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Today I was on the former Air America Radio host Nicole Sandler’s show Radio Or Not. The podcast is here. I discussed the Righthaven predatory business practices and the disturbing lack of coverage in the blogosphere or mainstream media about it. Thanks, Nicole, for having the spine to allow me to get this story out.
I recently blogged about bottom feeding legal outfit and copyright troller Righthaven, LLC. Its March lawsuit against me has put the Blend’s existence in jeopardy – and not just this virtual political coffeehouse, but many others blogs whose proprietors who were forced to settle rather than go through a lengthy trial. (Thank you, by the way, for the kind tips in the jar over the last couple of days.)
Righthaven is suing, in a random and sloppy way, activist bloggers, non-profits and personal bloggers for violation of copyright. This includes retroactive lawsuits prior to Righthaven’s alleged holding of copyright.
The strategy of Righthaven is to sue thousands of these websites and counts on the fact that many are unfunded and will be forced to settle out of court. Most cases are being filed in a Nevada Federal Court and must be fought in this jurisdiction.
The earlier post went into great detail about Righthaven’s rise (and likely soon-to-be-fall after some rulings and revealed agreements went public last week). Even with all this news in the wind, there has been nearly utter silence about this topic – unbelievably scandalous, as this affects the relationship between blogs and traditional media, as well as U.S. Copyright Law.
I’ve received comments and emails about the possible reasons for this silence, including the hoary “it’s too complicated.” Jesus, it’s not that complicated and I’m no attorney. So to take that tired excuse off the table, I’ve constructed a visual guide to the relationships involved in Righthaven’s business model. Take a look.
Click to enlarge.
At its core, the Las Vegas Review-Journal and The Denver Post are the intere$ted parties that have worked to profit and keep their hands clean of legal efforts that, among other things, involved suing an autistic man on fixed income for thousands of dollars for publishing a widely-circulated photo of a TSA agent feeling up a passenger’s thigh. (That’s the same one I was slapped for, along with the The Drudge Report and Raw Story).
The good news (not for me, though) is that the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s work on the cases involving Stephens Media, LLC, the jig is up.
7.2 Despite any such Copyright Assignment, Stephens Media shall retain (and is hereby granted by Righthaven) an exclusive license to Exploit the Stephens Media Assigned Copyrights for any lawful purpose whatsoever and Righthaven shall have no right or license to Exploit or participate in the receipt of royalties from the Exploitation of the Stephens Media Assigned Copyrights other than the right to proceeds in association with a Recovery.
We’ll keep you posted on whether a similar arrangement was made with Media News Group is unsealed. Other than legal blogs or Righthaven Victims, it may be the only place you’ll learn anything.
8 Comments
ColoradoPols.comThe friendly, neighborhood Soapblox-powered blog that gets more unique visitors than the politics section of denverpost.com has also been a target of Dean Singleton’s and writes about it extensively.
Your posts have generated more sunlight on this… even prompting a post with the Hooligans in western NC.
You’re doing good work on this.
Electronic Frontier Foundation is involved . . .I just did a Google News search on RIGHTHAVEN and some interesting stuff comes up.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is representing some of the defendants being sued by Righthaven. Righthaven has dropped the case against the autistic blogger.
There is evidence that Righthaven may not even own some of the copyrights that it is trying to enforce.
You would think that organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union would be interested in all of this.
That Strategic Alliance Agreementseems to blow the whole thing out of the water — Righthaven, if I’m reading the situation correctly, is now open to countersuits and possibly even criminal charges.
Go for it.
right now it only applies to the Stephens Media casesWhen and if the Strategic Alliance Agreement with the Media News Group is revealed, then RH will be toast because a good number of cases involved that TSA photo.
yes, I covered the EFF’s casesand the revelation of the fraudulent claims of full copyright ownership in my other post.
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/…
ACLU relates to GovernmentThe ACLU focuses on government action or inaction that prevents exercise of constitutional rights. These cases involve private enterprise wielding the civil legal system to make money from threatening bloggers.
The EFF says“Righthaven contended that the mere hosting of any infringing material means that the entire domain name was forfeit to the copyright troll. Chief Judge Hunt rejected that claim, explaining that the “Court finds that Righthaven’s request for such relief fails as a matter of law and is dismissed.”"
“… unable to take “you’re wrong as a matter of law” for an answer, Righthaven upped the ante, and asked the Court to:
Order the surrender to Righthaven of all hardware, software, electronic media and domains, including the Domain used to store, disseminate and display the unauthorized versions of any and all copyrighted works as provided for under 17 U.S.C. § 505(b) and/or as authorized by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 64.”
So not only are they ignoring the law, they are now demanding the hardware that websites are served from! But who cares about the law when you can scare small fries into giving you every cent they have before they learn that they don’t have to! Isn’t that what frivolous lawsuits are all about?
Section 505 does not have a subsection (b), and concerns attorneys’ fees, not the surrender of domains and hardware. Righthaven has already “concede[d] that such relief is not authorized under the Copyright Act.”
“The new complaint also asserts that Righthaven holds the “exclusive rights” to Stephens Media news articles, despite the Strategic Alliance Agreement showing that Stephens Media retains these rights.”
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2…
Since when does the law have any meaning? Righthaven will simply stay ahead of the judges by continuing to file these fraudulent lawsuits, extorting money from those who don’t know that it’s all bogus, and ignoring the rulings of everyone that finds against them. There’s no stopping Righthaven because the Rule of Law does not apply to Republicans. Righthaven will keep filing these until they find some far-right-wing judge who will also ignore what the law actually says and give Righthaven the all precedent they need to continue ‘legally’.
This is how the law works, everybody.