Newspapers' New Revenue Plan — Copyright Suits 123
SpicyBrownMustard writes "Wired magazine has coverage of the numerous lawsuits recently filed by Righthaven, LLC regarding the content of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. 'Borrowing a page from patent trolls, the CEO of fledgling Las Vegas-based Righthaven has begun buying out the copyrights to newspaper content for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post those articles without permission. And he says he's making money.' The owner of the LVRJ has commented on the strategy, and the Las Vegas Sun has extensive coverage of each suit filed. The owner of one site has apparently settled for more than the site has made in six years. Media Matters suspects many of the suits may be politically motivated, and thus violate federal election law."
The guy isn't exactly innocent either (Score:5, Informative)
The owned of acdc-bootlegs.com site mentioned in the summary isn't exactly innocent either.
To begin with, the site is devoted to offer downloads of bootlegs, which according to current copyright laws is illegal. Even if you don't think it's a big deal, you have to go by laws.
What the current lawsuit is about is the use of copyrighted content from news sites (and not in fair use manner), again a copyright infringement.
Then he is also doing click fraud:
One thing you can do is click on the Google ads on the left side of all of the pages on this site. I make a few cents from each click, which will go directly to paying the settlement. So the more you click, the more you help. And it's free to you! You do not need to fill out any forms or submit your personal information; just click on the link, let the page load and go from there.
The way the /. story title and summary is worded makes it sound bad, but this guy is also blatantly breaking several laws and frauding advertisers to generate money. He just got what he asked for. He should be happy AC/DC or Google hasn't sued him.
Re:Takes one to know one. (Score:3, Informative)
Media Matters [mediamatters.org] is a media watchdog that is certainly politically motivated but frequently includes actual facts in their analysis. So it's a valid reference, and we can hope that readers will be intelligent enough to make up their own minds. I'll be nonpartisan and note that Newsbusters [newsbusters.org] does the same thing, just from the other end of America's political spectrum.
Given the possible political angle, it is interesting to see what the different sides are saying [left-right.us] about Righthaven.
Re:Not entirely evil (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not a troll (Score:5, Informative)
They sound like trolls. It appears as if they don't actually produce any of the content. They buy an exclusive license to redistribute on speculation that someone will intentionally or inadvertently infringe, then they sue for enough money to make them money, but not enough to make it worth fighting in court.
Re:The last sentence is misleading (Score:3, Informative)
The point of copyright is to encourage the tangible expression of ideas for those who need an economic basis to do so. We, through the government, offer that limited monopoly because we think ideas, education, culture, political debate, and their propagation are a very good thing. We don't really care about your material wealth, or, rather, I care about your material wealth to the degree you care about mine. Doing well? That nice.
Now if you sincerely only want some people to receive and share your thoughts, write them a letter.
Re:The last sentence is misleading (Score:5, Informative)
As copyright law was originally written, you sued only over financial damages. For roughly 200 years, you had no basis to pick and choose except financial harm. The law still doesn't give you that right in the US - if it did, it would include what are called 'moral copyright clauses', as, for example, the ones now used in French law which the US has deliberately avoided including in treaty. Now that parts of copyright law have been criminalised, you are in effect arguing that your right allows you to compel the state to engage in selective prosecution of crimes, as is expressly forbidden in the bill of rights, for damned good reasons.
Re:Is that click fraud? (Score:4, Informative)
From Google AdSense policies [google.com]
Encouraging Clicks
Publishers may not ask others to click their ads or use deceptive implementation methods to obtain clicks. This includes, but is not limited to, offering compensation to users for viewing ads or performing searches, promising to raise money for third parties for such behavior or placing images next to individual ads.
Yes, it can be counted as fraud, especially when there's money involved. It's only a matter of at what point (how much money is involved) it makes sense for Google and other ad networks to go after the people frauding them. If someone happens to report him to Google, he will get his account disabled and the income lost. If it was a lot of money, he might even get sued by Google.
Also, since he is now using ads he is also commercially benefiting from copyrighted material (bootlegs) he has no right to. That gives even more serious jail time than the casual piracy happening over p2p networks.
Re:Not entirely evil (Score:5, Informative)
The 'information' is free and can not be copyrighted. The information in this case would be the fact that there was an accident, number of cars, etc. However, if you write a creative description of that information, it can be copyrighted.
You could not copyright the following description: There was an auto accident at the corner of A and B streets today. One of the cars was speeding and ran a red light. Minor injuries were reported.
However, the following may be able to be copyrighted: A spectacular auto accident occurred at the corner of A and B streets today. One vehicle was careening down the street and inadvisedly ran the red light. The other vehicle had already entered the intersection, and they collided in a cacophony of breaking glass and crumpling steel. Fortunately for all involved, only minor injuries were reported.
Anyone could strip out all of your 'creative' content and still reprint the facts, adding their own creative content if they wish. But that is not what is occurring. Instead, people are just copying YOUR sentences.
Re:Takes one to know one. (Score:3, Informative)
Media Matters [mediamatters.org] is a media watchdog that is certainly politically motivated but frequently includes actual facts in their analysis. So it's a valid reference, and we can hope that readers will be intelligent enough to make up their own minds.
Media Matters is wrong. All you need to refute them is the recent list of sites that are being sued:
Conservative website among 3 sued over R-J copyrights [lasvegassun.com]
The article identifies Free Republic [freerepublic.com] as one of the recently targeted websites.
To be fair, Media Matter's article pre-dates the suit against Free Republic.