Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
StumbleRighthaven seeks to dismiss suit over posting of R-J story
Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2010 | 12:25 p.m.
Related Document (.pdf)
Sun archives
- Free speech group files counterclaim against copyright enforcement firm (10-30-2010)
- Righthaven gets legal win in copyright lawsuit campaign (10-28-2010)
- Righthaven files 2 copyright lawsuits, settles 3 (10-27-2010)
- Six more website operators facing Righthaven copyright lawsuits (10-21-2010)
- Righthaven defendant wins first lawsuit dismissal motion (10-20-2010)
- Righthaven files, settles more copyright lawsuits (10-13-2010)
- Sharron Angle signals interest in settling copyright lawsuit (10-9-2010)
- Attorneys accuse Righthaven of settlement shakedown (10-8-2010)
- Two more website operators sued for copyright infringement (10-7-2010)
- Seven more defendants settle Righthaven copyright lawsuits (10-6-2010)
- Group plans to sue over right to sell insurance to nonprofits (10-6-2010)
- Nevada Democratic Party settles copyright lawsuit (10-2-2010)
- Righthaven reaches another copyright settlement over R-J website content (9-30-2010)
- Amid new criticism, Righthaven sues additional website operators (9-29-2010)
- R-J owner faces counterclaim in copyright lawsuit campaign (9-28-2010)
- 5 more website operators sued over R-J copyrights (9-28-2010)
- Attorneys attack Review-Journal copyright suit arrangement (9-27-2010)
- Executive says suing over R-J copyrights worth the negative publicity (9-26-2010)
- Lawyers argue R-J stories on Web aren’t protected by copyright (9-25-2010)
- Attorney: Righthaven copyright suits a free speech threat (9-23-2010)
- Observers note uncertainty over future of Righthaven/R-J copyright suits (9-21-2010)
The Las Vegas Review-Journal's copyright enforcement company no longer wants to litigate one of its more controversial cases: a complaint against the big political website the Democratic Underground.
Righthaven LLC on Aug. 10 sued the website after a message-board poster copied to the site four paragraphs of a 34-paragraph May 13 Review-Journal story about Republican Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle titled "Tea Party power fuels Angle."
The post by Democratic Underground website user "pampango" credited the information to the Review-Journal and included a link to the rest of the story on the Review-Journal website.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) of San Francisco, an online freedom of speech and privacy organization, as a public service is representing the Democratic Underground in the suit pending in federal court in Las Vegas.
The EFF in September hit Righthaven and the Review-Journal's parent company, Stephens Media LLC, with an answer and counterclaim saying the post at issue was protected by the fair use doctrine of copyright law and accusing the Review-Journal and Righthaven of abusing copyright law by trying to intimidate defendants into settling what critics call frivolous, no-warning lawsuits.
Unlike most of the newspaper industry, which generally seeks to resolve copyright problems out of court, the Review-Journal this year teamed with Righthaven to file dozens of generally no-warning lawsuits against website owners and bloggers who have posted all or portions of Review-Journal material without authorization. In some cases, the material was posted by third parties like "pampango."
In moving to dismiss the Democratic Underground suit this week, attorneys for Righthaven noted one of the Nevada federal judges hearing Righthaven cases, Larry Hicks, last month dismissed one of the suits on fair use grounds -- a suit involving the unauthorized copying of eight sentences of a 30-sentence story by a Realty One Group agent.
That ruling set no precedent for the other Nevada judges hearing Righthaven cases, but it was cited in Righthaven's motion to drop both the Democratic Underground case and the EFF's counterclaim in behalf of the Democratic Underground.
"This motion represents Righthaven's sensible reaction to the intervening, immediately relevant fair use ruling recently issued by this court, all in the spirit of judicial economy," Righthaven said in its dismissal motion. "Though Righthaven firmly believes that the defendants are liable for copyright infringement, the non-holistic nature of the defendant's unauthorized textual reproduction is such that reasonable minds may disagree as to the legitimacy of a fair use defense."
Righthaven added that it "believes Judge Hicks' Realty One decision is in error."
Since Righthaven settled with one of the Realty One defendants, Michael Nelson, it can't appeal Hicks' ruling focusing on Nelson.
However, Righthaven said it expects Hicks to apply the same fair use reasoning in favor of the remaining defendant, Realty One Group Inc., and that at that time it will appeal the fair use ruling to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The EFF hasn't yet responded to the motion that the Democratic Underground case be dismissed, which is conditioned on all parties bearing their own attorney's fees.
Righthaven's motion to drop the Democratic Underground case was filed by staff attorneys J. Charles Coons and Joseph Chu; as well as outside counsel Shawn Mangano, a Las Vegas attorney who recently has started appearing in cases in behalf of Righthaven.
Separately, Righthaven last week filed its 167th copyright infringement suit in federal court in Las Vegas since March, naming as defendants TZ Holdings LLC, Robert Zumbrunnen and Peter Dierks. Righthaven says Review-Journal material was posted to their website siliconinvestor.advfn.com without authorization.
A message for comment was placed with Zumbrunnen about the lawsuit, which as usual seeks $150,000 in damages and forfeiture of the defendants' website domain name.
Discussion: 8 comments so far…
Comments are moderated by Las Vegas Sun editors. Our goal is not to limit the discussion, but rather to elevate it. Comments should be relevant and contain no abusive language. Comments that are off-topic, vulgar, profane or include personal attacks will be removed. Full comments policy. Additionally, we now display comments from trusted commenters by default. Those wishing to become a trusted commenter need to verify their identity or sign in with Facebook Connect to tie their Facebook account to their Las Vegas Sun account. For more on this change, read our story about how it works and why we did it.
Only trusted comments are displayed on this page. Untrusted comments have expired from this story.
Post a comment
Most Popular
- Viewed
- Discussed
- E-mailed
- Photos: Olivia Culpo, 20, of Rhode Island is crowned 2012 Miss USA at Planet Hollywood
- US Navy hopes stealth ship answers a rising China
- Learning about Electric Daisy Carnival fans will help Las Vegas court them
- On the horizon: A quick look at projects poised to shape downtown
- Clark PG Kentrell Washington heading to Hofstra basketball
Everything Under the Sun
Blogs
The Kats Report
Joe Pesci remembers his own honeymoon in Vegas -- meeting the Rat Pack
Las Vegas Philharmonic says search for new music director to begin 'immediately' (1 Comment)
With Shenandoah project stalled, Wayne Newton hits back legally (7 Comments)
Where does a Playmate play when she turns 21? Vegas! (3 Comments)
Ice Ice Billy
The road to six-toed cats and Mayor Bubba
The Kats Report
David Itkin tells L.V. Philharmonic officials he's on his way out (14 Comments)
Diamond Dave sells it well as Van Halen pours out the power at MGM Grand (2 Comments)
- Locally owned and independent since 1950; Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, best news website in the nation & DuPont Award for broadcast journalism
"In the spirit of judicial economy?" Righthaven is the antithesis of judicial economy.
If they want the suit against DU dismissed, Righthaven should be willing to pay attorney's fees to DU and the EFF.
Was this motion filed before or after the shakeup at the RJ and Stephens Media?
One would hope that Brown and the new management puts an end to this nonsense. The RJ's a newspaper, that like most, is on the "edge" perhaps of failure. Frederick seemed to do his best to offend what seems to be a large proportion of his readers and the community. If Brown continues on the same course, then it's my hope that the RJ fails, and that's a huge statement for me to make, because I believe in newspapers, whether print or online. But to offend and attack your readers over a law that's well-outdated and without warning, to me, is close to being the epitome of stupidity (I leave to the top end of that to George Bush and Sharron Angle).
What truly disturbs me is that it's been five days since Frederick lost his head, yet not a word on the direction or course of the newspaper at this point.
I am sure that Eli Lilly is lamenting the fact that Frederick's gone, as Prozac sales will probably decrease.
I hope the EFF does not agree to drop its counter claim. I say go after these scum bags. Righthaven is a dirty operation run by a scum bag lawyer and a scum bag newspaper.
vc: Let's hope the RJ improves as a newspaper because of this. My preference is the Sun, but competition generally tends to improve the product.
As for Sherm, from his writing, English was his second, maybe third language; and from his management style, a major company would have rid itself of him long ago.
So, at least temporary kudos for Stephens. We'll have to see if there are changes before I make them permanent.
"Was this motion filed before or after the shakeup at the RJ and Stephens Media?"
Did you not look at the document attached? It says it was filed yesterday.
LOL i wonder if this has to do with the change of managing editor or what ever it is called.
Chunky says:
He thinks it has everything to do with Righthaven not wanting to fight it out with a more formidable adversary. They're making a business out of aggressively picking on small time operations and individuals who can't afford to give them a run for their money.
That's what Chunky thinks!
kdand, I missed that, thanks for pointing it out. What really matters is when Righthaven decided on this course of action.
My point is this, I would speculate that the backlash from readers and (more importantly) advertisers played a significant role in the recent changes at the RJ. I would further speculate that this motion is a result of those changes if it was decided *after* it was known to Righthaven that Sherm was getting the boot and the new team was fed up with the negative publicity.
I thought Repukes hated attorneys and frivolous lawsuits! Oh, wait, I get it. They only love their own attorneys and their own frivolous lawsuits.