
Copyright troll lawsuit blows up in face of Righthaven - grellas
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/democratic-underground-responds-righthaven
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SkyMarshal
All the more reason to sign up as a regular donor to EFF.org, even if it's
just $5/month. If every developer, designer, software engineer, computer
scientist, and new media professional who depends on unencumbered knowledge
and information for their livelihood did just this small bit, EFF would be
even more capable in its defense of intellectual freedom, and better able to
prosecute all of these ridiculous patent/copyright trolls back to hell.

For anyone here who hasn't, here's a clickable: <http://www.eff.org/>

:)

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ubernostrum
I'm torn.

I used to give money to EFF, and I support a lot of the same causes they do.
But the last couple years or so their PR tactics have shifted noticeably into
the sort of gross alarmism/hyperbole that does more harm than good to those
causes. So I'll find other ways to support the things I care about.

~~~
SkyMarshal
If you find a better alternative, let us all know.

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drndown2007
I'm smiling ear to ear about this one. I hope Righthaven gets taken down hard!

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jorgem
Rule of thumb: Never back down from a bully.

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swombat
That's a stupid rule of thumb.

What if the bully has the means to kill you and get away with it?

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PostOnce
Do you live in stark, utter terror of your government? Because they can do
that. :P

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jsharpe
He didn't say "stark, utter terror", he said that sometimes you SHOULD back
down from a bully.

And yes you probably should back down from the government.

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PostOnce
You should back down from the government? I smell a debate forming.

Elaborate on this theory of yours, I'd be delighted to hear.

I postulate that backing down from the government can only possibly make
things worse. It might be tough to stand up now, but it'll be tougher later if
you don't...

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URSpider94
I love reading the filings in cases like this. It's really amusing to see the
kind of two-bit lawyers employed by Righthaven get taken to pieces by some of
the finest legal minds in the country.

EFF's strategy is spot-on: turn Righthaven's odds game back onto themselves.
Righthaven is betting that they can profit by filing scores of lawsuits, then
coercing settlements in just a small fraction of them. If this case plays out
in EFF's favor, then just a few contested cases could cost Righthaven all of
their profits in defendants' attorney's fees.

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bmr
Grellas, any idea how a "SLAPP-back" suit would fare for any of these
defendants?

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grellas
Anti-SLAPP statutes are products of state law and do not apply to federal
claims for copyright infringement. (See a sample discussion of the issue in
this blog post: [http://tushnet.blogspot.com/2008/08/copyright-and-
california...](http://tushnet.blogspot.com/2008/08/copyright-and-californias-
anti-slapp.html)). So these won't help.

The key to what happened here is that the defendant was able to elicit the
help of EFF and the Fenwick firm, undoubtedly pro bono, and this gave them
first-class legal talent with which to pick apart the Righthaven claims.
Unlike patent trolling suits, where the claimant is typically able to assert
credible claims for millions of dollars, the Righthaven model relies primarily
on bulk processing of settlements resulting from threats to file suit.
Righthaven will scout out the web and find one-fer instances of "copyright
violation," as when a contributor to a site posts an excerpt from a news
article in a comments section. The damages associated with this, even in a
worst case, run no more than into the tens of thousands of dollars and likely
would be far less. However, Righthaven takes an assignment from the newspaper
that owns the copyrighted content and threatens to file its bullying suit,
i.e., it threatens to subject the defendant to an expensive federal copyright
suit that will cost far more to defend than is worth it for a typical
defendant. In that context, Righthaven's business model depends on the vast
majority of defendants caving and being willing to settle for a comparatively
small dollar amount in order to avoid the suit. Righthaven does this in volume
and that is how it makes its revenue - by coercing a lot of smallish
settlements and relying on bulk processing to justify the economics of its
efforts.

This model rapidly falls apart in any case where a serious defense is mounted
and particularly where the defendant (a) is represented by first-class lawyers
(as it was here) and (b) forces Righthaven to spend far more on processing the
case than it can ever hope to recover. Here, Righthaven got hit with all this,
plus aggressive counterclaims, leaving it unable even to dismiss the case
without getting permission from the court. Seeing it had a major loser on its
hands, Righthaven brought just such a motion to get permission to dismiss and
met with a response from the defendant saying that the court must condition
any such permission to dismiss on Righthaven's paying all of the defendant's
attorneys' fees. All in all, a pretty disastrous result for Righthaven.

I am not sure how much this may be replicable in other cases but it certainly
underscores that the Righthaven model is vulnerable to attack and may spur
others to mount similar efforts. It is in any case a good first step.

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JoachimSchipper
I'm all for copyright trolls getting their due, but does anyone know if this
kind of thing is enough to seriously hurt their profits?

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makmanalp
It's not the profits that matter. It should be shown that these cases are
defensible and the average victim should defend themselves. This way, the
company would not be able to settle with anyone and thus not make any profit,
and hopefully die.

~~~
Groxx
And similar companies as well. It's a step towards preventing this sort of
shit from existing in the first place.

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aditya
So, wait. Only the lawyers will end up profiting, as usual? (no offense,
grellas :-)

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streety
I suggest the important point is not who profits but who pays the bill.

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athom
I'm kind of surprised this hasn't made the top of DU's list. Maybe it did, and
got buried under all the WikiLeaks stuff before I could get over there...?

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beeeph
Ahhh the joy I get from seeing these weak, greedy copyright trolls beg for
mercy from the innocent people they prey on!

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paradox95
I love this story. Kudos to them.

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lotusleaf1987
A New Hope? Now I'm waiting for the Empire to Strike Back.... I kid but
seriously, this is great great news. Patent trolls are anti-innovation, impede
creators/entrepreneurs, and drive up costs for consumers.

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angusgr
I hate to be a pedant, but this case concerns a copyright troll, not a patent
troll. The distinction between the two is well worth acknowledging.

However, I agree with everything you've said about intellectual property
trolling, in general. :)

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lotusleaf1987
Oh oops! I didn't catch that before, but yes I do understand the distinction.
My mind was just being lazy.

