
I feel sleazy just reading this article.
Righthaven should not be allowed to buy rights and then sue others for infringement. This sounds so much like mob-based activity - extortion, etc. Wouldn't surprise me if it WAS mob-based.
A copyright enforcement service has filed a lawsuit seeking $150,000 from Nevada Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle for posting two newspaper articles without authorization. The complaint, which was filed in US District Court in Las Vegas, is at least the 117th lawsuit to be filed since March by Righthaven LLC, a …
He who takes what isn't his'n
Pays for it or goes to prison.
The moral is surely not to plagiarise other people's copy. You can always pay a hack to rewrite the same sentiments in different words (which turns it from an illegal act into the "sincerest form of flattery"). These days it may even be possible to program a computer to do the rewording (and when someone writes that program, I forsee a very interesting lawsuit a la SCO with respect to natural language rather than code).
But this is a plain old boring lawsuit. Plagiarism is actionable - and should be, or no-one could writre for a living! Get over it.
Nice troll Nigel 11, this has nothing to do with plagiarism, this is about copyright, the difference being duplicating someone elses work without their permission vs duplicating someone elses working and claiming its your own original work, major difference...
I highly doubt she plagiarized the work considering the article says she posted 2 news articles on her website from a local newspaper...
The more people who set/support these crazy laws (or the crazy abuses of the law) who get it in the neck, the better. Hopefully we'll see some changes.
However, I do wonder about the legality of this. Surely the first question from the court will be "Did you give the defendant an opportunity to rectify?" hopefully followed by "No? Kindly bugger off then."
Handing over domain names usually requires some sort of legitimate interest that you have that trumps the reasons the holder of the domain name has. What would that be in this case?
I seem to recall that damages have to have some sort of relation to the damage done, and what would that be in this case?
What they've done is not so much buy the right to the articles, but buy the right to sue. Especially because of the without warning or attempt to settle first part I'd countersue for wilful abuse of law and damages of twice the demands (damages) times three (wilful), plus costs, of course.
On another note, who hates her so much they'd sic a litigous troll on her? Or did she do it herself for some publicity? Campaigns aren't cheap, especially not in dollars.
Well, I think it works like this. Either you pay them whatever they want (including your domain name) or noegotiate even more money (without the domain name) or, hey you want a trial? They have lots of lawyers, and you might end up paying diddly-squat in compensation, but a couple of mil' in costs. So pay up!
These fuckwits sit around wiring laws for the RIAA so if we happen to walk past a shop where a customer is listening to a tune on their headphones and we happen to hear it we're liable for prosecution and the shop owners being burned at the stake and then when they get caught breaching the same laws they cry foul?
If they bought the copyright knowing that the copyright had already been breached (if indeed it was) surely they would have offered a price which took this into account, therefore they have suffered no loss?
It would be hard for them to argue that they didn't know about the breach. It is easy to find out (a google search on some of the phrases in the article), they have made this same "mistake" many times, and it is in their interests to check before purchasing.
In any case, how have they lost substantially more than th e amount they paid for the copyright?
I looked at her web site because I felt that I should at least see the situation prior to spouting off about it. The sources were cited, mind you not very thoroughly, but it still gives credit to the provider of the news which was posted, which means that it is NOT plagiarism. She's not passing it off as her own work, so the copyright suit is groundless and all comments about the allegedly offending posts on her web sites being plagiarism are also groundless. The copyright troll involved needs to be put back under the bridge from whence it came.
I had someone reply to my post stating that my previous post demonstrated a lack of understanding of copyright law. I do know that copyright is the stick people wield to try to control who distributes what content and when, but usually if you write something and use a quote or excerpt from a source, as long as the source is cited and isn't claimed as the one doing the quoting's own work, no one cries foul. That was my point. The fact that copyright law is being misused to the end of disallowing someone from putting a quote from a news article on their web site is ridiculous and shouldn't be allowed, especially since the firm involved is getting the rights to the material after the fact that the material was re-posted. There needs to be some copyright reform to disallow this sort of thing from happening, especially since Righthaven isn't even the original publisher. This is an abuse of a system that was put into place to prevent people from copying whole books or other entire works and trying to sell them as their own product. Quoting and citing the source should fall under fair use, and if it doesn't, something is terribly wrong, since billions of students in colleges everywhere are in potential danger of copyright lawsuits being filed on them if this doesn't get straightened out.