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Published Thursday, July 15, 2010 | 11:41 a.m.
Updated Thursday, July 15, 2010 | 8:51 p.m.
Sun Coverage
- Nevada Democratic Party hit with R-J copyright lawsuit (7-9-10)
- 5 more websites face R-J copyright lawsuits (7-8-10)
- Six more suits filed over R-J copyrights (7-1-10)
- Three more websites hit with R-J copyright suits (6-29-10)
- R-J copyright suit filed against newspaper source (6-25-10)
- 3 more R-J copyright suits filed; defendant responds (6-10-10)
- 8 more websites sued over R-J copyrights; 34 total (6-5-10)
- Former news anchor among targets of new R-J copyright suits (5-30-10)
- 4 more copyright suits over R-J stories brings total to 22 (5-28-10)
- 4 more sites sued over alleged R-J copyright infringements (5-20-10)
- 14th website sued over R-J copyright allegations (5-17-10)
- More suits over alleged R-J copyrights bring number to 13 (5-14-10)
- Suits accuse groups of posting copyrighted R-J stories (5-5-10)
- Two more websites sued over posting of R-J stories (5-3-10)
- Sixth copyright suit filed over R-J stories on websites (4-26-10)
- 3 copyright suits filed over R-J stories on Web sites (4-16-10)
- Suits accuse 2 groups of posting copyrighted R-J stories online (3-17-10)
Righthaven LLC, the company suing website operators for infringing on copyrighted Las Vegas Review-Journal stories, filed five more lawsuits this week in federal court in Las Vegas.
The company has now filed at least 69 lawsuits since March.
The latest suits were against:
--Stacy Nason of Baton Rouge, La., and Breakdown of America, alleged operators of the website www.breakdownofamerica.com. That site allegedly posted without authorization a May 13 R-J story about Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle. The R-J was credited for the report, court records show.
--Fred Bouzek, whom Righthaven says owns the Internet domain name www.bikernews.net. That website, which carries numerous news stories from around the world on clubs such as the Hells Angels and the Pagans, is accused of posting without authorization an April 5 Review-Journal story about an undercover agent who infiltrated the Hells Angels. The posting on the biker site credited the story to the R-J, court records show.
--Marion Valentine, whom Righthaven says owns the website marionsword.spaces.live.com. Court records show a June 10 R-J editorial was posted on Valentine's blog on the site, with the R-J receiving no credit for the information. The editorial complained about the nation's "vast and unwieldy federal bureaucracy," and "the pipe-dream agenda of left-wing academics and government employee unions."
--Isaac Rosete and an entity in West Covina, Calif., called Question Authority, whom Righthaven says are associated with the website iquestionauthority.com. A May 10 R-J story involving the Gulf of Mexico oil spill allegedly was posted on that website. Records show the R-J received credit for the story on the iquestionauthority website.
--Scottsdale, Ariz., company The Above Network LLC and an official there, William Irvine. They allegedly run the website www.abovetopsecret.com. The same R-J story about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill was posted on that site, apparently by a user of the site. A court exhibit filed by Righthaven indicated the R-J was not credited for the story in this case. But an abovetopsecret.com official said that at the top of the post there was a link to the R-J story on the R-J website.
Valentine, who on his website says he lives in Mississippi and is a retired Navy cryptologist, said Thursday: "I post articles I write and articles sent to me by e-mail on my site for information and education only. There are no advertisements on my site, nor do I accept donations, therefore there is no income generated by my site."
"I am a 70-year-old now housebound veteran with 100 percent service-connected disability. I have no attachable property or attachable income, so let them sue away. Frankly, with congestive heart failure, I did not expect to still be living this long, so I will probably be dead before a verdict is reached in the lawsuit anyway," he said.
Officials at The Above Network said they were surprised to be sued over the posting on the abovetopsecret.com website.
They vowed to mount a vigorous legal defense since, they said, their site includes a notification advising copyright holders how to request removal of stories -- yet they said no one from the Review-Journal or Righthaven asked them to remove the story in question.
They also said users who post stories on the abovetopsecret site are required to post links to stories they post, meaning abovetopsecret has been driving Internet traffic in the form of thousands of visitors to the Review-Journal website.
"It's ludicrous. We'll never settle with them," said Mark Allin, a partner at the company, adding the R-J will likely now lose revenue because his site would likely stop allowing users to post R-J stories and links.
The abovetopsecret website includes a "DMCA" notice about a procedure that is commonly used by copyright holders to have copyrighted information removed from websites.
"It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (found at the U.S. Copyright Office) and other applicable intellectual property laws. It is our policy to remove material from public view that we believe in good faith to be copyrighted material that has been illegally copied and distributed by any of our members or users," says the notice on the abovetopsecret website.
Rather than demanding stories be removed before filing lawsuits, Righthaven's procedure has been to obtain copyrights for individual stories and then sue alleged infringers of those copyrights.
Rosete, of the iquestionauthority website, said he removed the R-J story from his site Thursday after being informed by the Las Vegas Sun that he was being sued.
"The story was about the use of the same chemical dispersants that were used at the Exxon Valdez oil spill that led to the death of many of the cleanup crew and are now being used in the Gulf oil spill. I felt that this information was important and had to be heard. I meant no harm to the paper or writer. This was my first time ever posting a story from their paper ... obviously the last," he said.
"This lawsuit is a big joke ... well, not really a joke, but frivolous to say the least," Rosete said. "They never sent me a cease and desist or any type of complaint about me using their story. If they did not want me to share their article, I would have gladly removed it instantly."
Messages for comment were left with the other defendants.
lol. Someone at RJ is either sleeping with a lawyer or married one.
The Sun just had to remove two comments today that I know of because one of the users had done a cut-and-paste without a link back of a story from the R-J. Even if the link had been provided, they still would have had to delete the comments since they were a copy of the complete R-J story.
Can someone please explain whether the LVRJ has sued people simply saying:
See this story at www.lvrj.com/xxxxxxxxx
How hard it is to just post the link and a brief comment about the article? Then the RJ has no case. No one should post any article in its entirety.
Then they had better be prepared to sue WalMart if they don't have a reprinting agreement.
http://walmartcommunityvotes.com/electio...
http://walmartcommunityvotes.com/electio...
http://walmartcommunityvotes.com/electio...
http://walmartcommunityvotes.com/electio...
Posting a link is fine. Posting short portions of an article, with attribution, for the purpose of commenting on the article is fine. What is not fine, and what gets the copyright machine whizzing, is when you post the entire article (with or without attribution) on your own site, and make maybe one or two sentences (if any) about the article. Folks, that's not commentary, that's stealing the article.
Can the reporters at the Sun tell me if the RJ has prevailed in any of these suits and what amount are they requesting for settlement that they the RJ is or has allegedly lost in revenue.
Better yet can the sun please if they have the information list how many have settled and how many haven't, Itemize would be great.
I saw in earlier stories that a few have settled, usually in the range of a few thousand dollars. Most have not disclosed settlement amounts, if any. A number of them now are stating they will fight back, mainly because of the lack of prior contact before the suits are filed.
Hey Righthaven and the RJ, the RIAA spent $64M on lawsuits to stop illegal file sharing. And got revenues of $1.4M back. Good luck with this as your next business opportunity.
"In 2008 alone, law firms were paid a total of $17.61 million to pursue copyright infringement claims. This returned just $391,000. "
Read more: http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/...
(note the above text is fair use - in fact the attribution URL was automatically appended to my copying of the excerpt by Javascript on their website, maybe something the RJ should look into as well)
Seems to me that newspapers have a responsibility to serve, inform and, with any luck improve the community in which they are published. Mr. Frederick's lawsuits, about which his own paper has not written (hard to figure that one out), seem only to detract from all of those responsibilities. One has to wonder why he hasn't gone after larger companies that may have "slipped up" and inadvertantly either distributed or somehow republished his "valuable" stories.
And, what a pain in the neck this must be for all the defendants, especially those who are local.
I can't imagine that all of this couldn't have been avoided by pre-notifying the offenders with a letter. Postage, after all, is a lot cheaper than filing lawsuits.
I sent an email to Charles Zobell,the Managing Editor of the RJ last week asking whey they do not report all these copyright lawsuits in their own paper.
His response was: "We may soon do an overview of Righthaven's initiatives if we deem it sufficiently newsworthy. "
I also asked why they don't just send out "take down" notices through email as most other copyright holders do and that question was not answered.
Personally I feel they are wasting court time and making for bad public relationships but I don't own their paper so my opinion really does not matter. I know of two clients that now refuse to advertise with the RJ. They are not big spenders there but any loss of income is not good for a newspaper these days.
Hopefully they will find a better way of taking care of business.
I'm thinking it might be about time to start a petition to boycott the RJ all together. I have had enough of the nonsense. If they are boycotted then where will the money come from for the lawyers? Righthaven is a joke.
this is such a joke.
For the last 2 weeks, Sunday editions of the RJ have been littered about my gated neighborhood that has clearly posted NO Trespassing and NO Soliciting. Just because the RJ has subscribers on my street doesn't mean I want their rag delivered to me. I simply toss it into my recycling bin with my junk mail and piles of unused phone books.
Sherm Fredricks may *think* he is giving me the gift of a free Sunday paper... but to me he is soliciting new business, trespassing, and illegally dumping trash on my driveway.
If I used the same jack-boot tactics the RJ seems to enjoy using with Righthaven" Sherm Fredricks should be immediately arrested and imprisoned for thousands of counts of illegal dumping, and trespassing.
Sherm "grubstaked" with Righthaven (as he puts it) and apparently intends to use this as his new business model since the traditional newspaper business is toast.
I respect a man for attempting to protect his property" but the *way* Sherm is going about it is simply butt-stupid, and to me demonstrates WHY the newspaper business is dying.
He could have easily spent a few thousand dollars and hired software programmers to create a "story sharing widget" that would have dramatically extended the reach of the RJ carrying ads and collecting revenue along the way. He should be ENCOURAGING people to share his little stories. Instead he gave away his copyrights to Righthaven, who seem to be a bunch of out-of-work lawyers looking for something to do.
Frankly" the RJ stories are simply NOT that valuable. Very few seem to be the results of expensive investigative journalism. Most seem to be pieced together from UNCITED press releases sent to them from PR firms seeking publicity for their clients. I could send any one of their stories to an experienced writer in the Philippines and have it re-written in its entirety for $10-$15.
Sherm" I'm sorry you are going to ultimately choke on your grubstake" but in while you are still in the "newspaper business"" please keep your garbage off my driveway!
Does anyone have Birds that they can line the cage bottom with.
After about the tenth suit I quit linking to it why should I those that advertise there must agree with the RJ so I don't want to deal with the advertiser.
I hope that every time someone wants to give a press release they tell the RJ the can by it for a tidy sum.
Vegaslee: The Zobell quote, "His response was: "We may soon do an overview of Righthaven's initiatives if we deem it sufficiently newsworthy," seems to say it all about the RJ's news judgement. Nearly 70 copyright suits by a newspaper isn't "newsworthy." Please. I'd like to the the financial relationship between the RJ and Righthaven, other than the latter being just "grubstaked."
On the other hand, maybe Sherm's just trying to help the service economy: Think about all those legal fees from defendants?
@murrayburns,
No, it really isn't newsworthy. These type of suits are filed every single day by organizations trying to protect their intellectual property. Don't believe me? Find the most valuable article on the Sun's site (probably the Pulitzer series written by a reported who long since left the Sun) and copy it wholesale onto another website. Then do the same with the headlining articles. See how fast Greenspun's paper sues you for infringement and demands licensing fees.
I'm not enough of an expert to judge whether it's newsworthy, but it does seem so to me -- Nearly 70 lawsuits over the same issue by one company. That's a lot to me. It still seems to me that some sort of demand or cease and desist (or whatever attorneys call them) letter could have been sent out before the lawsuits were filed.