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Friday, July 16, 2010 | 12:08 p.m.
Sun Coverage
- 5 more suits filed over alleged R-J copyright violations (7-15-10)
- 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)
Three more website operators were sued for copyright infringement Thursday after Las Vegas Review-Journal stories allegedly were posted on their sites without authorization, lifting the total of such lawsuit filings to at least 72 since March.
The suits are being filed by a Las Vegas company called Righthaven LLC, which has partnered with the Review-Journal to prosecute lawsuits alleging infringement of copyrights to Review-Journal stories.
The latest suits were filed against:
--Danny Downey, alleged owner of the Internet domain name www.windowintopalestine.blogspot.com. A May 23 R-J story about Israelis linked to drug trafficking allegedly was posted on that blog site. Court records indicate the Review-Journal was not cited as the source of the story on the blog post.
--VerticalScope USA Inc., Sportbikes.net and Rob Laidlaw. The lawsuit says VerticalScope is associated with the websites www.sportbikes.net and www.menstennisforums.com; and that Laidlaw is the president of VerticalScope. VerticalScope says on its website it's based in Toronto.
Court records indicate a user of the sportbikes website posted there a May 21 R-J editorial headlined "Washington will take care of you." The R-J was credited as the source of the information.
The court records also indicate a May 20 R-J story about retired tennis star Steffi Graf was posted on the tennis website, with the R-J credited as the source.
--Grant N. Grand and an entity called Florida Oil Spill Law, which are associated with the website www.floridaoilspilllaw.com. A May 10 R-J story about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill allegedly was posted on that website. Court records show the posting included the byline "BY OILFLORIDA," but also included a link to the R-J story on the R-J website.
Laidlaw, at VerticalScope, said an inquiry Friday from the Las Vegas Sun was the first he had heard he was being sued or that there was a concern about Review-Journal stories on VerticalScope websites.
"As publishers ourselves, we believe strongly in copyright laws, and do our best to moderate our user-generated content sites from having unauthorized copyright content. We have strict policies against this type of material being posted by our users, and we are very responsive to all take-down requests. However, we have not received any correspondence nor requests in this regard from the Las Vegas Review-Journal," Laidlaw said.
Requests for comment were placed with the other two defendants.
Rather than requesting websites remove R-J stories before filing lawsuits, Righthaven typically sues the websites and seeks $75,000 in damages for copyright infringement.
Court records show that of the 72 suits, eight have been settled or otherwise closed under generally undisclosed terms. In one publicly disclosed settlement, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws agreed to pay $2,185 to settle allegations an R-J story was posted on its site.
NORML attorneys said they arrived at that amount by examining the number of people who could possibly have viewed the article on a codefendant's servers (247), and multiplying that number by $2.95, which is what the R-J charges to purchase the story from its website archive. That dollar amount was then tripled to remove any doubt about the reasonableness of the settlement offer, the attorneys said.
How long would a comment stay on the R-J site if it contained copyrighted material from another source? One day? One week? One year? Forever?
Any bets that one could scour the comment sections there and find examples?
boftx-You raise an interesting point. Anyone could knowingly post content on a site to entrap.
How would the RJ like if someone did that to them?
Let me provide some real bad news.
If you think that just linking to the LVRJ is legal you are wrong.
Courts have ruled that a link creates a "cache" on another server and this has been ruled "taking" under copyright law.
Every case so far, the owner sent a letter asking the site to remove the link.
So far RightHaven LLC has not sent one cease and desist letter. Legally they do not have to.
This would normaly be a joke but the LVRJ and RightHaven LLC have become such predators that even a link can expose you to legal "extortion"
Dont mess with R-J Simpson
lvrjsucks, can you provide a link to the court rulings? (no pun intended)
I'm fairly certain those rulings have been overturned in part, and applied to "deep-linking".
Such a ruling would make it impossible for search engines and archive sites to exist.
So it's true that just posting a link on a website, even if it is credited is a copyright infringement?
Then how do websites like Drudge or Lucianne get away with all of their content being from copyrighted sources?
I would be very interested in seeing the case law lvrjsucks is talking about.
I have owned 100's of web sites for over 15 years. Been in court and always have won my cases but never have heard of ANYONE losing a case over a "link".
I am amazed that there are 72 website operators who think there is anything worth linking to in the R-J.
OK, there are some reporters who do good work and two local columnists worth reading, but, c'mon!
Are we serious? Enough already! Can't we all just get along? If someone thinks enough of a story to re-post it and give that source a big credit on their website, then by all means they are honoring the writer and publisher on their website. Those people reading it can clearly go to the link and see the full article from the RJ. It's just a re-post of old news folks!!!
Why in the heck would they want to sue them? In fact, with their readership (which probably isn't that much), should be grateful that someone thinks enough of the article to even want to re-post it on their website in the first place.
If this continues, then where does it end? There would be no websites for information for fear of lawsuits left and right, and no RSS feeds for them to get their information from in the first place, and the list goes on.
RJ stop this nonsense and just write some REAL news!! Hey! just my opinion folks!!
I think Worm Frederick is upset because he can't stop Harry Reid from getting reelected. It's driving him crazy.
From the Wikipedia entry on the DMCA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Mil...
"Linking to infringing content
The law is currently unsettled with regard to websites that contain links to infringing material; however, there have been a few lower-court decisions which have ruled against linking in some narrowly prescribed circumstances. One is when the owner of a website has already been issued an injunction against posting infringing material on their website and then links to the same material in an attempt to circumvent the injunction. Another area involves linking to software or devices which are designed to circumvent DRM (digital rights management) devices, or links from websites whose sole purpose is to circumvent copyright protection by linking to copyrighted material.[4]
There have been no cases in the US where a website owner has been found liable for linking to copyrighted material outside of the above narrow circumstances."
Looks like Righthaven is taking a shotgun approach and will find out that the range fees are going to become expensive.
Most used automated scripts to pull in stories from the RJ and other sites to populate their blogs. Most all of these will link directly back to the main source.
That is how blogs works and drive traffic. I love it when people use my stories and link back to me. That is how the internet and blogging works.
As mentioned, most ethical companies would send out a cease and desist letter.
All 72 should file a cheap BK and Rightklaven won't get Jack...
From the responses I have received from RJ editors maybe they will think this is "newsworthy" once they hit 100 law suits and print a story about it in their own news paper. ;-)
I am betting they are going to find that costs will out weigh rewards when this is all over. They are not going to collect much money from those they are suing and they ARE losing advertisers over this.
OK. perhaps legally you would not have to send a letter first. Fine. But there are lots of ways to get things done in this society without wasting the courts' time. not to mention the expense of the attorney, judge, etc. A simple letter should suffice. Otherwise, it is being done not for copyright purposes, but simply to expose and take advantage of a loophole that is used millions of times a day.
Example, did you know that the song "Happy Birthday to You" is copyrighted and NOT in the public domaine. Every time it is sung, legally you should be sending a check to ASCAP for royalty payment. Lawyers would make billions by trolling workplaces if they could.
RJ provides people links on their website to share articles on websites such as Facebook and Twitter. In other words, RJ is encouraging sharing articles then suing entities where articles are shared.
This is an attack on all Citizens as those who actually click the "Facebook" link and share one of their articles could be next. This sounds like a shake-down to me.
This group is suing entities on both the Right and the Left. It is time those entities put aside political differences and band together to stop this shake-down. Counter sue the RJ for extortion.