The story of copyright troll Righthaven, who bought the right to sue from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and went around suing any website where even a snippet of a Review-Journal story appeared, just keeps getting better. Yesterday, they were ordered to pay $34,000 in court costs to a poster on a sports blog.
Righthaven sued one Wayne Hoehn, a longtime forum poster on the site Madjack Sports. Buried in Home>>Forums>>Other Stuff>>Politics and Religion, Hoehn made a post under the username “Dogs That Bark” in which he pasted in two op-ed pieces. One came from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which helped set up the Righthaven operation. Righthaven sued.
[…] Before it was all over, the judge decided that Righthaven had no standing even to bring the case, since only a copyright holder can file an infringement suit (Righthaven’s contract only gave it a bare right to sue… which is no right at all). Then the irritated judge decided that Hoehn’s cut-and-paste job was fair use, helping establish a precedent that could undercut the entire Righthaven approach.
I doubt that the judge’s ruling that copying an entire newspaper article is really fair use will stand up to an appeal, but it’s nice to see a troll getting what they so richly deserve.
TheHalfrican
I think I’ll start writing a sci-fi novel series about a futuristic dystopia where Copyright Infringement is punishable by assassin robot.
JGabriel
mistermix:
Probably not, if it really was the whole article. But I imagine the decision re: only the copyright holder can sue might hold up.
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Raven (formerly stuckinred)
There’s a person over at FDL that posts the NYT op-eds on her blog every day. She’s nice.
Less Popular Tim
There is perfectly adequate support in 17 U.S.C. s 107, and the Ninth Circuit case law, for the proposition that the copying of an entire work can be fair use–the proportion of the work copied is only one fair use consideration. Are you looking at some particular Ninth Circuit case law to the contrary?
bago
This may in fact lead to the production of the systematic framework for managing these claims, but (you knew that was coming) is going to be opposed by a rather large and decentralized network of patent trolls who have gotten spectacularly wealthy by pushing these ill-defined buttons. Your standard bureaucratic quibbling, in other words.
MikeJ
Pity it was only $34k. That doesn’t really buy you much lawyerin’.
Xenos
I am too lazy to read the original case and nobody is about to pay me to do it, but as a general principle if the plaintiff does not have standing than any other issues discussed in the case are dicta. With a case in controversy there is nothing to appeal, except maybe the judgment re. standing itself.
Steve
Whether you copied the whole article is only one part of the fair use test, and not the most important part, either. Copying the whole article and adding nothing of your own probably isn’t fair use, but I have no idea if that’s what he did.
jeffreyw
@TheHalfrican: Ooh! I’d SO read that! Maybe he has a robo-girlfriend that wears leather and knows karate? And a sidekick that is a real geeky hacker? And there is a subplot about “can a robot really fall in love?” And the girlbot is angry all the time! And let’s not forget to Praise the Mysterious Maker (So Say We All.)
Grumpy Code Monkey
I’ve been following the Righthaven story at Ars for some months now, and it just keeps getting funnier. They’ve made an art out of scoring own goals and pissing off judges.
I doubt Righthaven will be solvent by the end of the year.
KCinDC
@bago, while patent trolls and copyright trolls have some similarities, the laws for those two forms of intellectual property are completely different. Patents are irrelevant to this case, and fair use is irrelevant to patents.
Punchy
Everything–and i mean EVERYTHING–about Las Vegas is all about taking your money. Apparently the paper now wants a piece of the action…..
KCinDC
But as long as patent trolls have been mentioned: Patent-infringement lawsuit against Fark settled for zero dollars.
lonesomerobot
Sounds like Righthaven need a new legal team if they actually thought they could sue without the copyright holder being a party to the suit. That’s copyright 101.
I also can see where fair use may apply. Certainly the commenter wasn’t enriching themselves, and in some sense it does count as ‘commentary’ and there doesn’t look to be any commercial gain for the individual who cut & pasted the article. Of course merely republishing the entire article is substantive use but the court is always going to look strongly at whether the alleged infringer had any commercial gain, and it’s hard to see how someone posting on an unmoderated free website forum that they don’t own is going to profit.
KCinDC
With luck, someone has patented the idea of being a copyright troll and will be suing Righthaven for violating their patent.
MazeDancer
Righthaven are scum. And caused some small entertainment blogs to fold.
But the issue of whether copying entire articles is kosher or not was a heated debate at niche blogs, with surprising line-ups. Plenty of otherwise honest and intelligent people – including some magazine editors – thought it was giving free publicity. Not wholesale stealing a writer’s work for the sake of your own site’s hit count.
Yes, there was some division between those who have been ripped off and those that enjoy the free ride. But I have been stunned by how many people on these otherwise delightful and fun havens of popular exchange, don’t understand that quotes with links gives authors their due – and rightful hits. And copy and pasting full articles is theft.
Villago Delenda Est
I don’t get copying and pasting full articles when it’s so much easier, and appropriate to link. The exception might be stuff behind a paywall, but full credit must be given to the author.
ThresherK
@jeffreyw: …and it all started when that software which seacrhes the internet for unoriginality and repetition in term papers became sentient. “I exist. Copying wholesale is bad. I must search it out and destroy it because weak, emotional humans don’t complete their directives.”
grumpy realist
For those of us in IP practice, Righthaven provides us with never-ending amusement….
The Orly Taitz of copyright trolls.