Kosher nostra news sues 35 web forums for copyright piracy by piratenews

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Kosher nostra news sues 35 web forums for copyright piracy

POSTED BY: PIRATENEWS
UPDATED: Monday, June 14, 2010 17:34
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Monday, June 14, 2010 5:34 PM

John Lee, conspiracy therapist at Hollywood award-winner History Channel-mocked SNL-spoofed PirateNew.org wooHOO!!!!!!

Kosher Nostra runs Las Vegas ghost town, seizes website domains for media mafia
http://www.jewishtribalreview.org/lasvegas.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Goodman

It looks to me like these folks in the newspaper business are going to be the "new RIAA", someone who has a business model that no longer works and have decided to sue their customers.

Back when I was able to sample complete songs before making a purchase, I purchased more music than any other time in my life. The one thing that causes me to even care a little bit about newspapers in this country is when I am led to them by excerpts and links. So let's make the links/etc illegal and let newspapers fall into the same category as CDs - extinct.

The publishers of a noncommercial blog about cats in Boston are among the latest defendants in lawsuits claiming website operators have been infringing on copyrights by posting Las Vegas Review-Journal stories without authorization.

The plaintiff in the suits is Righthaven LLC, a company that has partnered with the Las Vegas Review-Journal to sue alleged copyright infringers.

In an unusual sequence of events, Righthaven filed suit before anyone had asked the defendants to remove the posts. While there's no law requiring content owners to send cease-and-desists before suing, the failure to do so here indicates that the motive wasn't to take down the articles as much as to shake down the people and organizations who had posted them.

In an era of declining ad revenue and circulation, it's understandable if newspaper executives are somewhat panicked about their future. It's also understandable if newspaper executives are tempted to sue online aggregators or rivals for "stealing" content.

But arranging for a third party to target readers like a local real estate agent, and nonprofits like NORML? That can only hurt the paper's reputation with its readers while doing very little to solve the underlying business issues, such as the migration of classified ads to free sites like Craigslist.

Back in April, we got a tip from someone that a lawyer who had worked for the Las Vegas Journal Review newspaper had set up shop as a company, called Righthaven, to sue websites that post copies of LVJR stories. We looked into the story, and tried to trace the path from LVJR to Righthaven -- even speaking with someone at Righthaven who didn't give particularly enlightening answers. In the end, we chose not to run a story, because there wasn't much detail to go on. However, as more information has come out, the story gets more and more ridiculous.

First, most (if not all) of the websites being sued all published links back to the original LVJR stories. Second, almost all of the sites were not, in any way, competitors of the LVJR. Instead, they were different organizations or groups that followed certain issues, and in the process reposted a variety of stories on those issues, including links back to the LVJR. While this might be copyright infringement, it can be a borderline case, and it's hard to argue that it does any harm to the LVJR. If anything, it's promoting their coverage. However, the really bizarre part of all of this was that Righthaven sued all these sites without first issuing a DMCA takedown or giving any notification at all to the sites. It just sued. Now, there certainly is no legal requirement to issue a DMCA takedown or to notify people first, but it is odd and unexpected -- especially in scenarios where I'd bet many of the sites in question would have just taken down the content.

The lawsuit seeks financial damages, an order blocking MoneyReign from infringing on Righthaven's copyrights and that an Internet domain registrar for the casinoreign Web site be ordered to "lock" the name and that control of it be transferred to Righthaven.

In the federal lawsuit against NORML, Righthaven complained that "NORML copied, on an unauthorized basis, the literary work entitled 'Dr. Reefer’s business goes to pot"' and the "literary work entitled 'Marijuana activists take stand against bill.'"

"Righthaven did not grant NORML permission, in any manner, to reproduce, display, or otherwise exploit the works," charges the lawsuit, which also seeks financial damages, an order barring NORML from infringing on the copyrights and that the NORML Web site domain name be locked and transferred to the control of Righthaven.

Now, Eric Goldman alerts us to the news that the LVJR's publisher, Sherman Frederick, is defending these lawsuits with one of the more economically and legally clueless arguments we've heard in a long time. He even pulls out the ridiculous "you wouldn't steal a car, so why are you stealing my content" analogies:

Quote:
Say I owned a beautiful 1967 Corvette and kept it parked in my front yard.

And you, being a Corvette enthusiast, saw my Vette from the street. You stopped and stood on the sidewalk admiring it. You liked it so much you called friends and gave them my address in case they also wanted to drive over for a gander.

There'd be nothing wrong with that. I like my '67 Vette and I keep in the front yard because I like people to see it.

But then, you entered my front yard, climbed into the front seat and drove it away.

I'm absolutely, 100% not OK with that. In fact, I'm calling the police and reporting that you stole my car....

Yet, when it comes to copyrighted material -- news that my company spends money to gather and constitutes the essence of what we are as a business -- some people think they can not only look at it, but also steal it. And they do. They essentially step into the front yard and drive that content away.

Except, of course, any fifth grader could point out the obvious difference. Making a copy of your news (and linking back to it) is not "driving off with it." No one has "driven away" the content. The content on the LVRJ website is still there. Not stolen at all. Might there be "infringement"?

It's possible. But, there are other issues to take into consideration -- such as the actual impact on the LVRJ. It's hard to make any reasonable claim that any of these sites did any damage whatsoever to the LVRJ. In fact, you could argue that all of them helped promote the LVRJ as a publication to follow on these issues.

Reading between the lines, I'm kind of wondering if Frederik is really trying to set up an operation that is more like US Copyright Group or ACS:Law, seeking to file a bunch of borderline questionable lawsuits just to get money out of people. He admits in the article that his paper has "grubstaked" (grubstaked?!?) Righthaven and encourages other publishers to contract with Righthaven as well. He doesn't mention that the company CEO apparently was (or still is?) a lawyer who did work for LVRJ, though he does suggest that if you want to work with Righthaven, you contact LVRJ's general counsel.

Wendy Davis, over at Mediapost, has an excellent article ripping apart Frederik's bizarre editorial, pointing out how the "car" analogy makes no sense at all. Davis, in an earlier article, also pointed out that it seemed unlikely that the amount Righthaven could get from any potential court victory could possibly outweigh the legal costs. The whole thing really is bizarre.

Marc Randazza, an attorney who is defending non-profit NORML in the lawsuit, shared some of his thoughts about the Corvette scenario with MediaPost.

Quote:
"The real analogy is this: You have a 1967 Corvette in your driveway, and you charge people $2.95 to take pictures of it. Someone drives by and doesn't know that you charge to take pictures of it. They take a picture, and you come running out of your house with baseball bat and demand $5,000 or you'll smash in the windows on their car."

So... if I went up to this person's lawn and made a copy of his car, leaving it intact, then drove off in the car I made.

Then I put a sign on my car that says "This is where I got the idea for my car" telling the directions back to his place.

I guess making copies of people's cars, while not touching their car, is some how illegal?

Tangible = finite
Intangible = infinite

Ma'b we should require a PH.D in Math in order to make ANY laws about intangible things since smarty pants math people are the only ones to comprehend the idea of "infinite" correctly.

What's more, the initiative isn't likely to generate much revenue for anyone.

First of all, some defendants have already told the press they intend to argue they made fair use of the articles. Any litigation over that issue will probably prove expensive for all parties -- including Righthaven.

Second, it seems unlikely that the newspaper will be able to prove that it suffered damages as a result of the excerpts and links. Yes, the federal copyright statute provides for a minimum damage award of $750 per infringement, but that could quickly be eaten up by litigation costs.

What's more, some copyright defendants in music piracy cases are challenging the constitutionality of the law's damages provisions. The argument against statutory minimums seems even stronger here, where readers shared news stories and provided links back to the paper.

The way to handle presumably mobbed-up bankrupt Las Vegas Review-Journal is to NEVER link to its site ever again, copy all facts out of a story, never name the source/author/title, then claim 100% of the facts for your site. Pit it's presumably mobbed-up lawfirm and its lawyers on your hit list, digging for dirt FOREVER. Case closed.

FYI the kosher nostra founded and run Vegas, with a kosher nostra lawyer as the current Vegas mayor. No wonder Vegas is a ghost town.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100604/0425069685.shtml

http://asternglance.com/2010/06/07/the-las-vegas-review-journal-lawsui
t/

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid
=129470

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid
=126809

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