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Published Tuesday, March 29, 2011 | 1:16 p.m.
Updated Tuesday, March 29, 2011 | 1:47 p.m.
After experiencing a quick wave of criticism, Las Vegas copyright enforcement company Righthaven LLC today dropped its lawsuit against journalist Eriq Gardner.
Many commentators noted Friday's suit over a Denver Post TSA pat-down photo appeared to be vulnerable to a fair use defense.
In writing about another Righthaven lawsuit over the Drudge Report's use of the photo, a story by Gardner on the Ars Technica website was illustrated with what appeared to be a court exhibit from the Drudge case.
And as it turns out, it was a court exhibit.
"I'd buy a 'I survived Righthaven' T-shirt, but won't for trademark reasons," Gardner quipped in a Twitter tweet after the dismissal.
Gardner is a New York-based journalist who writes for The Hollywood Reporter and other publications.
A story on the Ars Technica website today was headlined: "Copyright troll Righthaven's epic blunder: a lawsuit targeting Ars"
The story said: "In our article, we reproduced the patdown photo in question. It wasn't a copy of the original image. No, our reproduction came from Righthaven's own court filing against The Drudge Report. It was a grainy black-and-white image from the court documents, which in turn had copied the image from Drudge, which in turn had (allegedly) copied it from the Post."
"We strongly believe that the use is fair — indeed, that it is almost a paradigmatic case of fair use," Ars Technica's story said.
"The reaction (to the suit) around the Ars newsroom — and from our legal counsel — was absolute bafflement," the story said.
"So, after getting the green light from Condé Nast's legal team, I gave Righthaven a call to find out just what was going on here. After waiting on hold for a while, I was put through to Steven Ganim and Shawn Mangano, lawyers for Righthaven, who immediately volunteered the information that the lawsuit had been 'dismissed with prejudice' this morning after it 'came to our attention' that Gardner was a reporter," said the story by Ars Technica writer Nate Anderson.
The dismissal came after a Las Vegas attorney familiar with Righthaven told the Las Vegas Sun that Righthaven "must have been insane" to file the suit as the image with Gardner's story was clearly a fair use.
Also commenting on the suit today were frequent Righthaven commentators Joe Mullin and Mike Masnick.
I hope Gardner recovers whatever legal fees he had dealing with this. That suit was clearly wrong to begin with, one would hope Gardner has grounds for action on some level if he so desires.
It's pretty sad when a bunch of lay people like those of us commenting here can spot serious flaws in a case. You have to ask, what guidelines, if any, does Righthaven have for choosing cases to proceed with?
Even if the intent is to target vulnerable sites who lack the means to properly defend a case, why would Righthaven even think of going after a legitimate news outlet such as the Ars site or worse, the Toronto Star group? Even the Drudge case was dubious and I'm sure many would agree with me when I say I wish Drudge had defended rather than settle for nuisance value.
The scum of the earth over at Righthaven thought it would be cute to file a suit in retaliation for the reporting they had done, but backed out when they came to their senses and realized they were about to get their lunch eaten in a messy and expensive counter suit. They are already in deap doo doo in a case of a website operator out of South Carolina.
This is too precious EPIC FAIL! ROCK YOU DEFENDED THESE IDIOTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Righthaven is now officially a discredited laughing stock.
How odd. This story is not also currently in the RJ. : )
Testing the waters is all Gibson is doing.
Rock's silence is deafening.
Righthaven suing over an Ars story? Righthaven getting its ass handed to it was the only possible outcome. I've been on the Ars forums for 11 years, watching them cultivate a community and build a brand from nothing. They did it by being excellent at what they do. When they became part of Conde Nast, the people stayed and so did that excellence.
Everyone needs to contact the Colorado Federal Court and demand they invoke rule 11 on Righthaven and slap them with sanctions.
Colorado Federal District Court
Clerk's Office
Alfred A. Arraj United States Courthouse, Room A105
901 19th Street
Denver, Colorado 80294-3589
Civil Division: (303) 844-3433
Criminal Division: (303) 844-2115
wow.
really, really enjoyed the line, "after getting the green light from Conde Nast's legal team". Having seen these guys operate against real problems I'd too worry if my case were as velum thin as Reichaven's and these guys were on my butt.
> ROCK YOU DEFENDED THESE IDIOTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
hell Ken -- he picked them. the guy's brain has apparently rotted in the past few years. his judgment also looks suspect. <tee-hee>
>You have to ask, what guidelines, if any, does Righthaven have for choosing cases to proceed with?<
and that's a major rub, isn't it? do they even look at the copies shooting through the copy machine before running to the courthouse with them? or perhaps Stevie Wonder is scanning the internet looking for violations? really, the quality control is abysmal. and what? are these "Reichaven Attorneys" rank rookies or just slap stoopid?
lol -- I wonder. in the end will it be better for a Reichaven attorney to not list his time with the firm? Maybe in the long run it'll be easier to say, 'I went on vacation for 19 months. Yeah. That's It. On vacation.'
as they say.... you can't make this stuff up.
Whats really odd to me is that, if you read the story linked above by Joe Mullin, it appears that initially, Righthaven CEO Steve Gibson was still intent on litigating this. The last paragraph of the story seems to indicate that Gibson hadn't realized the error of his way (or at least was talked out of it by someone else)...
'I asked: "Do you believe reporters have a right to use court documents to report on Righthaven?" Gibson didn't really answer that one either, saying: "That's going to be based on facts and circumstances." '
What are they thinking? Or aren't they?
There are now contradictory reports. Righthaven says they didn't know they were suing a journalist but that contradicts their earlier assertion that they were suing him directly because Ars had a DMCA registration. So they knew that but they didn't know who they were suing? I have a feeling this is just the beginning of a widening scandal.
So would they have dropped the suit if it had been against a blogger who did the exact same thing?
It looks like they made a mistake.
Mistakes happen.
It is part of life.
Isn't that a $350 dollar filling fee type of mistake? Also since interns who get paid very little can't do this type of job, thousands of dollars were spent doing the job of finding infringing material.
Mistakes like that just shouldn't be made considering the initial investment cost. They need all the money they can get.. Didn't two other lawsuits get dismissed because they couldn't locate the people they were suing, and thus there was no proof of them being served. Is that another $700+ loss?
After weeding out the infringements saved by DMCA safe harbor registration, there still should be thousands of full proof lawsuits in Righthavens favor.
They are getting sloppy. It's like a serial murderer you hear about on tv. First few seem perfectly executed then they start to get comfortable and sloppy.. Oh yeah, they've also sued a few websites operators who no longer are associated with those URLs.
I think a few others are right, They need some court complaints against them.. Do Judges not look at past trends of a LLC? Or is every lawsuit based solely by itself?
I just wanted to conclude, I basically do a google news search for "righthaven" daily and change the results to "Past 24 hours". Do that right now and hundreds of new websites and sources are picking this up. Some days you may never even see one article listed. But today it reaches into the thousands. In total 33 pages worth of links. I don't know how anyone can spin this into a positive.. One more big mistake and it'll just mount onto the coverage that this case has been getting.
He should counter sue.
Righthaven has sued about two hundred people, demanding $150,000 per defendant. If they won every case, the total would 30 million, and nearly all for one crummy photo...
If a judge looks at the blizzard of lawsuits, amd asks Righthaven, "what makes you think this photo is worth $30 million?" I wonder what their reply would be?????