Las Vegas Sun

June 4, 2012

Currently: 98° | Complete forecast | Log in

Righthaven CEO defends company during roundtable discussion

Image

Justin M. Bowen

Steven Gibson is CEO of Righthaven, which buys copyrights from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, then sues people who have violated those copyrights.

By (contact)

Thursday, Sept. 9, 2010 | 2:05 a.m.

Related stories

Sun archives

American legal and media insiders seem to agree the unauthorized online re-posting of newspaper content is an issue.

Some agree it’s a problem.

But uncertainties abound in quantifying how it may be affecting newspaper revenue.

The issue was discussed Wednesday during a telephone roundtable sponsored by the international law firm Bryan Cave.

Participating were Barbara Wall, vice president and senior associate general counsel at Gannett Co., the nation’s largest newspaper company; Eric Goldman, copyright scholar and associate professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law; and Steven Gibson, CEO at Las Vegas copyright enforcement company Righthaven LLC.

The topic: “Can Large-Scale Copyright Enforcement Save the Newspaper Business?”

Gibson said Righthaven — best known for filing at least 117 copyright infringement lawsuits since March, generally without warning, over Las Vegas

Review-Journal material — is offering a viable solution to what he called the problem of online infringements.

Gibson said the lawsuits with their stiff claims for statutory damages — damages in which economic loss need not be shown — can serve as a deterrent to infringements. Righthaven typically seeks $75,000 or $150,000 in its lawsuits.

This approach, he said, is preferable to newspapers having to hire hundreds of people to send millions of takedown notices to infringers.

But Gibson said there’s more to Righthaven than its lawsuits. The Las Vegas startup generally wants to help copyright owners monetize — or derive value from — their copyrights over time and may get involved in licensing arrangements.

“I don’t want Righthaven to be seen as a company only finding infringements and filing lawsuits,” Gibson said.

Gibson dismissed a suggestion from Goldman that in many of its lawsuits, Righthaven seemed to be suing people who thought they were friends of the Review-Journal’s.

Copyright infringement “is an unfriendly act,” Gibson said.

Gibson and Goldman traded arguments during the call over whether unauthorized online postings of newspaper material help, or hurt, newspapers.

In most of the Righthaven lawsuits, the defendants are special-interest websites or blogsites. Righthaven is not suing the Review-Journal’s direct general news competitors in Las Vegas and it’s not suing news aggregators like Google and Yahoo.

Typical Righthaven defendants are political bloggers, sports betting websites and super-specialized sites like that of a former prosecutor who documents “no-body” murder prosecutions — murders in which the victim’s body hasn’t been located.

Goldman noted viewers of a re-posted newspaper story on a special-interest website likely otherwise would never have seen the story since they previously had no interest in going to the source newspaper website for news.

In this instance, the unauthorized re-posting, or infringement, may drive traffic to and bring publicity to the source newspaper, particularly with a link.

Gibson, however, disputed whether these types of postings actually drive traffic to source newspapers.

He noted someone doing a Google search for a specific story may be directed to an infringing version of the story rather than the source newspaper.

Righthaven has argued in its lawsuits that copyright infringement of the type it sues over has harmed the newspaper industry’s finances.

But no one, including Righthaven and including Gibson on Wednesday’s call, has produced hard data on how these types of infringements have affected newspaper finances.

Wall said that while Gannett has no plans to start suing infringers on a mass basis, unauthorized use of newspaper content online is a problem that the industry needs to find a joint solution for.

She noted Gannett incurs substantial costs in generating news. “Giving it away for free is not a sustainable business model,” Wall said.

While Gibson frequently says newspapers would have to hire large staffs to deal with all copyright infringers by sending them takedown notices, Wall said that task is currently handled by editors already in place at Gannett properties around the country.

Having editors contact infringers and demand or request material be taken down and/or be replaced with links is a common practice in the newspaper industry.

It’s how the Las Vegas Sun deals with infringement, as well as other papers such as the Seattle Times.

The journalism site Poynter Online reported Aug. 31: “Executives at other newspapers say take-down notices can easily resolve most copyright conflicts without litigation.

“Generally we don’t even do it through lawyers,” Seattle Times Executive Editor David Boardman, an officer of the American Society of News Editors, told Poynter Online. “Normally all it takes is a call or note or e-mail or letter to somebody just saying, ‘Hey, you’re in violation of our copyright. Please take it down.’ More often than not, they do.”

Discussion: 4 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.

  1. By vegas_tom
    Sept. 9, 2010
    9:22 a.m.
    Flag

    > There are two possible reasons.

    If I wanted Sherman's opinion I'd read his swill on the RJ. why do you wish to pollute the Sun with his twisted views?

    > One is that the Sun has given permission to Harry Reid to steal Sun copyright material.

    well, if they've given him permission it's not stealing, is it?

    You have no idea what arrangements the Sun has with Reid --- but we do know that Angle has nothing in place with the RJ. Seems silly, doesn't it?

    And lets give the Sun some credit --- they let blowhards like you, Mr. Mitchell express their views here --- no matter how toxic or repulsive they are. You can't say that at the RJ, who will 86 those who don't walk in lockstep with the publishers.

    lmao. you're pathetic, Mitchell.

  2. By JerryWayne
    Sept. 9, 2010
    11:39 a.m.
    Flag

    so Sgt Rock works for the Sun now? He seems to know all the inner workings he must be on the payroll right?

  3. By murrayburns
    Sept. 9, 2010
    2:33 p.m.
    Flag

    ScottLv: "What is the End Game for the RJ?" That really is the question, isn't it? At this point, it doesn't seem profitable, though it does seem like the RJ thinks litigation is the way to increased revenues.
    JLOKC: Another smart statement -- We haven't seen any numbers that might support the loss of revenues for the RJ. It's all supposition. I understand statutory damages don't need that sort of support, but Federal Judges can do pretty much what they want.
    Sarge: Just read the statement by the Seattle Times editor. It's clear that that newspaper has been successful with letters. And, by the way, it has a larger readership than the RJ. Also, newspapers are going online these days anyway so the "enclosure" issue you continually refer to is near meaningless.

    In general, I wonder the following:
    Why hasn't the RJ covered its own story?
    What do the reporters there think of this issue?
    How many sources have they lost because of this?

  4. By vegaslee
    Sept. 9, 2010
    4:49 p.m.
    Flag

    SgtRock,

    You do post some interesting things but would be interested in where you came up with the "10% rule".

    Most newspapers have no problem with anyone using the Headline and the first paragraph of an article with a link back to the story.

    It appears on "Harry's" site that is what he is doing.

Post a comment

Commenting requires registration.

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.

If you would like to submit your comment as a letter to the editor, you may submit it here.

Most Popular