Righthaven LLC 1 Righthaven LLC Righthaven LLC is a copyright holding company founded in early 2010, which acquires newspaper content from its partner newspapers after finding that the content has been copied to online sites without permission, in order to sue the site owners for copyright infringement. The lawsuits have been heavily criticized by commentators, who describe the activity as copyright trolling[1] [2] and the company as a "lawsuit factory".[3] Lawsuits Righthaven initially purchased copyrights to a number of old news articles from Stephens Media, publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, based on a business model of suing bloggers, other Internet authors, and Internet site operators for statutory damages for having reproduced the articles on their sites without permission.[4] An affiliate of Stephens Media owns half of Righthaven.[5] As of January 19, 2011, 205 cases have been filed.[6] [7] Typically, Righthaven has demanded $75,000 and surrender of the domain name from each alleged infringer, and has agreed to settlements of several thousand dollars per defendant.[8] As of December, 2010 approximately 70 cases had settled. The Electronic Frontier Foundation soon took up the case on behalf of several defendants.[9] Kurt Opsahl, an EFF attorney, said, "Despite what Righthaven claims, it's hard to interpret these lawsuits as anything else besides a way to bully Internet users into paying unnecessary settlements."[10] In August, 2010, the company entered an agreement with WEHCO Media in Arkansas to pursue similar actions.[8] Later, it made a similar arrangement with Media News Group, publisher of the San Jose Mercury News.[3] In December, 2010 Righthaven began to sue website operators over republished graphics and photographs, and also expanded its scope to material originally published by the Denver Post and other newspapers.[11] That month it filed more than a dozen lawsuits over a graphic illustration of the "Vdara death ray" that had gone viral.[3] Commentary The cases were covered by many newspapers and blogs.[6] The Las Vegas Review-Journal and its main competitor, the Las Vegas Sun, published a series of editorials criticizing each other over the incident.[2] [12] Wired magazine and others described the lawsuits as copyright trolling and likened the activity to that of patent trolls.[8] References [1] Ashby Jones (September 3, 2010). "Vegas, Baby! Ruling a Possible Boon to ‘Copyright-Troll’ Suits" (http:/ / blogs. wsj. com/ law/ 2010/ 09/ 03/ vegas-baby-ruling-a-possible-boon-to-copyright-troll-suits/ ). Wall Street Journal. [2] Debra Cassens Weiss (August 4, 2010). "Attack Dog’ Group Buys Newspaper Copyrights, Sues 86 Websites" (http:/ / www. abajournal. com/ news/ article/ attack_dog_group_buys_newspaper_copyrights_sues_86_websites/ ). American Bar Association. [3] Kravets, David (December 21, 2010). "Newspaper Lawsuit Factory Sues Over ‘Death Ray’ Image" (http:/ / www. wired. com/ threatlevel/ tag/ vdara-death-ray/ ). Wired.com. [4] Joe Mullin (August 16, 2010). "Is This the Birth of the Copyright Troll?" (http:/ / www. law. com/ jsp/ cc/ PubArticleCC. jsp?id=1202466627090& Is_This_the_Birth_of_the_Copyright__Troll). Corporate Counsel. [5] Green, Steve (January 12, 2011), "Righthaven extends copyright lawsuit campaign to individual Web posters" (http:/ / www. lasvegassun. com/ news/ 2011/ jan/ 12/ righthaven-extends-copyright-lawsuit-campaign-indi/ ), Las Vegas Sun, , retrieved 2011-01-22 [6] Steve Green (September 1, 2010). "Why we are writing about the R-J copyright lawsuits" (http:/ / www. lasvegassun. com/ news/ 2010/ sep/ 01/ why-we-are-writing-about-r-j-copyright-lawsuits/ ). Las Vegas Sun. [7] Chuck Coker (January 19, 2011). "List of Righthaven Copyright Lawsuits" (http:/ / ix23. com/ righthaven-shakedown/ righthaven-copyright-lawsuits. php/ ). [8] David Kravets (August 30, 2010). "Threat Level Privacy, Crime and Security Online" (http:/ / www. wired. com/ threatlevel/ 2010/ 08/ copyright-troll-expanding/ ?utm_source=feedburner& utm_medium=feed& utm_campaign=Feed:+ wired/ index+ (Wired:+ Index+ 3+ (Top+ Stories+ 2))#ixzz0yUtiRAUg). Wired Magazine. [9] Eva Galperin (August 25, 2010). "EFF Seeks to Help Righthaven Defendants" (http:/ / www. eff. org/ deeplinks/ 2010/ 08/ eff-seeks-righthaven-defendants). EFF. Righthaven LLC 2 [10] Webster, Stephen C. (November 16, 2010). "'Copyright troll’ Righthaven looks to dismiss suit against Democratic Underground" (http:/ / www. rawstory. com/ rs/ 2010/ 11/ copyright-troll-righthaven-dismiss-suit-democratic-underground/ #). The Raw Story. Retrieved 2011-01-22. [11] Green, Steve (December 9, 2010). "Drudge Report owner sued by Righthaven" (http:/ / www. lasvegassun. com/ news/ 2010/ dec/ 09/ drudge-report-owner-sued-righthaven/ ). Las Vegas Sun. [12] Sherman Frederick (September 1, 2010). "Protecting newspaper content -- You either do it, or you don't" (http:/ / www. lvrj. com/ blogs/ sherm/ Protecting_newspaper_content_--_You_either_do_it_or_you_dont. html?ref=268). Las Vegas Review-Journal. External links • righthavenlawsuits.com (http:/ / www. righthavenlawsuits. com/ ) - unofficial site that lists the lawsuits • court finding in Righthaven v Realty One, 16 Oct 2010 (http:/ / www. scribd. com/ doc/ 39767798/ Righthaven-v-Realty-One-Order) • "Righthaven defendant wins first lawsuit dismissal motion" (http:/ / www. lasvegassun. com/ news/ 2010/ oct/ 20/ righthaven-defendant-wins-first-lawsuit-dismissal-/ ) - newspaper report of Realty One decision • lasvegassun.com (http:/ / www. lasvegassun. com/ news/ 2011/ feb/ 01/ tsa-pat-down-photo-draws-more-righthaven-copyright/ ) - lawsuits over a TSA pat-down Photo Article Sources and Contributors 3 Article Sources and Contributors Righthaven LLC Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=412152393 Contributors: Bearcat, Chuck Coker, Hermione is a dude, JamesMLane, Kerberos, Naaman Brown, Wikidemon, 1 anonymous edits License Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported http:/ / creativecommons. org/ licenses/ by-sa/ 3. 0/.