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Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011 | 4:33 p.m.
Las Vegas copyright enforcement company Righthaven LLC is now suing individual message-board posters, not just website operators.
Righthaven, which files copyright infringement lawsuits over unapproved online postings of material from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post, filed seven infringement lawsuits Tuesday and Wednesday in U.S. District Court for Nevada, lifting its lawsuit total since March to at least 203.
Among the defendants sued Monday were message board posters identified as James Higgins and Wayne Hoehn.
Higgins, according to Righthaven, posts as Jim_Higgins on a Google Groups message board. Records indicate that on Nov. 21 he posted a Review-Journal column about Transportation Security Administration pat downs of the elderly and disabled at Reno-Tahoe International Airport. The post credited columnist John L. Smith but didn't credit the Review-Journal, records show.
Righthaven said Hoehn posts as "Dogs that Bark" on the website madjacksports.com, where Righthaven says that since 1999 Hoehn has posted about 18,000 items. Among those, the lawsuit says, was an unauthorized copy of a Review-Journal column called "Public employee pensions -- we can't afford them."
That post, records show, credited the Review-Journal and columnist Sherman Frederick.
In the past, some message-board users were sued by Righthaven, but they were named as codefendants along with the websites where the material was posted.
The lawsuits against Higgins and Hoehn differ in that the websites where the material was posted aren't being sued. Because of that, Righthaven is not trying to seize the Google Groups and madjacksports domain names.
In fact, Righthaven previously sued and settled with the owner of the madjacksports site.
Both the madjacksports and Google sites are somewhat protected from copyright lawsuits because they have posted "DMCA" notices as required by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. These notices, which must be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, inform copyright holders who to contact if they would like infringing material removed.
An attorney for Righthaven on Wednesday said those notices don't apply to individual website users who violate copyrights by posting material online without authorization.
"Whenever there is a direct infringement claim against an individual who is a user or a poster on a 'service provider,' as described in the DMCA, a 'takedown' notice is not required to file suit," said Shawn Mangano, a Las Vegas attorney representing Righthaven in the litigation.
As usual in its lawsuits, Righthaven demands $150,000 in damages from both Higgins and Hoehn.
Separately, new Righthaven suits were filed against five website operators, along with two website users, claiming material from the Review-Journal was posted on those sites without authorization. These suits seek damages of $150,000 apiece and forfeiture of the defendants' domain names.
Those defendants are:
-- Business Insider Inc., owner of the website businessinsider.com; and Gus Lubin, identified as the features editor of Business Insider.
-- Inform Technologies Inc., owner of the website yuku.com; and yuku.com user Todd Taliaferro, identified on the site as "Todd8080"
-- Inform Technologies and yuku.com user Lisa Vinci, identified there as "bogglethemind."
-- Bob G. Bell; registrant of the domain name americanarchaeologist.com
-- Peter Ashton, owner of the domain name peteashton.com
Messages for comment on the lawsuits were left with Higgins, Lubin, Inform Technologies, Bell and Ashton. Hoehn couldn't immediately be located for comment.
Righthaven, which is half owned by an affiliate of Review-Journal owner Stephens Media LLC, says its lawsuits, typically filed without warning, are necessary to crack down on rampant online infringement of newspaper stories, columns, editorials, photos and graphics.
Prior to the Righthaven lawsuits, the Review-Journal and Denver Post generally tried to resolve copyright disputes out of court and that's still the practice of most of the newspaper industry.
Critics and defense attorneys call the lawsuits frivolous and in some cases are fighting back, hitting Stephens Media and Righthaven with counterclaims charging abuse of the court system and the copyright law.
Most of the lawsuits are settled, apparently for under five figures, and Righthaven observers are waiting for Nevada federal judges handling the contested cases to issue rulings on several motions for dismissal.
So far, the only definitive ruling is one that went against Righthaven when a judge found a Las Vegas real estate agent was protected by the fair use doctrine in posting part of a Review-Journal story on his website.
I guess business is bad. What a surprise!
Yep righthaven is owned by a scum bag lawyer. This man serves no useful purpose to society. Just my opinion but im glad im not related to this jerk. What a loser. If he were my son i would disown him. Period. Yuck Yuck Yuck!!! Just reading about his dirt bag makes me want to take a shower!!
I'm sitting here very glad I canceled the RJ.
This is what brought me to the Sun, wish more RJ readers knew about this instead of learning the hard way.
This is a new low. When posting (like to this article), if I include a quote from an RJ article (or another poster) about said article, can I get sued? Good luck with that. Righthaven can have my house. It's worthless. I've got 14 year old truck that's paid for, though.
The RJ's purpose here is to push people to read the RJ and it's ads, and they're willing to shred the First Amendment to do it.
When this doesn't work, and drives people away, they will fire the ambulance chasers posthaste.
Tell the RJ's advertisers you will read their ads in the Sun, and never in the RJ and it will be over.
This outfit sounds as if they're in the bullying business. As someone who has spent more than 30 years in publishing, I know U.S. Copyright law well. And the "Fair Use" provision of that law permits brief quoting of any copyrighted source, even without permission. This company likely hopes that most people, not knowing the law, can be intimidated. In court, though, they are likely to lose big, since selective quoting is protected.
these guys are bigger crooks than the people they file lawsuits against.
At this point in the game, I'm afraid to even READ the Righthaven Journal.
What is the RJ trying to accomplish here? Its not a term paper, and most these message board posters aren't receiving money to post.....these lawsuits make zero sense. UNLESS, they're only going after deep pocketed individuals.....still, I don't get it. I've posted on UNLV basketball boards for over 15 years....I'm sure,in that time, I've posted an RJ column (although I always give them credit), but I don't get what the RJ is doing. They're revenues are going down, so they do this?....why not just look for other sources of revenue....or don't make your online newspaper free. There's plenty of newspapers out there that aren't free online....
This is low life stuff imo. You should be thanking people for using your content and spreading your name around not suing them. Hope you go under.
Maybe Obama needs to come to Las Vegas for a teachable moment with these plaintiff lawyers and the R-J.
In some cases it looks so minor as to hardly be worth the time/money/effort TO sue, but in other cases the information Righthaven owns (in the same way you own your car, and don't expect others to just use it without permission) is either being reprinted in full with no credit even mentioned (hey, how about a LINK back to R-J?) or being twisted in to something other than the paper's factual information as originally presented, like in the case of dogbites.org that used the paper's statistics to turn a very official-looking website in to a blood libel (yes! I used it!) against dogs filled with fabrications along side the facts instead of just targeting pit bulls for the vitriol. Maybe she started off with good intentions, but somewhere along the line it got overzealous, and she used the RJ information to spread misinformation. To a journalist that's a double-slap. Don't use my work and then twist it to mean something else entirely. In the case of the Cultural organization, they posted everything word for word. Just took it, no credit. That is just plain wrong. Perhaps it was out of ignorance, but every paper does have that blurb in the front about copyright information and obtaining reprint permissions. Sometimes someone has to sue Napster. This is no different.