|
Righthaven LLC was a copyright enforcement company founded in early 2010. Based in Las Vegas, Nevada; it entered agreements from its partner newspapers after finding that their content had been copied to online sites without permission, in order to engage in litigation against the site owners for copyright infringement. The lawsuits were heavily criticized by commentators, who describe the activity as copyright trolling and the company as a "lawsuit factory".〔 Righthaven LLC's CEO, Steven Gibson, who is currently a partner at Las Vegas law firm Gibson & True LLP, regularly spoke to the media about Righthaven. Although its strategy was initially successful, it was brought undone in 2011 when several judges held that since Righthaven didn't actually own the copyrights, it had no standing to sue for infringement. The company was forced into receivership in November 2011 due to outstanding legal fees to a successful defendant.〔 In January 2012, its domain name, righthaven.com, was sold at auction to help satisfy its debts.〔 In March 2013, Stephens Media bought back what copyrights they had transferred to Righthaven, allowing the Righthaven Receivership Estate to pay off legal fees. ==Lawsuits== Righthaven initially entered agreements concerning 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. An affiliate of Stephens Media owns half of Righthaven. , 255 cases have been filed. Typically, Righthaven has demanded $75,000 and surrender of the domain name from each alleged infringer, but accepted out of court settlements of several thousand dollars per defendant.〔 approximately 70 cases had settled. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) soon took up the case on behalf of several defendants. 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." In August 2010, the company entered an agreement with WEHCO Media in Arkansas to pursue similar actions. Later, it made a similar arrangement with Media News Group, publisher of the ''San Jose Mercury News''.〔 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. That month it filed more than a dozen lawsuits over a graphic illustration of the "Vdara death ray" that had gone viral. In April 2011, a federal judge unsealed the agreement between Righthaven and Stephens Media, revealing that Stephens media receives 50% of the proceeds of lawsuits (after deducting costs). In addition, an attorney for one of the defendants claims that the agreement provides only limited rights to the copyrights of Stephens Media, specifically, only the right to sue. Some defense attorneys argue that one must have complete ownership in order to have standing to sue, which may undermine the lawsuits related to the ''Review-Journal'' material. On June 14, 2011, Federal District Court Judge Roger L. Hunt ruled that Righthaven had no standing to sue for copyright infringement, on the grounds that the original parties retain the actual copyrights. Hunt also dressed down Righthaven for misrepresenting its financial connections to Stephens Media. Among other sanctions imposed by Hunt, Righthaven was fined US$5,000 for the misrepresentation.〔http://www.vegasinc.com/news/2011/jul/14/judge-fines-righthaven-5000-misleading-court-over-/〕 On August 15, 2011, Righthaven was ordered to pay $34,045.50 in attorney's fees and court costs in its unsuccessful lawsuit against Wayne Hoehn. Righthaven had sued Hoehn for copying a ''Review-Journal'' editorial to a blog. Federal judge Philip Pro found that Righthaven had no standing to sue, and in any case Hoehn's posting was protected by fair use. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Righthaven」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|