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Wednesday, March 30, 2011 | 1:50 a.m.
Righthaven LLC's lawsuit against journalist Eriq Gardner backfired in more ways than one.
Besides embarrassing the Las Vegas company for a suit that should never have been filed, news coverage of the lawsuit is now exposing more people to the Denver Post TSA pat-down photo that Righthaven claims to own with its copyright.
But this new exposure for the photo won't yield a dime of revenue for the Denver Post or Righthaven.
That's because this exposure of the photo, as it appeared on the Drudge Report, is in the form of Google thumbnail images that now pop up in Google searches for Righthaven.
They pop up with the Ars Technica story on Righthaven's dismissal of its lawsuit against Gardner, the Ars Technica freelancer.
They pop up next to the headline "Copyright troll Righthaven's epic blunder: a lawsuit targeting Ars."
***
Amidst all the excitement about the suit against Gardner, Righthaven filed three more lawsuits alleging copyright infringement involving the TSA pat-down photo.
The latest to be sued by Righthaven in federal court in Colorado were:
• Neil Rosekrans (statebrief.com)
• Christopher Szaz (asmallcornerofsanity.com)
• Hetal Jannu (uberpix.net)
Messages for comment were left with Rosekrans and Jannu. Szaz couldn't be located for comment.
As usual Righthaven demands damages of $150,000 apiece and forfeiture of the defendants' website domain names to Righthaven.
These bring to at least 261 the number of lawsuits Righthaven has filed since March 2010 over Denver Post and Las Vegas Review-Journal material; and to 57 the number of suits over the pat-down photo.
***
Another commentator is weighing in on the theory that Righthaven's lawsuit campaign has been counterproductive in terms of protecting newspaper content from rampant online infringements.
Two of its suits have now been rejected on fair-use grounds -- including one involving an entire Review-Journal story posted on the website of an Oregon nonprofit.
Righthaven plans to appeal, but in the meantime we now have case law reducing -- not expanding -- legal protection of newspaper content.
"If I were a traditional news publisher with an expansive view of copyright law, I’d be furious at Righthaven," Massachusetts attorney Joel Sage wrote in a post on the website of Harvard University's Citizen Media Law Project.
"Insofar as Righthaven’s tactics are often, in practice, little better than bullying, it is little wonder that judges seem to be doing everything they can to give Righthaven's defendants the benefit of the doubt — even if this ends up constricting the rights of established media players," Sage wrote.
Any reasonable law firm would suspend all new legal activity and investigate how something like this could have happened, but not Righthaven. They won't miss a beat because most likely they don't have to investigate what happened because they already know.
All Righthaven cases now need to be investigated. There are probably scores of cases that are just as bad as the one they were forced to close (only because they got caught)
Righthaven said they closed the case because they found out he was a journalist? however they knew enough about him and the website to know the site had a DMCA registration. They would only had to look at their exhibit to know he was a reporter but then again had they looked at their own exhibit they would have discovered it was from their own court document from the Drudge suit.
This may have been an attempt on Rightahven's part to silence a journalist that has been critical of Righthaven. If that is the case this would constitute criminal activity in the highest order. This case screams for a federal investigation.
Chunky says:
Clearly those with a bigger picture view of copyright and the legal system are questioning the wisdom and business ethics of Righthaven's heavy-handed approach.
Sometimes you have to wonder if there's a certain amount of ego involved feeding Righthaven's motives now that their cases have gained national attention.
That's what Chunky thinks!
From all appearances they are shaking people down for money!
The Reichklaven opperation should be seized by the Federal Government for racketeering and blackmail.
Since Righthaven is demanding the domain name of the victims then those that are counter-suing should demand the copyright "owned" by Righthaven.
This could put a quick end to this nonsense.
With the internet and search engines, it seems that a mistake like this could hurt Mr. Gardener for years and years. Maybe it affects him his entire life. Lawyers like to think like this and place statuary damages as high as they can. Maybe Mr. Gardener has a case against them for defamation. Or maybe the courts become more strict with how Righthaven files their lawsuits.