

Is This the Birth of the Copyright Troll? - there
http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202466627090

======
njharman
> "My hope," says Hinueber, "is we will raise awareness of copyright laws,
> ..."

Preach it brother, I sincerely hope that the general public becomes aware of
current copyright law. Because if they learn about the extremely egregious,
one-sided laws that have been payed for by copyright holders they might do
something about it.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
This was exactly my thought. Copyright holders might not like the results if
it winds up codifying the way people currently feel about copyright law.

Of course, given how apathetic people are, it probably won't happen. I'm still
amazed that the RIAA was allowed to get away with nationally sanctioned
extortion.

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te_platt
How much of this would become a non-issue just by requiring the losing party
to pay all costs? The way it stands now is really just blackmail. Sure you can
spend $100,000 to defend against a frivolous claim or just $5,000 and
everything goes away.

I have been in that exact situation. Probably the most frustrating thing I
have ever been involved in.

~~~
roel_v
Seems to me these people are all in the wrong. The way it's described in the
article, these were people who reproduced whole articles on their website.
Like it or not, this is contrary to current copyright law (and to add my
opinion, as it should be). Even if they would've challenged the suit they
would've lost. Standing up for your legal rights is not blackmail.

~~~
gamble
They were in the wrong, true, but a simple takedown request would have cleared
that up if this was about copyright. The bone of contention is that this
fellow has set up a company designed to buy up rights and pounce on violations
for profit, regardless of whether the infringement was malicious and without
notifying his victims that they were in the wrong. Most of the people he sued
appeared simply ignorant of the law.

While he may be operating within the law, a world where relatively small
mistakes result in four-figure lawsuits without any opportunity for making
amends isn't one most people would enjoy.

~~~
mattmaroon
Takedown requests are for companies like YouTube where content is illegally
uploaded by a user. In this instance, the site owners clearly stole the
intellectual property themselves. This is plagiarism, plain and simple, and
the DMCA does not (and should not) protect it.

I may be biased because I'm a published author, but if it takes a guy like
this to hammer plagiarists I'm all for it.

If you want to use someone else's writing, ask them for their permission and
get it in writing. That's been the law and custom since time immemorial.

~~~
akgerber
The article says many of the targets are discussion boards, probably where
users posted the articles.

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redsymbol
I love the quote at the end: “It’s like setting a hungry wild pig loose in a
china shop to find a piece of bacon," Randazza said. "It’ll get the bacon, but
it will destroy everything else in the process.”

I wonder if the reference to cannibalism is intentional :)

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gamble
Anyone with a background in law know how easy it would be to automate
copyright infringement suits? It seems like the logical endpoint of
professional IP exploitation companies like this is an entity that identifies
violations, files lawsuits, and settles them with a minimum of human
intervention. Software already exists to detect copyright infringement and
file takedown notices; it seems like automatic lawyering is the next logical
step.

~~~
wmf
You're doing it wrong; the purpose of mass lawsuits is to _create_ business
for lawyers.

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greatreorx
After reading more about this, it sounds like they are going after sites who
have not followed requirements to get safe harbor under the DMCA...
specifically registering correct contact info with the US Copyright Office and
clearly posting contact info on their site.

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ck2
_using a proprietary technology that he won't discuss_

Er, google with quotes around key phrases?

That is the kind of guy that will end up with contempt of court jail time
someday when he tries to lecture a judge.

I wonder what percentage of his lawsuits were actually fair use or could have
been modified to meet the requirement.

~~~
jemfinch
"Many targets of the Righthaven lawsuits are political blogs and discussion
boards, both liberal and conservative, which have posted content—nearly always
entire articles—written by Review-Journal reporters."

I'd be curious to see the percentage as well, but those cases clearly aren't
fair use.

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taylorwc
"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law
on the planet."

\--Mark Twain

~~~
mattmanser
"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find forgiveness for people who
think other people's hard work and effort are their's to take"

This, at least, is backed up by the 10 commandments.

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icey
What are the requirements for a legally upholdable copyright? If I write a
paragraph of random words and apply a Creative Commons license to it, can I
require anyone who uses that sequence of random words to adhere by the CC
license going forward? Is it more involved than that?

~~~
tbrownaw
I think you have to register a copy with the Library of Congress before you
can actually sue anyone, and can't collect damages for anything that happened
before you registered.

~~~
VBprogrammer
In the UK at-least, there is an automatic copyright entitlement granted on
anything you write / create which is deemed copyright under the limits set out
in law.

"Copyright is an automatic right and arises whenever an individual or company
creates a work. To qualify, a work should be regarded as original, and exhibit
a degree of labour, skill or judgement.

Interpretation is related to the independent creation rather than the idea
behind the creation. For example, your idea for a book would not itself be
protected, but the actual content of a book you write would be. In other
words, someone else is still entitled to write their own book around the same
idea, provided they do not directly copy or adapt yours to do so.

Names, titles, short phrases and colours are not generally considered unique
or substantial enough to be covered, but a creation, such as a logo, that
combines these elements may be.

In short, work that expresses an idea may be protected, but not the idea
behind it."

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative
Works License.

Copyright © The UK Copyright Service. Source:www.copyrightservice.co.uk

~~~
tbrownaw
Yes, everything is automatically copyrighted. But there is some sort of
enforcement action that you can only take after you register, I'm not entirely
certain which one (suing in general, going for statutory damages, ...).

So my understanding is that it goes like

    
    
        1. create something, get automatic copyright
        2. someone infringes, you send a nasty letter
        3. go register with the government
        4. sue the infringer to make them stop or buy a license (assuming they ignored the letter)
    

or

    
    
        1. create something, get automatic copyright
        2. go register with the government
        3. someone infringes, you send a nasty letter
        4. sue the infringer to make them stop (or buy a license) *and pay damages* (assuming they ignored the letter)
    

where without automatic copyright it would go like

    
    
        1. create something, forget to file for copyright
        2. someone uses your work, you send a nasty letter
        3. that someone tells you to STFU

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FlemishBeeCycle
I hope someday we as a society can shift from the idea of "ownership" and
"creation" to one of "contribution" and "discovery". Is anything really
"invented", or rather pulled from the set of "things that can be"?

I also believe part of the original intent of original US copyright law was to
promote progress by rewarding discoverers' contributions. To be in a state
that we are now, where we are actually stunting discovery with ridiculous IP
laws, is quite sad.

[Edit: Not sure the reason of the downvotes?]

------
cschep
Like someone already said, his software that he's gloating about is probably
pretty simple. Crawling the web somehow. Any chance that the reverse could be
automated? Write the same type of crawler that can let people know this guy
will be coming and exactly how to modify their stuff so that they'll be just
inside the "safe harbor" laws? Whatever those are?

Maybe just a pipe dream, but sounds like a fun way to spend a weekend, and
such nerd heroics are the stuff that dreams are made of.

------
roc
_The_ Copyright Troll? No. It's old hat to ASCAP & BMI.

------
jemfinch
> Many targets of the Righthaven lawsuits are political blogs and discussion
> boards, both liberal and conservative, which have posted content—nearly
> always entire articles—written by Review-Journal reporters.

What's the problem there? If people are reproducing entire articles, they're
clearly operating outside of fair use, and _ought_ to be paying licensing
fees.

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piramida
Was the site just HN'd or article withdrawn? "Error getting pubarticle, Please
call the system admin."

~~~
Natsu
It works for me. Try again?

------
sabat
I, for one, welcome the copyright trolls. It can only quicken the complete
reform of the copyright/patent system and the partial or complete destruction
of the "intellectual property" industry.

~~~
Alex63
Please clarify: are you saying you reject the concept of intellectual
property, or just the industry that has grown up around enforcing intellectual
property laws?

~~~
sabat
I reject the concept of "intellectual property" as unconstitutional. Read the
copyright clause carefully, and read the letters of Thomas Jefferson on the
issue in particular. There is no provision for treating ideas or expressions
as property. _Limited monopoly_ for the _original artist or inventor_ was all
that was being granted. Otherwise: Congress shall make no law -- meaning that
if I tell you a joke, you should be able to repeat that joke without me coming
to claim that you owe me money and potentially jail time because you "stole"
something from me.

~~~
mattmaroon
Using The Constitution as justification for an opinion is roughly on par with
using the Bible, The Koran, or Beowulf. This is a document that says that
slavery is ok and a black man is worth exactly 60% of a white man (but gets 0%
of his votes).

My main criticism of the American educational system is that it instills the
sort of hero worship that makes otherwise intelligent people use a piece of
paper written by people who believed in witches and didn't even know what an
atom was as the basis of an argument about intellectual property in the
digital era. I expect it from Sarah Palin, not from Hacker News.

On the other hand, we wouldn't get awesome satire like this without it:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbRom1Rz8OA> . NSFW.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
For those of us in the US, the Constitution is the basis for the law of the
land. To ignore it would be ridiculous.

Ad hominem attacks from somebody who such a strong admitted bias towards
copyright just makes you look desperate. Many published writers have shown
that they can get by without copyright.

The problem is not copyright, which, in and of itself, is fine. The problem is
when copyright moves from a balance between the creator and society as a whole
to being only favorable for the creator.

That point (which we are at, IMO) is the point the laws need to be shucked,
and that will happen as a result of people ignoring the laws until government
decides to make people legal again.

~~~
mattmaroon
I wouldn't suggest ignoring it exactly. It's relevant when determining whether
or not something is legal. It's just not relevant when determining whether or
not something should be legal. It's a logical fallacy (called an appeal to
authority).

I was not making any attack against the author personally, especially since I
don't know anything about him. I also don't have a strong bias towards
copyright. I believe that there has been a clear progression throughout
history of protection from theft (of both the tangible and intangible) being
followed by innovation and wealth creation, and therefore that the idea that
copyrights as a class should be abolished is naive and shortsighted, but
that's not really a bias toward copyrights as they exist currently.

I also believe that in any functioning copyright system, litigation will be
the best (and for the most part, only) method of enforcement. And that the
word "patent troll" is an ad hominem attack meant to discourage rather than
encourage discussion about a complex topic typically used by people who don't
even remotely understand it.

You never get coherent arguments like that from people who support the
abolition of all IP. All you get are appeals to authority, name calling, and
the occasional "Cory Doctorow makes his books free and still makes money."

~~~
sabat
_there has been a clear progression throughout history of protection from
theft_

There is no provision in the constitution for the treatment of ideas as
property, and the guys who wrote it explicitly disdained that idea. That isn't
"appeal to authority" -- I'm merely pointing out that the document which is
the foundation of our country forbids the laws we currently have. If you want
intellectual property, amend the constitution.

 _the word "patent troll" is an ad hominem attack meant to discourage rather
than encourage discussion_

It's a description of a person/company that uses the patent/copyright system
in ways that are against the very purpose of the laws that allow it: to
encourage innovation and creativity. Patent and copyright trolls discourage
it, and do nothing to improve artistic and innovative environments. "Troll"
does not mean "ugly guy who lives under a bridge"; it's meant to indicate
someone who trolls around looking for juicy litigation opportunities so he can
cash in.

 _You never get coherent arguments like that from people who support the
abolition of all IP_

Never? I'd suggest you haven't read much, but how about this argument: it's
illogical and unsustainable to pretend that ideas are physical objects.
"Intellectual property" industries such as book publishing and music sales
were actually about selling the physical media; the means to create such
things were once scarce. Now that they're not, those business models must
evolve or die.

~~~
mattmaroon
You and I read the constitution very differently if you think it explicitly
forbids copyrights. According to Wikipedia "the Intellectual Property Clause
and the Progress Clause, empowers the United States Congress: 'To promote the
Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors
and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
Discoveries.'" Regardless of what Jefferson may have thought, that's a pretty
explicit promotion of the idea of intellectual property (with a vague notion
of how long they should last for).

In fact this is exactly what I mean by no logical and coherent argument. A 12
year old could read that and tell you that the Constitution expressly promotes
the idea of intellectual property, and gives Congress control over the
details. He could also Google for some Supreme Court cases, such as Eldred v
Ashcroft, that have upheld it's constitutionality. I'm assuming you're not
unintelligent, which means the only way you could come up with "There is no
provision in the constitution for the treatment of ideas as property, and the
guys who wrote it explicitly disdained that idea." is if you either never
actually read the very clause you cited, or if you simply saw what you wanted
to see.

Also it's troll as in an internet troll. It had a negative connotation before
it was applied in this context. Whatever the derivation, it's clearly
derogatory and an ad hominem.

Writers don't write because they love the idea of selling paper. As one I can
tell you I'm we're mostly OK with digital distribution. See the Author's
Guild's controversial settlement with Google for evidence. But that doesn't
mean we want other people able to sell or distribute our work without our
permission or compensation. It's not about the media and it never was, media
was just a necessary evil.

~~~
sabat
_You and I read the constitution very differently if you think it explicitly
forbids copyrights._

I wonder how carefully you're reading. I've cited the copyright clause several
times and even paraphrased it. It does not "forbid" copyright. It creates it
as a limited monopoly on a creative work.

 _the Constitution expressly promotes the idea of intellectual property_

That's a big leap. It says, in short, that since they think that advancement
of the sciences and arts is important, they will allow authors and inventors a
limited monopoly on their work, in order to motivate them. Nothing there
implies the creation of a pretend property, not does it promote such an idea.
And if you read Jefferson, who wrote extensively on the subject, you'll see
that he was completely _against_ the idea of "property" consisting of ideas.
Paraphrasing him from one of his letters: how can a man own something in
another man's mind?

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lotusleaf1987
What a scumbag. Screw that asshat.

