Righthaven Copyright Suits Are Without Value
For almost as long as any of us can remember, copyright infringement has been taking place in the deepest, darkest depths of the internet. The drudges of internet society have long been able to flaunt copyrights and repost news content from large news providers on blogs, forums, message boards, and personal sites without any fear of reprisal. But what could be done? Who would step up and save news providers from the stream of free use of valuable information that flowed like a watery, polluted metaphor?
Hope remains. Enter the recent efforts of Righthaven, LLC, a shining beacon of conviction whose goal is to stop dastardly copyright villains such as blogs, senate candidates, and small nonprofits from reproducing content stolen from The Law Vegas Review-Journal. How is the heroic Righthaven able to accomplish such valiant, commendable work? Righthaven scours the shady back-alleys of the internet looking for repostings of LVRJ articles (often by third parties on forums or in article comments), purchases rights to the content from the LVRJ, and then represents itself in a lawsuit against the infringing party.
No more will evildoers like The Hepatitus C Support Project and Senate candidtate Sharron Angle be able to deprive the innocent LVRJ of readership. Any upstanding citizen knows the morally bereft practice of reproducing content is wrong, and it matters not that the content theft probably amounts to no lost readership or profits. It matters not that many of these hoodlums even cite and link to the original source. Righthaven’s swift and righteous action of filing lawsuits without any requests to remove the offending content, nor any notice of an impending lawsuit, is the only way to bring these malfeasants to justice.
Luckily for Righthaven, the filing fee for civil suits in Nevada (Righthaven’s home base) is merely $350, and with minimal time and manpower involved in these types of suits, Righthaven is able to bring copyright crooks to their knees by the score. Surely such a valiant, grand effort deserves equally grand compensation, but being the bastion of right (surely where the name derives) that Righthaven is, they ask for no more than a standard pittance of $75,000 a suit, and typically settle for far less than this amount.
As an upstanding, blogging denizen of the internet, I suggest we follow others’ lead and take arms in this issue. Show your support by blogging, tweeting, facebooking, or whatever other internet action-verbing you may think will aid in the effort. Just make sure that when you do you avoid content from LVRJ, as you would be willingly joining the ranks of despicable lowlifes who write about and link to the work of others. Plus, you wouldn’t want to end up with a lawsuit on your hands.
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Gah! This is like “ambulance-chasing” in the IP world. These guys should be required to have FAIR USE tattooed on their foreheads.
For some reason this reminds of the TV show “Community”:
The Dean: I thought you had a degree from Columbia.
Jeff: Yes, and now I need to get one from America.
Peter:
As a law student you ought to resort to facts and law rather than emotions to persuade your readers.
A generation of Americans and others has grown up believing that simply because some content such as music can be downloaded from the internet that it is free for the taking. Since common sense and traditional rules of property ownership have not swayed this thinking, apparently the Righthavens of the world and the Recording Industry Association of America, for example, have no choice but to use litigation to protect propety interests. I have no dog in this fight except to advocate for what any creative person/business would want–the right to receive benefits from its work and production.
Snarky and sarcastic blog post aside, you do have a valid point. Copyright infringement is a serious issue, and the law should prevent infringers from profiting from the property of others. However, I think the problem here isn’t that people are actually benefitting from stealing the copyrighted work of the LVRJ, but rather that this new firm business model exists solely to profit from innocent use that should arguably be protected.
The RIAA going after music pirates makes some sense to me, but Righthaven bringing suits, without any takedown request, against people who are in some instances linking to and giving credit to original sources just doesn’t seem right. Although I suppose that what “seems right” and doesn’t is again an emotional response so you’ve got me there.
It actually costs Righthaven (aka Steve Gibson) more than $350 to file each suit. Before they can file a lawsuit in Federal District Court, they need to have a copyright certificate in hand. Since they need it much faster than the normal time it takes to process, they must pay for “Special Handling” which is now $760. So, it really costs Righthaven a bit over $1000 to tee up a case for filing. But their behavior is reminiscent of the case of Jarek Molski in California who filed hundreds of technically valid ADA cases, but has been heavily sanctioned and now banned from filing any more because they are vexatious and burdensome to the courts. To my knowledge, Righthaven never sends a take-down letter or cease and desist warning; they just file a lawsuit and scare the bejesus our of small time bloggers. My guess is the little Steve is able to bank will be used up is sanctions if he continues. Just my humble opinion. Time will tell.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by TIMOTHY O'NEILL and CCC, The IP Brief. The IP Brief said: New post, Righthaven Copyright suits are Without Value – http://tinyurl.com/29ttzat [...]
These lawsuits were without value in March and continue to be without value today. If you haven’t read the recent EFF counterclaim, please do:
http://righthavenvictims.blogspot.com/2010/09/defense-democratic-underground-fights.html
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/righthaven_v_dem/AnswerandCounterclaim.pdf
[...] Faster than you can say Rule 11 violation, Righthaven LLC, individual forum users to the growing list of litigants. [...]