desist letters first to offenders. Not Righthaven and LVRJ.

[derby378]

3. How about countersuing Righthaven for tortious interference?

Hey, if it could work for the tobacco companies...

[girl gone mad]

5. It seems like Righthaven could have a racket going..

by themselves posting LVRJ articles on various boards.

Am I crazy to think that?

[Mz Pip]

11. I've thought the same thing

Who's to say that whoever posted the link on DU that resulted in the lawsuit wasn't a Righthaven troll.

This really smells to me. DU gets thousands of posts everyday. How would Righthaven even know something of "theirs" was linked here?

Too many coincidences for this not to stink.

[Buns_of_Fire]

6. K&R for the Admins!

Maybe our party doesn't display any cojones, but YOU guys sure do!:patriot:

Er... Well... You know what I mean...:blush:

[donco]

7. Any chance of a defendant’s class action against righthaven?

[mzmolly]

9. Go DU!

And, thank goodness for the EFF!