Posted on 09/05/2010 2:15:02 PM PDT by redreno
Even as Righthaven LLC made headlines for suing Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle last week, attorneys in another Righthaven case accused the firm of misusing the legal system to carry out its copyright infringement lawsuit campaign.
Righthaven, controlled by Las Vegas attorney Steven Gibson and the family of Arkansas investment banking billionaire Warren Stephens, has contracted with the Stephens Media LLC-owned Las Vegas Review-Journal to file copyright infringement lawsuits against 117 website owners and bloggers since March.
(Excerpt) Read more at lasvegassun.com ...
This will be another interesting case to watch.
Righthaven is about to wear out try the Court’s patience.
Bill Shakespeare was right about “lawyers”.
wear out/try the Court’s patience.
Somewhere amongst these 117 lawsuits is a defendant with the money, the argument, and the gumption to put up a credible defense and allow the courts to put a stop to this nonsense. If that doesn’t happen then much of the internet and what little is left of the newspaper business will be very seriously harmed.
Many of these lawsuits are against tiny hobby and public service blogs, the kind your grandmother would write, and that no one ever even looks at.
Righthaven sustained no injury since they did not own the copyright.
I wonder what would happen if one or more of the defendents in this action, sought descovery of ALL employees of Righthaven, Stephens bunch and LVRJ. And I mean ALL.
The purpose being to check data base to ascertain if any articles were posted by said employees. Since this appears to be a money making scheme, this would be a logical trail to investigate.
What Stephens didn't count on is that he's managed to draw attention to every single periodical he owns a piece of and people are watching them like hawks. After all whenever he engages in a copyright violation that's an automatic win AGAINST HIM ~ for whatever amount, not just that $75,000 statutory deal.
I figure if I watch just the LVJ 6 months I should be able to find something worth several million bucks.
Righthaven is like that despicable attorney in Florida who’s gotten rich on foreclosures. This isn’t about justice, it’s about money.
I'm pretty sure that FR is one of those 117. Unlike most outlets they did not send a cease & desist, they sued immediately. Jim pulled the articles in question immediately and they are now on the FR "do not post or link" list but that doesn't settle the suit.
Hopefully some judge will put a stop to this abuse of the legal system quickly. I believe there is a good argument that the LVRJ granted a limited license to anyone that visited their webpage when they encouraged readers to "share and e-mail" their content.
;)
FR is one of the 117, the suit can be found through Google. Jim found out about it when it when it was posted on FR. These folks are predators and they will probably have a short run. The real target needs to be Stevens Media. All of their publications need to suffer from both disappearing advertisers and readers.
We should begin a boycott of their advertisers.
Righthaven is engaging in these copyright suits more as a matter of suppressing opinion, than any intellectual property defense, making people afraid to make a statement and quoting authorative accounts, in the hopes of putting the Internet genie back in the bottle.
Malefactors of great wealth have now turned to supporting the control of the flow of information, all of a piece with the nuisance lawsuits and the ad hominem obfuscations they are throwing up against Sharron Angle. Righthaven is the spokesman and foremost defender of the status quo that supports Harry Reid, and they are using intimidation to try to win their point. Bullies in the schoolyard are the same everywhere, and they will not desist until somebody stands up to them.
Er, we could blackhole their IP. That would do it.
Curiouser and curiouser....
I don’t know how a Judge will rule on any of these legal points, but if Righthaven is not stopped other lawyers will pile on using the same methods. Courts will overflow with these suits.
If Righthaven casts their nets wide enough they will eventually catch a crazy that will go off on them. Then their money won’t mean anything.
That is possible. They appear to be filing at random and without warning. It is bound to set someone off.
[I figure if I watch just the LVJ 6 months I should be able to find something worth several million bucks.]
An interesting hypothetical is who would allow themselves to be interviewed by LVRJ once they know that this is going on? Any friend of those interviewed who linked or mailed or posted it on their website would be subject to legal action. This has to eventually dry up the pool of sources,
both the powerful and the mom and pop.
Say you are a restaurant and they do an article on te five top Restaurants and you are one of them. Kiss of death to be interviewed much less send that article to your clients.
They could all be sued.
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