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.
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.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
(hand written letter usually gets better result.)
Clearly, you've never seen my handwriting.