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Saturday, Sept. 11, 2010 | 2:05 a.m.
Sun archives
- Quick settlement reached in copyright lawsuit against PR company (9-10-2010)
- Texas woman emerges as vocal critic of copyright lawsuit firm (9-9-2010)
- Righthaven CEO defends company during roundtable discussion (9-9-2010)
- Copyright lawsuits filed against U.S. Marijuana Party, dating website (9-9-2010)
- 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)
Another company facing a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Righthaven LLC is fighting back, this time calling the Las Vegas company’s litigation campaign “a parasitical abuse” of judicial resources.
Righthaven is a company that detects online infringements of Las Vegas Review-Journal stories, obtains copyrights for those stories and then sues the alleged infringers.
The owner of the Review-Journal, Stephens Media LLC, has participated in the lawsuits by investing in Righthaven and providing the copyrights at issue in the suits.
The “parasitical abuse” charge was leveled in a court filing this week by Silver Matrix LLC.
Silver Matrix and an official there, Justin Beech, have a telecommunications industry website, www.dslreports.com. They were sued because a June 16 Review-Journal story about the CommPartners companies’ bankruptcies in Las Vegas was posted on the website.
In responding to the lawsuit and seeking its dismissal, attorney Hector Carbajal II of the Las Vegas law firm Carbajal & McNutt LLP wrote in court papers:
• Silver Matrix was not aware that a third party had posted the story to the website until it learned of the lawsuit, at which time the story was removed, “which is consistent with the website’s longstanding policy.”
• Nevada is an inappropriate venue to litigate the case because the defendant’s staff and operations are in the New York area and the third party who allegedly posted the story to the website appears to be based in New Jersey. In addition, eight replies to the post were from states other than Nevada or from another country.
• The alleged use of the story, “to the extent it was used, constitutes fair use.”
• The lawsuit claims are barred based on an “implied license,” a defense asserted in previous Righthaven cases by defendants who say the Review-Journal encourages the online sharing of its stories.
• The lawsuit claims are barred based on “waiver and estoppel,” arguments similar to those in other cases in which defendants say the Review-Journal for years apparently didn’t object to online postings of its stories but is now participating in lawsuits over such postings.
• Righthaven failed to mitigate its damages, if any, “and delayed bringing the claim to defendant’s attention when, among other things, it knew that defendant and other like defendants would have likely promptly removed the (story) without the need of litigation and upon the receipt of a simple and less costly inquiry or cease and desist letter. Plaintiff’s costs and fees in initiating the action were needless and unreasonable.”
• The lawsuit claims are barred because of copyright misuse. “Plaintiff is not seeking to protect its copyright or to stop infringing activity. It (sued) to obtain money in excess of the fair and reasonable value of the claimed infringement and to get compensation for its needless and punitive expenditure of legal and filing fees.”
Carbajal also wrote:
“Plaintiff’s business model appears to consist of filing high volumes of small claims copyright actions against numerous out-of-state defendants who must retain counsel to defend them at costs that far exceed the value of the claims at issue. Plaintiff does not appear to seek or even ask for the take-down of their works, but sues without advance notice in order to impose high transaction costs on anyone who would seek to defend themselves.
“Plaintiff seems to rely on the cost of defense to extract settlements that exceed the fair or reasonable value of the claim. The practice is abusive and the Nevada District Court should not take jurisdiction of such massive and parasitical abuse of its judicial resources,” he wrote.
Righthaven has not yet responded to the Silver Matrix filing.
Separately, Righthaven on Friday filed at least its 124th lawsuit since March, this time suing the Hawaii Tourism Association Inc. and an official there, Juergen Thomas Steinmetz.
The tourism association and Steinmetz have a website called eTurboNews that says it offers global travel industry news to 235,000 travel industry professionals in 226 countries and 17,000 journalists interested in travel news.
The Hawaii Tourism Association notes on its website it’s not affiliated with the Hawaii Tourism Authority, which is the lead state agency promoting tourism in the state.
The Righthaven lawsuit says a July 29 Review-Journal story about the History Channel show “Pawn Stars” and an Aug. 30 Review-Journal story about a poll on legalizing marijuana and prostitution were displayed without authorization on the eTurboNews website.
Court records indicate the Review-Journal stories on the website were credited to “lvrj.com” and the Review-Journal reporters who wrote the stories. One story was posted in full; the other seemed to be missing the first paragraph.
As in other recent lawsuits, Righthaven seeks damages of $150,000 and forfeiture of the eTurboNews website.
Steinmetz said he had not been contacted by the Review-Journal about the stories and that he’d never heard of Righthaven or the lawsuit until he was asked to comment on the suit by the Las Vegas Sun.
Steinmetz said he was unaware the Review-Journal stories were on the website and couldn’t say how they ended up there, but he would be looking into it and would remove them.
“This (the lawsuit) seems unethical. It seems like some kind of a scam,” he said.
Wow these Rightshaven LLC guys really are lame.
Chunky says:
Three cheers to Silver Matrix and Mr. Carbajal for not folding and fighting back against Righthaven! Chunky wishes them the best with their case.
"parasitical abuse" is a perfect term to describe what Mr. Gibson and Righthaven are doing with our legal system. Chunky's words describing them could not be published here.
That's what Chunky thinks!
Don't be surprised if in the future certain factions point to Righthaven's actions in concert with the Review Journal as evidence of the need for tort reform.
+++++
A couple arguments presented by the defense bear repeating:
"Righthaven failed to mitigate its damages, if any, "and delayed bringing the claim to defendant's attention when, among other things, it knew that defendant and other like defendants would have likely promptly removed the (story) without the need of litigation and upon the receipt of a simple and less costly inquiry or cease and desist letter. Plaintiff's costs and fees in initiating the action were needless and unreasonable."
"The lawsuit claims are barred because of copyright misuse. "Plaintiff is not seeking to protect its copyright or to stop infringing activity. It (sued) to obtain money in excess of the fair and reasonable value of the claimed infringement and to get compensation for its needless and punitive expenditure of legal and filing fees."
Let's do some math:
1. Righthaven LLC appears to have filed about 120 suits for copyright infringement -- all seem to have been filed in the U.S. District Court for Nevada.
2. Righthaven appears to be filing more than 5 new suits each week, which translates to more than 250 new cases a year.
3. On average, U.S. District Court judges complete about 16 trials a year. To keep our math simple, let's assume that in the District Court of Nevada, each judge can complete 20 trials a year.
4. The entire U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada has a total of 10 judges. If all of the judges in the entire District did nothing but hear Righthaven copyright cases, their maximum capacity would be 200 trials per year.
But the Las Vegas branch, where most if not all of these Righthaven actions are continually being filed at Righthaven's election, has only 6 judges, or capacity of less than 120 trials per year. (The actual capacity, based on the averages, is 96.)
Righthaven has every legal right to sue to maximize its' profits. However Righthaven's multiplicitous exercise of its individual rights in picayune cases could prevent anyone else from exercising and protecting their rights in more substantial matters.
Steve Gibson's Righthaven is trying to turn the federal court system into an ATM machine. After a while the court will likely do what it did in California when a lawyer flooded the courts with hundreds of lawsuits for technical Americans with Disability Act (ADA) violations: sanction him and shut down this nonsense. Real lawyers serve take-down notices first. Then, if the website owner does not comply, file a lawsuit. Gibson's tactics are both tacky and an enormous waste of judicial resources.
lericgoodman, most, like 90%, all cases are settled or dismissed and never get to the trial stage. Most of Righthavens cases will be like that, too.
I hope one or two do go to trial just to see the outcome.
Cognastic, all those are not really acceptable defenses. The Judge will probably just ignore them as chatter.
"Nevada is an inappropriate venue to litigate the case " A judge has already ruled in another case that this is not a valid defense. Hmmmm...I wonder why Green did not mention that.
"The alleged use of the story, "to the extent it was used, constitutes fair use." Copying and pasting all or a significant part of other's work is the exact opposite meaning of the legal meaning of fair use.
"Silver Matrix was not aware that a third party had posted the story to the website until it learned of the lawsuit" If a staff person or owner posted the story then this is not a defense. If it is a casual user then to use a safe harbor defense then one has to register with the US Copyright Office which obviously this site has not done.
The implied license defense will be laughed out of court along with the waiver and estoppel defense.
"Righthaven failed to mitigate its damages" The copyright law explicitly allows to sue for statutory damages that are not related to economic damages.
"The lawsuit claims are barred because of copyright misuse" One can't misuse its own copyright. That is silly.
Steinmetz is the scammer. He is the that has allow someone to steal copyright material and post it on his site.
Of course the Sun has nothing better to print then garbage junk chatter from lawsuits that very little legal standing.
The Sun again shows that has very low standards in the news business.
Keep it up. Spread the word. The Sun is a koolaid site.
Third party huh? What's to say Righthaven doesn't have their own crew creating user names and trolling the internet. With millions of forums out there, the bait is easily set in a matter of seconds with free registration on the vast majority of these websites.
What a scary thought. To have STANDING to sue someone over other "users" on said websites is the scariest thing of all. Why wouldn't Righthaven create the abuse when it's so easy to file lawsuits?
Hey SgtRock,
Who are you? The disgraced Steve Gibson in disguise? Getting kind of nervous, aren't you, that someone is fighting back. You didn't take that into your calculations?
At the end of this, Gibson will likely be disbarred for malpractice, and misuse of the legal system. This suit has already ruined the online reputation of the LVRJ. Blogs are pulling their links in droves, and are adopting policies of not linking to any LVRJ pages in the future simply out of self preservation, adopting the meme LVRJ=EVIL.
The LVRJ has not so much shot itself in the foot as given Gibson the gun and allowed him to do it for them.
What does Gibson care? He doesn't own stock in the paper - only in Righthaven LLC. If he ruins the paper's reputation, well, that is the paper's tough luck. He'll just wash his hands and walk away. The victims of Gibson's scam aren't just the destitute bloggers he's suing, but the LVRJ as well. Gibson doesn't care where the blood comes from that he sucks, as long as it is red.
Case in point: LVRJ Staff in Revolt!
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/09/10/...
The copyright infringement campaign was already an awkward development for the paper's reporters prior to the Angle suit. Sources at the newspaper told me Mitchell and Gibson held a meeting last month to calm down the staff and explained that the company believes this was the best way to protect their content, and, in turn, their jobs. One veteran reporter responded by voicing concern about the problems the lawsuits could cause for the paper's journalists. That's exactly what happened following another of the paper's suits, this one brought against the website of the tourist publication the Las Vegas Advisor for posting an Review-Journal article about the results of a survey the Advisor did on Strip ticket prices. But that was itself the result of a scoop the Advisor handed to the paper, and now threatens the reporter-source relationship between the Advisor and R-J's entertainment scribe.
Its interesting how the Sun tries to hold themselves out there like a uninterested third party. My guess is there is collusion going on. For some reason the Sun plays the good guy in this, while their partner the LVRJ takes the heat through a third party. It really on the surface makes no sense. I think this is a attempt to establish some sort of case law, that all papers will hang their hat on. It may have something to do with the RJ and Suns alleged plans to charge for their web sites. It appears to me anyway that they are working in concert, I am not buying this as a just a reported story.
As far as I'm concerned... the Las Vegas Review Journal no longer exists. I will not visit their site, I will no longer read their paper, I will NEVER ever spend another dollar in the LVRJ for advertising.
Advertisers should start pulling their advertising because readership is going to sink.
What Gibson and Righthaven, LLC is doing is a complete abuse of the system paid for by taxpayers. They are parasites and the staff at the LVRJ should be embarrassed to be associated with such a money grubbing outfit.
Good for nvpatentlawyer. He's read the cases. Anyone who knows courts, has read the cases, and has experienced the realities of litigation can see the problems posed by Righthaven's practices.
Sgt. Rock, had you read the cases, you might see things more practically and how like facts can lead to different outcomes. The cases nvpatentlawyer mentions are easy enough to find. I don't want to spoil them for you by giving away the ending, but basically a disabled person brought actions against many businesses. Because the cases were expensive to defend, there were many settlements that netted a tidy profit. This made money regularly, until ... Well, it is sobering. When you read these cases and try to distinguish them, you might want to keep in mind that (a) the ADA guy, like the R-J was on a crusade to protect rights established by law that he rightly thought of as worthy of protection -- just as I'm sure the R-J's owners think that their rights are worthy of protection, (b) the ADA guy didn't have a published business plan, (c) the ADA guy didn't organize a business to profit from his lawsuits, (d) the ADA guy didn't leave a trail of Admissions and Declarations Against Interest in the form of business plans, statements, and blogs, (e) the ADA guy didn't have high tech, he just rolled around in his wheelchair and when he found an obstruction or an inconvenience, he sued (as was his right granted by law) rather than give notice and allow correction of the condition. Read the cases and see what happened to the ADA guy -- and his lawyers. Sobering. Worthy of consideration.
The ADA guy is still filing suits. He lost one counter-suit which he had to paid damages but the other guy was still forced to make ADA upgrades and pay for a post upgrade inspection. The court still has not forced the ADA lawyer to make any changes to his strategy.
Also, you are comparing apples to oranges.
The ADA was saying that all those businesses were violating his ADA rights.
These copyright infringements are fairly straightforward. They are not even close to complexity as the ADA cases. Not one has been dismissed. Many are getting settle.
Almost all law firms have a for-profit business models. Otherwise they would be broke and out of business.
What you are saying is just silly stuff.
Sue those Hospitals who saved your life Sherm, it is about your speed.
Who is drinking the Reverand Jones' poisoned Kool-Aid (Reg. TM Kraft Foods) now?
Litigation was once defined as "A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage." (Ambrose Bierce, the Devil's Dictionary, 1906, copyright expired).
It seemed obvious that this violates legislative intent, so I called both of my Senators and all of the NV Reps and asked what they were going to do to fix the "Review-Journal copyright trolling" situation.
They each sent me to a staffer who has been handling calls on this. One was assigned already in each office, and they knew all of my concerns already because they've heard them already from other callers. I asked if this was the original intent of the law, and all of the offices said no. And all of them said they are looking at ways to protect copyrights without allowing such blatant trolling to go on.
If there is a legislative fix on the horizon to this, Righthaven will have no one to blame but themselves. They have been arrogant and brazen about their approach, almost inviting enemies.
That arrogance has always seemed like a pretty dumb approach. The law is not a static thing. And Righthaven is giving lawmakers a chance to do something they love to tell constituents they did: protect them from a bad guy, fix an injustice.
So good luck with that "tallest blade of grass" approach, Righthaven. There will be a lot of cheers when the legislative lawnmower comes around again.
Has anyone checked the IP addresses of the third-party posters to those used by the RJ or Righthaven? Someone with connections to either organization could easily post stories throughout the Internet then contact Righthaven about the posting.