Righthaven Says It Will Stop Suing Over News Excerpts

[RamboLiberal]

Source: Wired

Copyright troll Righthaven this week promised to narrow its lawsuit campaign in the face of a courtroom defeat, when a judge ruled that a real estate website made “fair use” of a newspaper article from the Las Vegas-Review Journal.

Righthaven is the lawyer-heavy company based in Las Vegas that sprang to life last spring for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that repost, or even excerpt, Las Vegas-Review Journal articles without permission. It has filed about 150 lawsuits, and settled dozens of them in its favor.

But the company reached a snag when the Realty One Group fought back, winning a summary dismissal weeks ago. A Nevada judge agreed with the real estate firm’s argument that eight of 30 sentences from a Review Journal story about the real estate market qualified as fair use of the material.

With that precedent set, Righthaven no longer plans to sue websites for posting brief excerpts of newspaper articles, the company told a different federal judge in a separate case this week. “Righthaven does not anticipate filing any future lawsuits founded upon infringements of less than 75 percent of a copyrighted work, (.pdf) regardless of the outcome of the instant litigation,” Righthaven wrote the court.



Read more: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/11/righthaven/

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Bastards should refund the money of previous settlements - but we know they won't. Glad the real estate company, DU and EFF fought back against this scumsucking bottom dweller!

[Hawkeye-X]

1. Righthaven needs to pay back the settlements, plus $75,000 in damages

and then get the fuck out of the business.

Steve Gibson needs to be investigated by the Nevada Bar for barratry and abuse of the court system and disbarred and heavily fined.

Hawkeye-X

[RamboLiberal]

2. Interesting info from Las Vegas Sun on DU case

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While Stephens Media has participated in the lawsuit campaign by having an affiliate invest in Righthaven and by assigning copyrights to Righthaven, Stephens Media says the dispute at issue is between Righthaven and the Democratic Underground and does not involve Stephens Media.

“This is a case in which a well-known company, Stephens Media, has been needlessly added as a party to a similarly needless counterclaim, despite its utter disconnection to the pertinent factual and legal issues at issue herein,” said a filing by Las Vegas attorneys Donald Campbell and J. Colby Williams of the Las Vegas law firm Campbell & Williams, which represents Stephens Media in the case. “Stephens Media’s involvement with Righthaven, as well as its involvement with this lawsuit, is limited to its role as assignor of the subject copyright. Stephens Media’s involvement with Democratic Underground is virtually non-existent.”

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Attorneys for the Democratic Underground, however, have charged Righthaven is acting as an agent for Stephens Media, that “Stephens Media is an alter ego of Righthaven” and that “any separation between them for the purposes of this lawsuit is a sham.”

Allegations against Stephens Media in the counterclaim included charges by Democratic Underground attorneys that: “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.”

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/nov/18/two-more-website-operators-face-righthaven-copyrig/

Also

Righthaven Desperately Wants Out Of Lawsuit It Filed, As It Fears Having To Pay EFF's Legal Fees


Both Paul Levy and Eric Goldman point us to the latest in the Righthaven saga. As you may recall, the EFF took on a couple Righthaven Defendants, including Democratic Underground, a site that was sued after someone posted just five sentences from an article. The EFF hit back with more than just some defenses, but with countersuits. Things were looking bad for Righthaven due to the specific details of the case and the likelihood of this being "fair use" compared to a similar case -- so Righthaven decided it wanted out. Only problem? Since EFF now has countersuits filed, Righthaven can't just drop the cases unilaterally, so now it's filed a motion begging the judge to let it drop the case that it filed in the first place.

The EFF, of course, is almost certainly pushing for legal fees to be paid by Righthaven, so a big part of the filing is about why the case should be dismissed as a total win for Democratic Underground in every way... except in that Righthaven doesn't want to pay legal fees. That, of course, would cut into its profits. Either way, for a company filing so many questionable lawsuits, it's pretty amusing to see some of its language choices, including the idea that it's doing this for the sake of "promoting judicial economy." Uh, yeah, right. You can see the entire filing after the jump, but it has all the appearances of a bunch of lawyers on the run, trying to get away from having to pay for a questionable lawsuit they filed.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101117/02595311908/righthaven-desperately-wants-out-of-lawsuit-it-filed-as-it-fears-having-to-pay-eff-s-legal-fees.shtml

[Renew Deal]

3. DU and EFF should keep their suit going and shut down Righthaven once and for all.

[RamboLiberal]

4. Read post I made above yours n/t

[Renew Deal]

5. I wonder if the pressure on Stephens forced them to scale back Righthaven

Seems that way.

[bluedigger]

6. That is a battle won.

I hope DU and EFF continue this war on frivolous lawsuits, however. You don't often get an opportunity like this, and it would be a shame not to pursue it.

[notesdev]

7. I won't be satisfied

until the owners of Righthaven LLC are facing criminal charges for conspiracy to violate civil rights under color of law (20 year sentence, btw)

[LiberalArkie]

8. Righthaven, Stephens and who knows what other Arkansas personality

Stephens Media, LLC, is a diversified media company owned by the Stephens family of Arkansas. The family owns one of the largest investment firms based outside New York City, Stephens, Inc., and operates a crude petroleum and natural gas production company, Stephens Production. Stephens Media owns more than 50 small- and medium-sized newspapers in Arkansas, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Hawaii. Its largest publication is the Las Vegas Review Journal, the largest newspaper in Nevada with a daily circulation of more than 160,000. Stephens Media also operates two news bureaus in Washington, D.C., and Little Rock, Arkansas. Stephens Media Interactive, a subsidiary, oversees the development and maintenance of web sites for the company's publications. Stephens Press, LLC, operates as the book publishing arm of Stephens Media.


Also check out

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=5707283&mesg_id=5718855

[IllinoisBirdWatcher]

9. RightHaven: such a perfect name they have

A Haven for Rightie wingnuts. Losers.

[DirkGently]

10. Good. It was legally deficient scam business model to begin with.

[Turborama]

11. So, does that mean a legal precedent has been set that 75% or less of a piece of work is fair usage?

[RamboLiberal]

12. No legal expert but I'd say it does

[boppers]

14. Nope.

17 U.S.C. § 107
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 17 U.S.C. § 106 and 17 U.S.C. § 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.
.....

I believe we're talking about the third factor.

If you cropped out, say, 25% from the edges of the Mona Lisa, and still had the face in the center, you couldn't claim it as your own original work, and you couldn't claim fair use (depending on other tests) trying to sell it... because the face itself is the most significant part of the image. (Well, the image is public domain now, but it was the first thing that came to mind.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Amount_and_substantiality

[Turborama]

15. Using that logic, we'd have to either not post anything written by someone else or take out

all the nouns, pronouns and/or verbs of each sentence (depending on the context) so that the most significant part of the text is taken out.

[boppers]

16. You have to take out the significant "art"

..or add significant commentary.

It's a complicated field.

[Warpy]

13. I'm delighted RimJob paid them off, though

I just wonder how much they took him for, although I'm sure one of his right wing sugar daddies ponied up.

Outfits like Righthaven last only as long as nobody fights back. When somebody does, they fold.