Bravo!
Posted on 08/15/2011 7:17:16 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
In yet another stunning reversal for Las Vegas copyright lawsuit filer Righthaven LLC, the company won’t be collecting any damages from a man it once branded as a copyright infringer.
Instead, it’s Righthaven that must pay the man's legal fees of $34,045.
U.S. District Judge Philip Pro awarded the fees Monday in the case of Kentucky message board poster Wayne Hoehn.
Pro on June 20 dismissed Righthaven’s lawsuit against Hoehn, finding Righthaven didn’t have standing to sue him and even if it did, Hoehn was protected by the fair use doctrine in posting an entire Las Vegas Review-Journal column on a sports betting website message board. Righthaven's lack of standing was due to the R-J maintaining control of the column despite Righthaven's claims of ownership.
Righthaven is appealing the dismissal. But Pro, in the meantime, on Monday ordered Righthaven by Sept. 14 to pay Hoehn’s fees and costs for his representation by Randazza Legal Group of Las Vegas.
(Excerpt) Read more at vegasinc.com ...
This is terrific news! Will this case have an impact on us?
Are we still not posting from FH clients?
I see a couple every week, and they are allowed to stand.
Just askin’....
Hear, hear!
Good news indeed..
It’s good to see the scammers being shot down, couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.
Good news! If Righthaven does not win the appeal they are toast.
As the owner of a discussion forum (MUCH smaller than FR), the Righthaven saga was somewhat of a nightmare.
For a while there, it was as if any webmaster who had any LVRJ et al content whatsoever on his server - wittingly or not - could get buried by these contemptible litigationist axe-men. It's one thing for a newspapers to not want entire articles shared without credit, but was I supposed to babysit an entire membership's use of minimal content? You, or even an entire moderation team, can't be everywhere at once.
The tide seems to be turning against them. Justice would be seeing them sued into the poorhouse.
Heh heh heh! I love payback!
This is good news. Righthaven has no real standing in these cases anyway. A few more losses like this and they will go bankrupt
This could have a profound impact on the blogosphere.
And screw the LV J-R and Denver Post for fronting these thieves. I'll never give their sites a click again.
Maturity and Sanity are on the march, bro!
Thanks. I was wondering if Hoehn’s situation was too narrow to apply generally, but I guess not! :-)
I predict that is going to happen sooner than you think. They can read the tea leaves and can tell that they better get away with what they have managed to get so far, because they are not going to get anymore.
In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire company just sort of folds up shop and vanishes into thin air.
Indeed. The “entire” was surprising to me and I’d love to know the rationale.
Re DU’s suit against Righthaven: For the first and hopefully only time in my life, I have to say “Go DUmmies go!”
Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice said. I don’t get how LVRJ and Wronghaven expected to get away with this deal of half-selling copyrights. This seems to be to copyrights what MERS was to mortgages, an annoying nullity. LVRJ might still have standing to sue, but to do so would be to completely confess the whole Wronghaven thing was a farce.
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