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Thursday, Sept. 9, 2010 | 2:05 a.m.
Sun archives
- Righthaven’s suit against Sharron Angle draws increased attention (9-8-2010)
- Defendant accuses Righthaven of misusing legal system (9-5-2010)
- Sharron Angle hit with R-J copyright infringement lawsuit (9-3-2010)
- Righthaven wins key ruling as new criticism leveled over suits (9-3-2010)
- Righthaven sues D.C.-based group over R-J editorial posting (9-2-2010)
- PR firm Kirvin Doak sued by Righthaven over Celine Dion story it promoted (9-1-2010)
- Why we are writing about the R-J copyright lawsuits (9-1-2010)
- Settlement reached after judge refuses to dismiss copyright suit (8-31-2010)
- Judge questions Righthaven over R-J copyright suit costs (8-26-2010)
- Consumer group offers help to defendants over R-J copyright suits (8-25-2010)
- Righthaven CEO’s law firm in merger (8-24-2010)
- R-J accused of entrapment over copyright enforcement (8-23-2010)
- Blogger asks to pay $200 to close R-J copyright suit (8-20-2010)
- 2 lawsuits over R-J copyrights lift total to 100 (8-19-2010)
- Website operators use new defenses to fight R-J copyright suits (8-18-2010)
- Righthaven reaches settlements in 2 cases over R-J copyrights (8-12-2010)
- Righthaven sues Democratic Underground website over R-J posting (8-11-2010)
- 5 more websites sued over R-J story copyrights (8-10-2010)
Colleen Lynn is an admitted copyright infringer — at least by the standards of Las Vegas newspaper copyright enforcement company Righthaven LLC.
The Austin, Texas, woman hasn’t been sued by Righthaven, but in recent weeks she has emerged as one of the most vocal behind-the-scenes critics of Righthaven’s lawsuit campaign in which at least 117 bloggers and website operators have been hit with lawsuits since March.
Most defendants say they were sued without warning or even a request to take down the material at issue.
These lawsuits target people and companies that Righthaven says infringed on copyrights to Las Vegas Review-Journal material by re-posting all or portions of stories, columns and editorials. In some cases, the suits say the material was posted not by website operators but by message-board users.
After learning about Rightaven in early August, Lynn anonymously set up the website righthavenvictims.blogspot.com, one of at least five online sites where Righthaven defendants find and share information to help each other.
At first, Lynn didn’t want anyone to know she was behind the anti-Righthaven site. She initially was afraid of being sued by Righthaven and scrambled to remove from her website Review-Journal stories about dogs attacking and killing two children in the Las Vegas area in 2008.
Now, Lynn is ready to go on the record.
Archiving stories and news photos about dog maulings from around the country is crucial to the mission of Lynn’s group DogsBite.org, which Lynn started in October 2007.
She says such archives of newspaper stories from around the country are also crucial in helping countless other nonprofits of all types carry out their missions.
DogsBite.org was launched three months after a leashed pit bull attacked Lynn and nearly severed her arm as she tried to jog past the animal and its handler on a street in her former hometown of Seattle.
DogsBite.org promotes banning the breeding of pit bulls, mandatory spaying and neutering of the dogs, requiring pit bulls to be implanted with microchip identification devices, requiring pit bull owners to carry at least $300,000 in liability insurance and prohibiting felons from owning pit bulls.
“I haven’t been able to think all day upon reading your series of Righthaven articles (I just learned today about this horrific injustice),” Lynn told the Las Vegas Sun in an e-mail Aug. 4, the day she found out about Righthaven.
She found out about Righthaven, ironically, through a Google “attack dog” alert — the Sun had used the “attack dog” analogy in describing Righthaven as opposed to the “watchdog” role most newspapers play in enforcing copyright policies.
“We are constantly under the threat of lawsuits by ‘select’ and wealthy pit bull factions,” Lynn wrote. “I just wanted to let you know the stark terror that filled my bones for the past 12 hours. Obviously the fear is that jackass (Righthaven) will get new clients.”
In recent weeks, Lynn has talked with Righthaven defendants about how Righthaven can be dealt with in and out of court.
One solution that Lynn may pursue was offered by the online privacy and freedom of speech organization Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is working to help Righthaven defendants and plans to intervene in court against the Las Vegas company.
That solution is to get Congress to reduce what the EFF calls “extraordinary statutory damages” plaintiffs may demand in copyright suits.
These damage claims — typically $75,000 or $150,000 by Righthaven — are for damages that don’t involve economic loss to Righthaven.
Rather, they are in place to deter copyright infringement, though critics doubt whether the types of infringements Righthaven typically sues over will yield judgments by judges or juries anywhere close to $75,000 or $150,000.
Critics say Righthaven’s statutory damage demands, as well as its demands that defendants’ website domain names be forfeited to Righthaven, serve to intimidate defendants into quickly settling as the proposed settlement amounts — typically $7,500 or less — are far lower than legal costs to fight Righthaven.
Righthaven and the Review-Journal, however, insist their lawsuit campaign is not about collecting damages but instead is about stopping rampant piracy of Review-Journal news content.
“Righthaven LLC vigorously enforces the copyrighted work of Review-Journal reporters, columnists and editors,” Mark Hinueber, R-J vice president and general counsel, said in an R-J story Saturday after Righthaven sued Senate candidate Sharron Angle. “We expect everyone to comply with the copyright laws of the United States. It is never appropriate to utilize entire Review-Journal articles or columns without prior, express written permission of the newspaper.”
Lynn, however, said reasonable access to information documented by news organizations over the years is crucial to the missions of nonprofits.
Asked about assertions by the Review-Journal that special-interest websites like hers have been diverting readers and revenue from newspaper websites, Lynn said: “I doubt our documenting the deaths of 30 people a year (by dog attacks) is hurting newspapers’ revenue.”
Online sharing of newspaper stories has been common for more than a decade and until Righthaven came along, few newspapers seemed to object to postings at nonprofit and special-interest websites.
These sites don’t compete directly with newspapers for general news specific to each newspaper’s geographic market.
“It never dawned on me” to seek permission before posting news stories documenting dog attacks, Lynn said. “I’m not a journalist.”
Now, she’s using an archiving tool called WebCite, which preserves cited webpages and websites and that Lynn hopes doesn’t run afoul of Righthaven.
In the meantime, Lynn continues to work behind the scenes to help individuals and groups sued by Righthaven and is also critical of the Review-Journal’s policy of allowing its material to be used online in the form of just the first paragraph and a link to the R-J website.
“Abiding by the Review-Journal’s first-paragraph policy would be extremely damaging and demoralizing for non-profits, volunteer groups and other website operators that are dedicated to impacting public policy in an effort to create a better future for all Americans. The Review-Journal’s current policy and partnership with Righthaven seeks to destroy the very fiber of the Internet’s underpinnings too: The freedom of information, education and exchange of ideas. Their ‘sue the audience’ tactic does little more than ruin organizations and lives, all for the gain of a dirty dollar,” Lynn said.
“The Review-Journal’s requirements for non-profits and grassroots organizations that are part of a national debate to change public policy are wholly unreasonable. To start, in 60 days that link may be invalid, sending a user to an error page. Different types of articles are placed into archives at different times — each news organization varies. When this occurs, that URL often changes. Not only can a user then not access the article, he or she may not even know to do a separate search within the site’s archives. The person merely sees an error message: ‘This article is no longer available,’” she said. “Secondly, the first paragraph of a news article is usually one to two sentences in length and summarizes the article. The meat of the article — a startling quote, contradiction, irony, powerful or poor use of logic, revealing background details, statistical data and more — is always somewhere in the middle.”
She also highlighted the factors of legitimacy and impartiality that news stories bring to public debates
“Members of the U.S. media have far greater access to, and the knowledge of how to attain, source data materials than citizens and social change groups do,” she said. “How can any person or group effectively educate the public and lawmakers without providing access to historical and past news stories that ‘actualize’ and explain our cause written by seasoned journalists?”
Lynn noted that Rightaven in some cases has sued Review-Journal sources and said: “DogsBite.org fears the day when a news agency sues us for copyright infringement after that same group quoted data from one of our freely-available dog bite fatality statistics.”
Lynn isn’t alone among nonprofits in arguing about the importance of their online news databases — and how the news industry didn’t object to these news collections until Righthaven started filing its lawsuits.
The operator of the nonprofit website www.windaction.org (covering environmental problems with wind energy), Lisa Linowes, publishes it from her home in New Hampshire. She, like many defendants, was surprised to be sued by Righthaven.
“At the time of the posting of the article, I did not believe that I infringed on anyone’s copyright. One reason for not believing that the posting of the article would infringe on anyone’s copyright is that, over the past five years, we have posted somewhere between 28,000 and 29,000 articles on the passive, noncommercial website and we have never been subject to any lawsuit for copyright infringement for any of those articles until now,” Linowes said in court papers. “Nor am I aware of any similar passive noncommercial website that has been sued for copyright infringement merely for posting news articles from around the United States and the rest of the world, concerning a matter of public policy and interest.”
A July 27 post by the Reason Foundation noted the Idaho-based The Armed Citizen responded to a Righthaven lawsuit by closing access to its extensive collection of news stories about citizens using weapons in self defense.
“Since 2003, Clayton Cramer, an author and historian who has written numerous books on the right to keep and bear arms and the evolution of America’s gun culture, has edited a website that is currently called The Armed Citizen. With the help of another contributor, David Burnett, Cramer uses the site as a repository for newspaper articles that document instances where firearms owners use their weapons in self-defense. Over the years, the pair had posted excerpts and complete text of approximately 4,700 articles, and in doing so, they created a unique and useful archive for researchers, activists, and people who simply enjoy feel-good tales of homeowners protecting themselves and their property from intruders and assailants by any means necessary,” the Reason story said.
“In all that time, they say, they’d never received a single request from a copyright owner to remove an article. Last week, however, Cramer and Burnett were caught off-guard by a figure who aims to establish himself as the new sheriff in the lawless wilds of cyberspace. He was packing a .36-caliber copyright infringement lawsuit and he didn’t bother with a warning shot. Instead, Cramer and Burnett only learned they were being sued after a reporter from the Las Vegas Sun contacted them about the case,” Reason noted.
A similar result was seen after a Righthaven lawsuit against the Hepatitis C Support Project in San Francisco. Its website www.hcvadvocate.org now says: “The publication of the (site’s) Weekly News Review has been suspended until further notice due to litigation.”
All I can think of with these lawsuits is someone needs money really bad.
Chunky says:
Three cheers for Ms. Lynn and let's hope she gets enough momentum, legal assistance and support to create as much misery for Righthaven and Gibson as legally possible.
Chunky has said it before but he'll say it again; there's little or no question that the defendants may have used the materials improperly but likely unknowingly. The rub comes where as Steve Green put it so eloquently "they've made a business model out of going directly to filing suit instead of sending warning letters". (*NOTE: that's not Mr. Green's exact quote but I think it is close enough to get the general point across).
Again, Chunky knows little of the law or legal system but he knows that while they (Righthaven) may have the legal right to proceed as they do, it doesn't make it morally or ethically the right way to use our legal system.
Go Ms. Lynn! Chunky is cheering for you!
That's what Chunky thinks!
I am calling the RJ today to tell them I am canceling my subscription and will as a matter of fact make a point of not buying from their advertisers.
She did a search for "attack dog" and Gibson's name came up. I'm sure there were plenty of worthy attack dogs who were insulted by that result.
Righthaven and Steven Gibson are why lawyers are so hated and scorned. Nice going Steven, way to fuel the fire of lawyer contempt.
Jke....
You realize, if you cancel your subscription to the RJ, you will be unable to read the Sun.
The sun, much like many welfare programs, is unsustainable on it's own, thus has to be included with the Review Journal.
As for the issue here, the Review Journal is no different then any other entity that publishes or screens the news. They wish to protect their property and it's use.
Look at what the NFL did with Super bowl football parties. It wasn't popular, nobody was happy about it, but it was within their rights to do. Now we have Super Sunday parties instead.
If the rules for utilizing stories from the RJ seem unfair and unjust, then fortunately virtually anything they write about can be found from another source with far less stringent policies.
The other issue here seems to be simple ignorance. People assume it's ok to republish an article without permission. Obviously its not.
Go Ms. Lynn go! Both Chunky and Lisa are cheering for you!
Non-profits can link the stories to their hearts desire. They can post the headline and a few sentences of the story. That will fulfill their desire to share information.
They can't copy and paste all or a significant portion of the story.
It is obvious that Colleen Lynn has zero ethics.
Anybody that has a half of a brain knows that copying and pasting other's work is just plain wrong.
She needs to grow up.
Stop copying and pasting stories.
Just link, headline, comment, and no more than two paragraphs or a few sentences.
I went to righthavenvictims.blogspot.com and it is a riot.
About 95% of it is just links to Sun stories.
So here is a lady who is an advocate against Righthaven and the LVRJ.
So what does she do?
She builds a website that just links to Sun articles.
So that just proves that the Sun articles are not news articles but puff advocate articles.
The irony is that her site might be considered copyright infringement.
Yes, she does do the proper thing for each link but her whole website is just Sun links.
If she did that with AP links then AP would send her a take-down notice for doing that and would sue her if she ignored the notice.
The Sun probably is happy that somebody is cloning their web site and promoting their political and personal agendas.
SgtRock: I hope you do realize you're in the very minority of this issue. I'm affected because a website I frequent to has been sued. While nothing is said in the background, I'm making it my mission to make sure I'm well-informed on the copyright issues. As a matter of fact, I am a 25 year Internet veteran.
Copyright issues are nothing new to the Internet world, but what Righthaven is doing is completely unethical and contravenes the law. Normal procedure calls for, oh for example, RightHaven to send what's called a "DMCA takedown" because Righthaven owns the copyright (I have no argument with who owns what - it's just the process that irritates the heck out of me - Righthaven is doing it wrong).
I'm backing EFF with this one - the process Righthaven is currently using would be construed as extortion - especially demanding 75,000 dollars and a forfeiture of the web domain - excuse me. That's a clear violation of the DMCA - which doesn't require that you demand the cash and the domain name because some non-profit violated their copyright.
Guess what? Steve Gibson and LVRJ will go bankrupt soon, because once the judge declares barratry (which is very clear to me) on Righthaven, then the company would have no choice but to pay back every single dime that they extorted and then face a counter-lawsuit for damages thanks to the vexatious litigant law. LVRJ has money, and so does Steve Gibson - they could lose all of their assets very easily because of what they did. They went the wrong way, and now they're going to have to pay for it at the end.
SgtRock;
"Yes, she does do the proper thing for each link but her whole website is just Sun links.
If she did that with AP links then AP would send her a take-down notice for doing that and would sue her if she ignored the notice."
++++++
Why can't the RJ attempt to resolve their copyright issues by sending take down notices like the AP before before they resort to limited court resources? I'm sure there are a few taxpayers who would not be too fond of the RJ using their tax dollars to resolve a business issue when a simple email or certified letter could do the trick.
"That's a clear violation of the DMCA"
That is what Righthaven is suing under.
Not one case has been thrown out.
The $75,000 or $150,000 comes right from DMCA under statutory damages.
If an owner or website staffer posts copyright material then there is no safe harbor take-down notice area.
If a causal user posts copyright material and if the website registers and pays a fee with the US copyright office then there is safe harbor for that.
Go read DMCA before mouthing off saying what it says.
" judge declares barratry "
A judge can't declare barratry. It is a state criminal charge that can only be brought by the a district attorney. Nobody has been charged with that in Nevada. A core basis for the charge is that the lawsuits are baseless. Not one of the Righthaven cases have been through out.
"Why can't the RJ attempt to resolve their copyright issues by sending take down notices like the AP before before they resort to limited court resources?"
The law allows one to directly sue.
OK....let's make a deal.
Go open a business.
People will steal from you because that just happens in all businesses.
Once they steal then send them a letter begging them to return the goods and not to steal again.
Tell me how that works out.
SgtRock: your analogy doesn't hold true. Most insurance company WILL cover thefts up to a point if they are a regular store or something.
Your logic shows that you think everyone steals from everyone all the time.
Right now we are talking about people stealing copyright material.
I think you never own a retail store. About 20% of their goods get stolen a year and the insurance companies cover about 0% of it.
So, according to alot of people here, the retail store should just send a letter to the shoplifters and beg them to return the item.
Good business plan.