

How Many Words is Fair Use? Maybe More Than You and AP Thought - grellas
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20100922113406655

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grellas
My takeaway from this piece is that the Righthaven model of so-called
"copyright trolling" depends on intimidation leading to pre-litigation
settlements and will break down or stall if those who are targets of the
intimidation just realize that they do have grounds to fight.

The problem remains, though, that for most people paying a few thousand as a
nuisance payout is simpler and cheaper than going to the expense of a legal
fight that will cost that much just for taking the first step or two.

The Righthaven model is disturbing to me not so much for its trolling aspects
(and it does have those, since Righthaven will, in effect, scout out the
terrain, find the offending pieces, and then approach the papers to get
assignments on those items) as for its "collection agency" overtones: it is a
business model built fundamentally on harassment of small players who more
often than not have inadvertently stepped into it without even realizing what
they were doing. This is _not_ a defense legally (see this piece for a lawyer-
type analysis of why those sued are indeed often in the wrong under current
copyright law: [http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2010/09/zelnick-copyright-
tr...](http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2010/09/zelnick-copyright-
trolls.html)), but it raises public policy concerns about whether copyright
law should be so structured as to allow this. The law may say it's right but,
as with collection-agency forms of abuse, it feels fundamentally unfair.

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nkurz
Can you suggest any paths leading to a solution?

If you make it more difficult to troll, you will probably encourage
intentional infringement. Maybe a large expansion of compulsory licensing
combined with some sort of universal liquidated damages paid into a common
fund? I don't see any easy fixes.

Is copyright (and patent) trolling a greater or lesser problem in non-US
countries? Is there something different in their systems that makes it this
way, or are we just leading the curve by happenstance? Correspondingly, is
infringement greater under other systems?

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houseabsolute
Seems unlikely that this case is going to set a precedent that redefines fair
use in a jurisdiction that will be useful to you. Best not to copy whole
articles in that case.

(That said, it is idiotic that you can sue someone for a copy of an article
that a/ they did not post and b/ you never notified them of before suing them.
THAT is broken. It should be illegal in general to utilize the courts for
remedy before an equitable agreement is attempted outside the courts.)

