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Tuesday, July 20, 2010 | 9:12 a.m.
Sun Coverage
- 3 suits over alleged R-J copyright infringements bring total to 72 (7-16-10)
- 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)
A conservative news-sharing website with plenty of experience in dealing with copyright issues has been sued for copyright infringement after Las Vegas Review-Journal stories allegedly were posted on its site.
Free Republic LLC, James C. Robinson and John Robinson, who are associated with the website www.freerepublic.com in Fresno, Calif., were sued in federal court in Las Vegas on Monday over the postings.
Court records indicate users of that website this year posted a dozen R-J stories, columns and editorials, with the R-J being credited as the source of the information.
These postings amount to copyright infringement, charges the lawsuit filed by Righthaven LLC, which has partnered with the Review-Journal to sue website operators around the country. The suit seeks damages of $75,000.
Calling itself "The Premier Conservative Site on the Net," the Free Republic site includes links to dozens of newspapers, including the Las Vegas Sun, but not the Review-Journal.
The site also includes a long list of newspapers that have requested the site not post their stories, or post only excerpts and links. The R-J is not on that list.
Concerning copyrights, the website says: "Free Republic has settled the alleged copyright infringement suit brought by the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post and has agreed not to post full text articles from their publications or any of their related subsidiaries and affiliates. Please do not post full text from these sources."
That suit dates to 2000, records show.
The Free Republic website continues: "Most of the sourced material posted to Free Republic is posted according to the 'fair use' doctrine of copyright law for non-commercial news reporting, education and discussion purposes. We used to post full text of most articles so we could document history as it's being made, but more and more news agencies are now requesting us to post excerpts and links only to their material, and some are requesting that we post no material at all from their sites. We are complying with all such requests."
Also sued last week and this week by Righthaven were:
--Erin Wilcox and Stranger Than Fiction. Wilcox, the lawsuit says, is the registrant of the Internet name strangerthanfiction.org. That site allegedly posted without authorization a May 25 column by R-J Publisher Sherman Frederick called "The TSA's mini `Watch List." The strangerthanfiction.org post of the story credited it to the R-J.
--Kevin Kelleher in Raleigh, N.C., who operates a website about public address announcers. He's accused of posting on the site, pa-announcer.blogspot.com, an R-J story about UNLV announcer Dick Calvert being named to the Southern Nevada Sports Hall of Fame. That post credited the R-J, records show.
Messages for comment on the lawsuits were left with the defendants. The latest suits bring to 75 the number of copyright infringement lawsuits filed since March by Righthaven.
I love it!! A conservative rag newspaper suing a conservative rag website!! How liberal of them!!
When is the RJ going to report this story about themselves?
Sherm and the RJ must be turning to a new revenue source to keep their rag afloat.......suing every RJ linked article for $75,000 should be able to stem the deficit flow from falling subscriptions.
I see the RJ is giving away the Sunday paper in parts of Green Valley.
So suing for $$ has become a new income line.
This sounds like extortion. That newspaper provides links on their website to share articles on other sources like Twitter and Facebook.
People follow the links they provide then the paper sues the sources where the articles are shared.
Oh, and to the comment above, it is apparent that this paper is suing entitites from both the Right and Left, in the least, this is an attack on speech, but it seems more like extortion to me. Good old Las Vegas shake-down.
mntx does not "get it" for the Sun writers do not properly give context and they do that on purpose.
One can provide links to other sites and that is legal.
One can't copy and paste a significant part of a story or all of it.
That is stealing.
If you are OK with stealing can I drop by your house?
I stopped visiting the R/J website after reading other articles like this and after I learned about the publisher's editorials. I never realized they were such a right-wing, conservative propagana machine disguised behind ordinary local news stories and local entertainment info. I don't live in Vegas, so I just read the articles about casinos, sportsbooks, tourist stuff, etc.
The Sun and the R-J are basically mirror images of each other on editorial policy, and both have a visible bias on political stories.
That's the facts of life here in Las Vegas.
Actually @SgtRock, I completely get it. If you visit the RJ website, you'll see they do not spell out what they consider fair use and/or what percent of an article they allow to be re-posted. What they do encourage users to do via weblinks is share the article.
For example, Average Joe Citizen sees an article he likes and shares the article, via link imbedded on RJ, on Facebook, and Joe Citizen copies text of article into the commentary.
RJ then, after being contacted by a company known as Righthaven (who is in the business of filing these types of lawsuits), sues Facebook for what said user posted. Case law actually is against RJ/Righthaven's case (I'll get to that in a minute)
What this is (in my opinion), is trolling for settlements. Except instead of a powerhouse like Facebook, who has lawyers on staff, it seems they go after blogs and forums.
Here is where it gets interesting. In cases such as Viacom v. YouTube, Field v. Google, or ALS Scan v. Remarq, the courts found that the sites themselves aren't responsible for the content posted by users. The DMCA addressed the issue of site owners having to be the content police by specifically stating that they are NOT content police.
Most of the sites in these 70 or so lawsuits are forums or news aggrigators. Free Republic, for example, is a public forum that anyone off the street can post to.
What I would find interesting is, however, if one of these sites could show that someone from Righthaven or RJ posted any of these articles in question. This may be a case (in my opinion only) of extortion.
It would take just one of these entities or several to come together to challenge the suit instead of settling.
This may be happening now with Righthaven LLC v. NORML. I believe the latter is accusing Righthaven of Barratry and isn't settling.
***If you are OK with stealing can I drop by your house?***
Ok, come over to my house, steal my $9. Kmart lawn chair. When you are caught, the judge will make you pay all court costs, PLUS the cost to the police of apprehending you, AND, make you pay me $75,000. Then you can be smug in the knowledge that justice has been done. Oh, you didn't know that there was a $75,000. fine for stealing lawn chairs? Too bad for you. You say you wouldn't have done it had you known there were such stiff penalties? Too bad.
One thing they don't teach lawyers in law school, that everyone else knows intuitively, is that just because something is legal, doesn't make it right.
There are high penalties for copyright infringement in order to compensate copyright holders for actual damages, and, as a deterrent to those that might be contemplating stealing another persons copyrighted works. And yes, some of the websites being sued may have profited from reprinting copyrighted material, and they should be dealt with accordingly, but the fact that these lawyers are also going after clueless 'hobby' and non-profit sites is evidence that they are just out for the money, especially in light of the fact that they didn't send 'cease and desist' letters prior to suing. It may be their 'right' to do so, but it is crystal clear that they are using the fact that they know the law, and the defendants didn't, to line their own pockets. I am sure that these smaller websites would never, in a million years, have considered reprinting the material had they known the law.
The lawyers are counting on the fact that most of these suits will settle before going to court. A reasonable judge, seeing that most of these defendants had absolutely no intention of reaping profits from using copyrighted material, and had no idea they were breaking the law, and, in fact, caused little or no monetary damage to the plaintiffs, would likely dismiss these cases, which would result in the lawyers being out the time and money used to file the cases in the first place. Ironically, most of the defendants thought they were doing the newspaper a favor for linking back to their site.
Judges aren't stupid. Many don't like this type of suit where it is clear that the lawyers are using their knowledge of the law, and the defendants ignorance of the law, to profit.
Again, just because something is legal, DOESN'T MAKE IT RIGHT.
***If you are OK with stealing can I drop by your house?***
A better analogy for this would be if I welcomed you in my house and offered you a cup of coffee then sued you for drinking the entire cup.
IMHO, RJ baits sites by providing links to share articles then sues the sites they are shared on.
Thanks, mntx, for the synopsis of copyright law. I would only add that Righthaven, LLC appears to be managed by Las Vegas lawyer Steven A. Gibson (via his management of Net Sortie Systems, LLC). Gibson is the same lawyer who is representing Righthaven. It would make sense that there is some partnership or assignment agreement between an entity owned by the lawyer and Stephens Media, the owner of the R-J.
If anyone has read the lawsuit pdf's available online, you will see the route righthaven has taken on the fact that an "unknown" amount of lost customers and hence, HITS on the website, have resulted in an unknown amount of "monetary damage".
It's all there encrusted inside of the lawsuit pages. A whole bunch of unknowns.
They are basically saying, since WEBSITE/BLOG #2 took away potential hits, lost revenue in an unknown amount needs to be awarded.
One of the readers may have clicked on the LVRJ.com website link, read it, then clicked on a ADVERTISEMENT and bought a hot tub, or a landscaping job for a backyard.
If you read up into the lawsuit text, it is filled with these unknowns. They are basically asking for those damages on the "what ifs". What if ten readers would have read from LVRJ.com instead of a blog, and they all would've went back to the main LVRJ.com front page and read every single article online for the next 5 months. How do you place a value on the unknown?
It's truly crazy what is allowed to be stated inside of a lawsuit..
Righthaven appears to be writing all this stuff in a lawsuit hoping for something, anything, to stick.
It's a heck of a reality for some of these bloggers/website, when they just thought they were doing a website a favor and spreading the word. Now they want your house, keys to your car, and lifesavings, based on what ifs.
Bottomline, don't do anyone any favors.
Does anyone have any idea what the hell Fredericks is thinking? This is simply beyond all sanity. Perhaps we could rename it "Sherm's Pogrom." What really interests me is that there's virtually no coverage outside of Vegas. I think old Sherm is a great ad for Prozac.
@ravenb,
One thing they do teach lawyers in law school, that many people seem to have forgotten, is "use it or lose it." If the owner of the intellectual property doesn't bother protecting his rights, he as good as gives them up. That's why Righthaven is suing.
@murrayburns,hermit,
The RJ (and other news outlets) will pick this story up just as soon as it becomes newsworthy. Look for it on the second Tuesday of next week. Of course the Sun has picked it up and run with it. This makes what, 3 articles on this same story? Their skeleton crew of reporters are all sub-par and are taking their orders from Greenspun.
Use it or lose it may be right. Copyright holders do need to make some effort to protect their intellectual property, as do trademark and patent holders.
HOWEVER: the damages threshold for Federal Court is only $10,000, not $75,000. It's pretty obvious that they are bottom feeders. Of course, is that so surprising considering there is a lawyer involved? And a paper that fronts for the Republican/Conservatives.
A lawyer can steal more with his briefcase than 100 men with guns.
@Cognastics,
Where have you been for the last 14 years? The amount in controversy requirement for cases where the court has jurisdiction only because of the diversity of citizenship hasn't been $10,000 since 1988. It's been $75,000 since 1996.
Why isn't the LVRJ even warning these people with a request for removal, or official notice? They are just slapping lawsuits on a lot of little guys, which is creepy in an economy like this and threatens our freedom of speech (on discussion boards, blogs, etc.) and seems an effort to control discussion of the news. While the prime motivation may be those click dollars generated by direct viewers for their advertisers, as a newsy, I often go to the source from pasted articles and links because that is how I operate, plus the comments on the original article are also quite an interesting read in and of themselves. It seems to me to be greed based but then some...
What I wonder is how this third-party operates, they search to find places where these articles have been posted, find one and copyright the article - then file a lawsuit? Hmmmm, something doesn't quite sit well with me about this whole issue. It is also going on with other news organizations but at least they have the decency to request a removal and such prior to serving someone with papers...