Copyright Troll, Media Company Get Comeuppance Over Claim of Infringement

The Fremont District Troll of Seattle

An altogether nicer guy than a patent/copyright troll.

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A company formed to buy the rights to articles in some mainstream media sources and then sue for large amounts of money has been broken, and the media company behind it has failed to make it's case that short excerpts constitute copyright infringement, or that forum owners have responsibility for what their members post.

Though Righthaven, the original suing company  may have gotten some agreements for settlements from some unpaid bloggers and even bigger ones from politically connected Nevada groups (according to reports I read earlier), a finalized case has helped ruin Righthaven and will likely put a damper the ardor of Stephens Media which is connected to the Las Vegas Journal Review and some other newspapers to find other ways to continue suing people, for short excerpts from non paywalled articles.  It seems to us that a question remains about articles that are presented behind a paywall, and if in fact the NYT model can be called a pay-wall since 20 articles can be viewed for free each month by each person (or machine or browser?).

Another thing that is curious (well not really) is that this was action taken against Democratic Underground.   It might be that DU was targeted, or that DU was the source that had the wherewithal to fight this and therefore didn't cave immediately when contacted.

Sharon Angle's Senate campaign ponied up $150, 000 for reprinting an article by the Las  Vegas Journal-Review during her 2010 candidacy, and I believe the Democratic Party of Nevada did the same. Other times bloggers faced the Righthaven juggernaut, with the copyright trolls demanding tens of thousands of dollars to avoid lawsuits.  The examples I saw reports on were generally of the bloggers posting entire articles on blogs with small circulations and no ads.    I'm not sure if those bloggers have paid, are still in litigation, or what has happened.

But as seen in an EFF article, some questions have been settled.    See  Court Declares Newspaper Excerpt on Online Forum is a Non-Infringing Fair Use.

Copyright Case Could Turn Into a Judicial Cluster Bomb for Media Groups

A couple of posts down I wrote about a case in which a poster was embroiled in a fight over the use of copyrighted material.

The copyright plaintiff, Righthaven, is a limited liability corporation and lost its case since it didn't hold the actual copyright.

The judge in the case awarded the defendent c. $35,000 in lawyers fees which Righthaven says it won't pay, and will declare bankruptcy instead.

But an analysis says that it might be provable that Righthaven was set up by its creators, Stephens Media, and MediaNews Group plus some single names (I will link to the article I'm referencing so you can get those if you want) knowing it was all a bit of a scam,  and not wanting to put their own assets at risk, which would mean that they themselves can be sued for the fees.

I don't know much about Stephens Media, having avoided the Las Vegas paper, so I couldn't get tainted with a thought that Righthaven could sue me for, but I have admired some of the work that MediaNews has done.

Weirdly though they claimed that vigorously defending their material from copying would make them a more effective news system, since Righthaven's start up, it seems to me that their reporting has taken a serious dive in quality.

It's like the flatlining of news quality at the New York Times since they started their pay wall. Krugman's the only writer there who is even trying anymore. I wonder if the NYT is looking to catch Wall Street Journal readers with small brains and deep pockets.

Logically, making more money should make news teams better, but that's not what we are seeing.

Meanwhile The Washington Post keeps rolling along with some of the best reporting and still being offered freely on the web.

Media groups behind Righthaven could get hit with some bad judgements. Could it make them go back to superior reporting?

Maybe not, but the passing of news is an important function, one now apparently backed by a US District Court (in which most constitutional decisions are resolved according to one report on CA's trial to overturn Proposition 8).

The right to be informed looks to be winning.

I hope this continues, and a lot of people hope that Righthaven doesn't.

This post is a summary of and comment on a report at TechDirt

If Righthaven Declares Bankruptcy, Expect Lawyers To Go After Stephens Media, Media News, And Righthaven Principals

Also recommended:

Righthaven Defendant Moves To Strip Firm’s Assets
 

Lawyer wants US Marshals to seize copyright troll's bank account

Copyright bully Righthaven which was searching out articles reprinted on blogs from the Las Vegas News Review and other papers may be closed down after losing court case. Company often charged even small time bloggers with no advertising tens of thousands of dollars (from other reports I've read in the past year and charged both Sharron Angle and the Democratic party of Nevada $150k for copyright infringement also according to other reports. You can read at link how they may have met their match in court, and could lose their business. Could such a huge loss so early in the development of such seek and sue efforts, put an end to the whole model which was beginning to take off?  http://bit.ly/nMoAUA

Reading a link in the article linked above the case gets even more exciting.  The judge found that though a man actually did a cut and paste from information from the Las Vegas paper, it was deemed "Fair Use"  possibly because it was pasted into a forum post from which the copier would have had no way to earn money from the placement.

So this is exciting news for those who want to share what's happening with their peers, and possibly bad news for those who want to lock knowledge and news up in a safe so all people will hear are the politicians.