Slashdot Mirror
Senate Candidate Sued By Copyright Troll
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."
Now we just need a Paul Allen to step up and sue a senator for patent infringement, and maybe we'll get an ear in the Senate to put a stop to this craziness.
Hopefully Righthaven finds more politicians to sue. Lots more. Then maybe - just maybe - will we get some consumer friendly copyright laws. In this case it would appear that Sharron Angle is indeed guilty of willful infringement, but if more politicians get hurt in their own pocket by copyright suits then the chance of them creating laws that states that damages must fit the crime may actually come into effect. That would kill the business model behind the *IAA cartel suits.
Meus subcriptio est nocens Latin quoniam bardus populus reputo is sanus callidus
I like to think that what I do at my job benefits other people. How can someone work a job where they harass people into giving them money, and nothing they do could possibly help anyone but themselves. Lawyers who file suits like these have the same effect on society as people who steal for a living. The only difference is they can't get arrested.
Its copyright trolling at its best. There are several amusing parts to this story. The smug smile on the Righthaven CEOs Steve Gibsons (new Darl?) face as 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 and not being interested in ending infringements, on the contrary, the more infringements the better. The legally dubious tactic of not sending takedown notices or but going straight to the lawsuit, demanding $150,000 and then settling for a much smaller amount. Also, the fact that the Review Journal is generally seen as a newspaper with conservative/libertarian bias and it strongly endorsed Sharron Angle, and now (through Righthaven) is suing her for posting two articles which praised her on her website.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
This whole goddam thing has gotten out of hand. The U.S. has become far too litigious--it's not even a matter of suing for stuff you made anymore; suing for something that someone else made (wrote, in this case), and being able to do so simply because you gave them a few bucks for the rights to it...just ridiculous.
Honestly, if there's anyone who really, truly believes--on their own, not because a few pushy groups with money to finance campaigns--that the current system is the way things should be, then this country has really gone tits-up. Are there ways that some of these abuses could be curbed? Sure, there are; but it should not be, by any stretch of the imagination, be necessary. There is no way anyone with a hand in copyright law before this generation would have wanted this type of bullshit.
To summarize, the extent of copyright should be to protect your work from other people making a profit off of it; if no one else is making money (DIRECTLY) off of it, then STFU, you're not losing anything you wouldn't have already not gotten already; if they are, then you get a) a nice injuction, and b) the sum total of what they made off of it (that you should have)...and maybe attorney's fees. And if you didn't make it, but you acquired the rights to it later, then STFU about anyone having used it before you had the rights; if the original owners didn't care, then you shouldn't either.
I don't post AC. I like my -1, Flamebaits. Trump/Sheen 2012 on the Batshit Insane ticket!
This really just should be made illegal. Both for copyrights and patents. Purchasing an intellectual monopoly with intent to cause fiscal harm to another party is profiteering and should be made illegal. The punishment? No less than jailtime for the trolls involved, and it should pierce the corporate veil to nab the CEOs that permit this kind of scheme to happen. Intellectual monopoly have been under scrutiny for a very long time as "not working" and inhibiting intellectual progress, but permitting this kind of action most definitely is a direct inhibition of progress and a blatant abuse of the system. Sure, abolishing both would be best, but for now, hopefully criminalizing profiteering with copyrights and patents should stop at least some of the abuse.
So because a copyright troll sued a conservative it is somehow benign or OK?
Nobody actually said that except you. Btw, Righthaven sued plenty of left wing sites too. They are apparently averaging several lawsuits per day so I don't really think there is a political agenda here.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Yes it baffles me that you can buy into a situation like that will full prior knowledge and still be allowed to even raise an action in court. In most situations if you knowingly put yourself in a position of harm in order to benefit through legal action (for instance, throwing yourself in front of a car so you can sue the insurance company) and were stupid enough to admit it, you'd be looking at prison time.
Unfortunately copyright law is not all that sensible these days. Big media has pushed for, and got, a lot of changes made, all of which make things more of the "zero tolerance" kind of setup. One example would be statutory damages. One would think that copyright damages would have to be actual and punitive only. After all, the whole point of copyright is so you can make money on your work. So to succeed you should need to prove damages. In the event of willful infringement, a court might then also impose punitive damages, that is pretty common. Tripling the actual damages is often the case.
However that'd mean someone downloading 100 songs online might get sued for like $400. You'll notice that's not the case, they are sued for millions. How's that? Because the law specifies statutory damages. That means that doesn't matter what the intent was or if there was any harm, you can get hit with a ton of damages. Up to $250,000 per incident.
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.
So while the case may be bullshit in the logical sense, it may well be on the up and up with regards to copyright law. I have no idea, it is far, FAR too complex for anyone who isn't a legal expert in it to understand.
No, that makes it sound like the LV Review Journal aren't party to it. In fact the owners of the NVRJ also own Rightshaven. They set up the arrangement to pursue copyright infringers.
http://www.lvrj.com/blogs/sherm/Copyright_theft_Were_not_taking_it_anymore.html?ref=164
There's no copyright trolling here. Just a case of setting up a separate company to do the pursuit of copyright infringement. A company which can then also offer that service to other content creators.
It's perfectly reasonable. Neither LV RJ nor Rightshaven are at fault here. The only people who are at fault are those who steal their content rather than create it themselves; who copy and paste rather than link; who go beyond fair use, and just reproduce the whole article.
I disagree. It's not that laws don't need to be reformed. It's that these kind of kneejerk, ahistorical, situationally expedient solutions usually have unintended results that are worse than the problem they are attempting to mitigate.
Consider: Your dad passes away suddenly, and you're going through his old effects and papers and realize that his partner's been ripping him off for years to the tune of millions of dollars. What can you do about it? Nothing, in your world, because you had "lack of standing at the time the alleged infringement took place."
Or you buy a house next to a scenic lake. After you've been living there a couple of months you start to feel sick. It turns out that the old Duponsanto plant for years had been dumping toxic waste into the lake and polluting the land. They cleared out about a year before you moved in, so you have no recourse because of "lack of standing at the time the alleged infringement took place."
But, on top of that, although the wording in the article is ambiguous, it seems likely to me that Righthaven purchased the rights to the work while the alleged infringement was still ongoing. So even going by your litmus test they would still have standing to bring suit.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.