Righthaven Ordered To Turn Over Hard Drives To Creditors 51
Hugh Pickens writes "Remember Righthaven? Steve Green writes that the copyright troll who partnered with the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post to file 275 no-warning copyright infringement lawsuits in 2010 and 2011 against parties that used content from those papers without authorization has just been ordered to turn over to a creditor hard drives from its computers so the creditor could determine if Righthaven has any assets that can be liquidated for the benefit of Righthaven's creditors. Federal judges in three states rejected Righthaven's lawsuits because the company lacked standing as the newspapers — not Righthaven — maintained control of the material Righthaven was suing over. Some defendants were also cleared by the fair use doctrine in copyright law. In the aftermath of Righthaven's legal debacle, the company shut down and claimed to be broke. Creditors in another case seized its website and trademark and auctioned them. They also seized the copyrights it sued over, but they didn't sell. Meanwhile Kurt Opsahl, an attorney for the EFF, has for months been urging Judge Peggy Leen to hit Righthaven CEO Steven Gibson with 'coercive sanctions' for Righthaven's failure to turn over information that will help the EFF find Righthaven assets. 'Steven Gibson is now going to have to show some responsibility,' said Opsahl after the judge issued a court order that could cost its CEO a fine of $500 per day for non-compliance. 'The CEO of Righthaven remains responsible for taking care of the business of the company.'"
Re:Brevity in Summaries (Score:4, Funny)
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Also, your capitalisation of capitalisation and punctuation without a period at the end of the sentence would have been justified sarcasm; doing it with a period at the end implies an inventive emphasis also done in your parent, unless it's a mistake.
Deliberate irony, so I win.
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It's still possible to be sued successfully for downloading copyrighted data.
So enjoy your hollow victory, losers. We're still coming to get you.
All data is copyrighted from the moment it exists in a fixed form. A very tiny fraction of that data is placed by its author into the public domain. Thus, for 99.9999% of people, 99.9999% of what they download is copyrighted.
The key point is this: Attention is more valuable than information.
That is why content producers spend millions to create attention lures; for advertising.
This is why "news" shows are light on facts and heavy on shock and awe (things to keep you watching).
Smart 21st-century businesses u
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It's nice to see the CEO was going without a salary for a few years, banking on a payout.
No he wasn't. He'll be able to claim a net loss on his income for the last few years, and if his accountant did a good job with the books, the judge is going to find that the CEO is massively in debt. Once it's all said and done, the CEO will file bankruptcy and then slowly pull his assets out of whatever shelters he's hidden them in.
Just as an example, which I've seen used in real life. Rich CEO purchases a very nice house for his daughter, for their "wedding" present, pays the taxes, etc. and now it's her
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Escaping liability while retaining profits... (Score:2)
.
-- Land / real-estate developers form limited-time-extent limited liability corporations to buy the land and other LLCs to develop it and pay each other fees (to maximise profits). As soon as the last house is built, a shell corpo
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Gross points are also for chumps. What you need these days is 'first gross points'.
one more asset (Score:5, Funny)
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Who'd want him? Darl McBride? Now there's a gay marriage made in heaven.
Re:one more asset (Score:4, Funny)
He's an asshole, not an asset..
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asshat, asset... they sound pretty close
Patent law reform needs outside funding (Score:2)
Shell company patent trolling isn't illegal, but it should be. Change will obviously not come from governments. I would like to see some independent think tanks receive some funding to develop new proposals.
Maybe the Bill and Melinda Bates Foundation could spare some cash for this, to fix problems in their own backyard, instead of Africa.
Charity begins in the home.
Now when is Darl McBride going to face charges at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, for crimes against humanity?
Re:Rights management (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait, what? Am I missing something here?
Sure; There is almost no limit to how badly your lawyers can screw up if they try to be too clever. The company was attempting to do something illegal. Get to act as the copyright holder without having the responsibilities of the copyright holder. Unfortunately, they screwed up completely, and ended up achieving the reverse of what they wanted. They failed to transfer the right to sue, but they managed to transfer the actual copyrights (though presumably still with a license back to the newspapers the articles came from).
Future lawsuits about this material may well be very very "interesting".
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Why doesn't this apply to cases brought by the **AA associations over copyright material controlled by others (e.g. recording corps)?
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Why doesn't this apply to cases brought by the **AA associations over copyright material controlled by others (e.g. recording corps)?
You made that up.
Original poster, the correct answer is that the **AA are not the ones suing. The recording companies sue directly. For example SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas-Rasset etc.
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For example SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas-Rasset, ..
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For example SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas-Rasset, ..
For pity's sake. Making stuff up was bad enough, now you're clutching at straws.
Yes, sometimes people refer to Arista Records LLC et al v. Usenet.com as "RIAA v. Usenet.com". No, people using that shorthand way to refer to it does not change reality.
For a list of the plaintiffs in that case see the court ruling here : http://beckermanlegal.com/pdf/?file=/Lawyer_Copyright_Internet_Law/090630DecisionOfMotions.pdf [beckermanlegal.com]
Note that the RIAA is not amongst them. They are all listed individually because they all partic
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That was a very good, informative comment until this line: in fact, the **AA's were created by the recording labels to represent them.
That's inaccurate. There was a problem with phonorecords: deep bass would cause the needle to come out of the groove. Various record companies had different ways of attenuating it. The RIAA was originally formed to come up with a standard equalization curve [wikipedia.org]; bass is attenuated on recording and boosted on playback, and the attenuation and boosting were standardized. It was, in
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OP says that company partnered wih the newspapers in question. I don't know why a hired gun for you would get stuffed by a court.
That's weird (Score:3, Interesting)
If a judge wants to take something of mine, he'll send a cop to come and take it. Why isn't that happening here? Do the banks wait for a house to be 'turned over' when they forecloses on it?
Re:If a judge wants to take something (Score:2)
Good that you noticed that too.
Do judges have that much trouble acquiring evidence in other types of cases?
Bonus remark:
"Righthaven is a company, not a law firm." (Which) "partnered with the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post to file 275 no-warning copyright infringement lawsuits". (Founded by) "Righthaven CEO and Las Vegas attorney Steven Gibson", who then hired "Righthavenâ(TM)s attorney, Shawn Mangano".
Whew! A company that is not a law firm is started by a lawyer, hires a lawyer, and files
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Yes, actually they do.
No, they don't. They send the cops in to forcibly evict the inhabitants, even if the foreclosure was wrongfully (fraudulently) obtained.
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If a judge wants to take something of mine, he'll send a cop to come and take it. Why isn't that happening here? Do the banks wait for a house to be 'turned over' when they forecloses on it?
No, the judge will order you to hand it over. If you don't, then the judge will issue an arrest warrent and probably a search warrent and arrest you and then search for the item. If they don't find it, you probably stay in jail for awhile. If they do, then it depends on how much you suck up to the judge on how long he keeps you for obstruction or whatever they call when you don't do what the court/judge ordered you to.
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If a judge wants to take something of mine, he'll send a cop to come and take it. Why isn't that happening here? Do the banks wait for a house to be 'turned over' when they forecloses on it?
Actually that's not necessarily true.
If The State has a judgement against you then that is true. But... As someone who has been issued a small settlement in a legal dispute I can say that the courts will issue you a judgement, but it's up to YOU to figure out how to collect it. Now YOU, armed with a court order can certainly show up on their doorstep with the local sheriff and start hauling off stuff. Provided that the company isn't in bankruptcy and there are more than one of you to fight over the spoils,
GRC? (Score:1)
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Steven A. Gibson CEO in this article:
http://www.dickinson-wright.com/ourpeople/pages/person.aspx?person=96835d9d-f7d2-430e-a836-92977532ec50 [dickinson-wright.com]
Steven M. Gibson GRC CEO / programmer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Gibson_(computer_programmer) [wikipedia.org]
Posting this here since that was the first Steve Gibson I thought of too...
- Toast
To Paraphrase HL2 (Score:2)
We Don't Go to Righthaven
Karma (Score:2)
Karma's a bitch eh Steve. ;-D
waaaaaaa ha ha ha ha he so deserves it.