Slashdot Mirror
Righthaven Loses
A month ago we noted that the legal system had put Righthaven on hold, but now
redwolfe7707 noted that "A federal judge in Nevada says a Las Vegas law firm targeting unauthorized content on the Internet cannot sue others over a news company's copyrights. The Las Vegas Sun reported Tuesday the dismissal of a lawsuit by copyright enforcer Righthaven LLC against the website Democratic Underground. U.S. District Court Chief Judge Roger Hunt says copyright plaintiffs must control the rights to material in order to sue for copyright infringement."
My favorite line from the judge's ruling?
"IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Righthaven show cause, in writing, no later than two (2) weeks from the date of this order, why it should not be sanctioned. "
Kudos to the Judge on this one.
This news makes me so happy! Take that, you bullies at Righthaven!!!
as long as the laws in the book remain the way they are, many more will spring up to replace them. you want this stopped? write your congress critter (hand written letter usually gets better result.)
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
....through its lawyers for legal costs.
I am sure that the newspapers will just grant full copyright to RightHaven, for a right to share in the spoils of the lawsuits. This might have been RightHaven's plan all along...
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Righthaven claimed to hold the copyrights, not the original publisher.
ahhh DUH!
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Much more detailed than the submitter's link: techdirt's article.
I am sure that the newspapers will just grant full copyright to RightHaven, for a right to share in the spoils of the lawsuits.
Or another variation: sell Righthaven the exclusive right to sublicense articles to other web sites. This would make Righthaven more like a copyright clearance agency such as BMI or iCopyright.
Of course a company can hire a law firm to work on a lawsuit against anyone the company wants. When they do, though, the company's name, not the law firm's name, is attached to the case as the plaintiff. In this case, though, Righthaven is listed as the plaintiff, which means that they aren't the firm hired to work on the case, but that they are claiming to be the party that has been harmed.
So a company can't hire a third party law firm to blanket sue? Based on the previous slashdot story and TFA, that's the gist of what this is saying. A copyright holder can't have a generic contract with a litigation firm; they must hire them under contract to sue on their behalf in a specific case.
As I understand it, the ruling is that you can't split off the "right to sue" from the actual copyright - either you have the rights to the property (and can thus sue to defend those rights), or you don't.
You misunderstand this case. The actual publishers did not want their names associated with the law suit, so they set up a dummy company (Righthaven) to sue for them. This was not a case of a law firm bringing a case on behalf of the copyright holders. This was Righthaven bringing suit on behalf of themselves. If this had been what you understood it to be, the case would have been Las Vegas Review Journal vs. John Doe (or whatever the name of the defendant was) rather than Righthaven vs John Doe.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The judge cites the Copyright Act in saying that in order for someone to sue, they must be the holder of at least one of the exclusive rights under the Act. The agreement between Righthaven and Stephens Media only (and explicitly) transferred the bare right to sue and profit from the recovery, which is not one of the exclusive rights under the Act. Stephens Media retained all exclusive rights to the works. Therefore, Righthaven does not have standing to sue because it is not the holder of any exclusive right.
This is not the same thing as someone hiring a law firm to sue on their behalf. Stephens Media was not a party to the lawsuit, only Righthaven and Democratic Underground were parties, and Righthaven did not have the standing to sue. If I wanted to sue someone for copyright infringement I would hire a lawyer and I would be the plaintiff, not the lawyer. In this case, Righthaven is the plaintiff, not Stephens Media (the rights holder).
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Reminds me of the old tale about the woodcutter and the layabout. The woodcutter is just doing his job, out there splitting logs for the village, working along quietly. Along comes the layabout, who sits down, makes himself comfortable, drinks a couple of beer, all the time making grunting and puffing noises in time to the work.
At the end of the day, the woodcutter goes to collect his wages from the village clerk. The layabout tags along. Then, just as the bag of coins is brought out, he pipes up, "Hey, I'm entitled to half of that, because I did half the work. I made all the sounds."
The clerk says, "Right then, let's be fair. I'll count it out." And he carefully counts it into two piles.
The coins make a satisfying clinking sound as each pile grows. The layabout rubs his hands in anticipation. Then the clerk gathers the two piles together and gives the lot to the woodcutter, who cheerfully departs.
"Hey, what about my share?", says the layabout.
The clerk replies, "You've just been paid in full. You made only the sound of work, and so you have received only the sound of payment."
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
So a company can't hire a third party law firm to blanket sue?
Not when that company is acting as the plaintiff but has no standing to bring the lawsuit. In this case, Righthaven had no standing to sue as they did not hold the copyrights to the works they were suing over. This is basically a DUH decision. It would be outrageous for the judge to have decided otherwise.
Based on the previous slashdot story and TFA, that's the gist of what this is saying. A copyright holder can't have a generic contract with a litigation firm; they must hire them under contract to sue on their behalf in a specific case.
Yes, they can not act as a plaintiff in lawsuits that they have no standing to bring. What exactly do you find so hard to understand about this?
If I understand this case correctly (and maybe I don't), they still can, but the copyright holder still needs to be the plaintiff, with the company they hire being their representation. It sounds like what happened here, is that Righthaven themselves were the plaintiffs.
For example, say your ISP's DHCP server gives you the same address that was used a few weeks earlier by someone who died, but whose daughter had set up a wireless router, and someone else was using that router to bittorrent a Disney movie. You're a suspected Disney copyright infringer. But instead of getting a summons where Disney (represented by Righthaven) is suing you, you get a letter saying Righthaven is suing you.
Assuming that's how the Righthaven attacks worked, it's fun to speculate about why Righthaven built a business like this. One of the things we learned from all the RIAA actions was that they were frought with mistakes, often suing people who clearly didn't infringe the copyrights. Maybe Righthaven's gimmick is to tell copyright holders that by not being the actual plaintiffs, they can go after suspected copyright infringers without the copyright holder taking big liability risks, since mass-infringement lawsuits are so randomly scattershot and error-prone, and open up the plaintiffs to countersuits, sanctions, etc. Since many of the people being sued probably didn't actually infringe, all it takes is one of them with the resources to fight back, then it could be costly for the plaintiff. Does Disney want to pay for that? Fuck no. Enter Righthaven, offering to take the risk in exchange for higher fees.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Wouldn't posting a news clip on a political site in order to comment on it be considered fair use?
Captcha was "felony". Strange.
But if that makes it Fair Use, then Righthaven won't make money off suing you, so by using the material under Fair Use, you're impacting their "sewer" business and revenue, which removes the Fair Use defense. I think Ray Liotta expressed this as "Fuck you, pay me!"
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Comment removed based on user account deletion
First, news-oriented websites may not like having their material blatantly stolen, but they do love being referred to, with appropriate credit. Assigning their rights to RightHaven would almost certainly have a chilling effect on their website's popularity, and that equals dollars lost, not dollars made.
Second, as part owner of the copyright, RightHaven would have a right to part of any proceeds the website might generate by authorizing a third party to use the copyrighted materials.
Third, as part owner of the copright, RightHaven would have the authority to forbid such third party use or impose their own conditions on such use.
Now, if the news agency in question were to hire RightHaven, that would give RIghtHaven the standing they need to refile the (recently dismissed) lawsuit while preserving the news agency's undisputed ownership of the copyrighted materials. However, even this could have a less than desirable effect on their readership. Once more, we're talking about dollars lost (although the news agency in question could see this issue differently).
That's not my understanding of what happened. From the finding document:
Making this failure more egregious, not only did Righthaven fail to identify
Stephens Media as an interested party in this suit, the Court believes that Righthaven failed to
disclose Stephens Media as an interested party in any of its approximately 200 cases filed in this
District
So the issue is not that Righthaven doesn't own the copyright as much as they failed to acknowledge the fact that they were not the copyright holders. It would be more like paying a third party law firm to file a lawsuit without them mentioning you paid them to do so.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"U.S. District Court Chief Judge Roger Hunt says copyright plaintiffs must control the rights to material in order to sue for copyright infringement."
Does this really surprise anyone? It just seems like common sense.
Well them not owning the copyrights is actually a big part of the issue. To have standing to sue for copyright infringement you have to *drum roll* own the copyrights. Righthaven was basically a front company who was only given the "right to sue" but not the actual copyrights and was being used as a way to funnel winnings back to Stephens Media.
This is one of the things that the judge found, but not the only thing.
The Righthaven suit failed because they are not the copyright holders, non-holders can't sue, and their attempts to arrange otherwise failed.
They are at risk of being sanctioned because they failed to disclose the arrangement between themselves and the copyright holders.
Careers should combine three things: what you can do, what you want to do, and what you can get paid for.
I'm familiar with a similar story, though it's about Nasreddin Hodja.
Wonder which came first.
Hip hip hooray!
Hip hip hooray!
Hip hip hooray!
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
I wonder if this case would have gotten as much press if Righthaven didn't rile up Democrats & bloggers by suing Democratic Underground. They had sued several other bloggers before this, but the DU lawsuit is what really riled people up and got this in the news.
They also went after emtcity.com, a forum run by a retired EMT. He has limited resources and this has been financially (and emotionally) draining. All because ONE forum user posted a few paragraphs from an article and linked to the article.
Righthaven is the worst kind of troll. And I hope the Las Vegas Review Journal staff are utterly disgusted with themselves.
Righthaven is not a law firm. It is a company whose purpose is to sue. Under the copyright laws, the legal or beneficial owner of a copyright is entitled to sue. That's why in the P2P cases, it is not the MPAA vs John Doe, it is always one of the record companies: Capitol v Foster, Atlantic v Andersen, etc. In order to sue, Righthaven should have been assigned the copyrights in order to sue: "the Copyright Act does not permit copyright holders to choose third parties to bring suits on their behalf"
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Between what Righthaven is trying to do, and the blanket litigation tactics the RIAA employs?
How's this for a "Slashdot not-a-car" analogy:
Me: "Get off my lawn!"
Kids: "It's not your lawn!"
Me: "Yeah, but I bought the right to yell at you from the old guy in the house!"
Federal District Court: "No, you didn't. You have no standing to yell at anyone. The old guy in the house can either sell you the yard or come outside and do his own yelling. And by the way, explain to me why I shouldn't punish you for lying about your purported 'right to yell'?"
Me: <Gulp!>
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Wow. :-)
You misunderstand this case. The actual publishers did not want their names associated with the law suit, so they set up a dummy company (Righthaven) to sue for them. This was not a case of a law firm bringing a case on behalf of the copyright holders. This was Righthaven bringing suit on behalf of themselves. If this had been what you understood it to be, the case would have been Las Vegas Review Journal vs. John Doe (or whatever the name of the defendant was) rather than Righthaven vs John Doe.
I'm guessing that this was done in an attempt to shield the actual Plaintiff from any liability if this all went wrong and damages were assessed against the Plaintiff of record in the suit.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Disgusting pro-capitalist propaganda. In my narrative of the story, the "layabout" is black and has been denied a job by the racist city clerk.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
The real question here is, why did it take the judge so long to reach such a common sense answer? A lot of people have been twisting in the wind waiting for this definitive slap-down.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Out of curiosity, does this apply to the RIAA and MPAA as well? Or have those orgs not been the plaintiff and instead had Sony or whoever sue?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
If the Righthaven firm did not have standing because they were not the harmed party, then how can the RIAA or MPAA sue on behalf of the record labels and/or artists who's music is distributed in violation of copyright law?
RIAA and MPAA are the names used in the media to shield the companies from bad publicity. when the lawsuits are filed the actual company names are on them.
The RIAA and MPAA are associations of record labels / movie producers. In the lawsuits, the member label / producer does the suing as is legally required.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Disgusting pro-capitalist propaganda. In my narrative of the story, the "layabout" is black and has been denied a job by the racist city clerk.
Jesus Harold Christ in a fucking roller coaster! Don't you right-wingers ever shut the fuck up?! You are the very definition of a fanatic, one "who won't change his mind and won't change the subject." Not everything has to be about your stupid fucking ideologies.
You see, there is a difference between the above story and things like affirmative action which apparently has escaped your addled "brain." It goes like this:
Above story: person does not work.
Affirmative action (or similar program): help black people and other minorities have *jobs* so that they can actually work and make their own money
Do you see the difference? Probably not. You are proof positive that close relatives shouldn't breed. Please, go fuck yourself with an electric hand blender until blood pours out your ass.
Who was talking about affirmative action? You're projecting your own fears onto someone else's words. Besides, reinterpreting the narrative is a common tactic these days, maybe you haven't heard?
Don't you right-wingers ever shut the fuck up?!
You must be new here . . .
Because the parent is right. I will not speculate as to the motives of the grandparent.
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