Is this the end of predator copyright troll Righthaven's flight under the media radar?

NOTE: If you read and care about PHB (and many other blogs), it's worth taking the time to read this piece about Righthaven.

What does this screen capture mean?

I'm not sure, but for many people following the business operations of Righthaven, LLC over the last year or so, there's speculation that the jig is up for the Las Vegas shell company purportedly set up to protect the copyright interests of media organizations.

Its model has become clear to those who have been slapped (almost always without notice) for copyright infringement of news articles or photographs originally published most notably in the Las Vegas Review Journal and the Denver Post).

Why am I writing about this? Well, in March of this year I was contacted by a reporter at the Denver Sun, Steve Green:

Hi, I am a reporter for the Las Vegas Sun writing a story about the attached lawsuit alleging copyright infringement

The suit claims your website posted without authorization a Denver Post TSA patdown photo

Background on similar lawsuits:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/blogs/business-notebook/2011/feb/28/roundup-righthaven-faces-pr-problem-suit-against-n/

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/feb/08/new-round-righthaven-suits-over-tsa-pat-down-photo/

Please let me know if you want to comment on the lawsuit and thanks

So I open the PDF and cannot believe what I was reading. The suit was filed the U.S. District Court in Colorado regarding a photo that was widely circulated on the Internet of a Transportation Security Agent doing a feel-up of a man's thigh that inspired the "don't touch my junk" commentary. In my case, I tapped the image that was on Ranker.com (it must have been caught up later as well; its article with the image is long-gone).

Doing a little Googling, I found the Righthaven Victims web site and learned that I wasn't alone. There's a long list of victims, some sued by Righthaven retroactively from the time RH "obtained" the copyright (more on that to come). There is also a good deal of reporting on this debacle within the limited sphere of legal blogs.

When I posted on a couple of listservs I am on - there was zero admission that anyone on the lists  were also in this legal entanglement, but there were several general "I'm sorry this happened to yous" as reactions. There were also a couple of private blame-the-victim reactions, pretty crass considering there wasn't even a cursory look at what Righthaven was engaging in - such as squeezing autistic individuals on a fixed income over the same photo.

No one was blogging about it or discussing it publicly; after all - if they discussed my plight, it might turn Righthaven to Google them for possible IP violations. I actually generated interest from more than one major blog to discuss Righthaven's shakedown operation and every single one backed off out of the fear of being targeted. There was no mainstream media coverage, aside from the LV Sun.

What is Righthaven and why the silence by MSM?

A nice summary:

Righthaven LLC is owned 50/50 by two limited liability companies. The first is Net Sortie Systems, LLC, which is owned by Las Vegas attorney Steven Gibson - the Nevada attorney who is behind all of the lawsuits filed by Righthaven. The second is SI Content Monitor LLC, which is owned by family members of investment banking billionaire Warren Stephens whose investments include Stephens Media, LLC which owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Righthaven's business arranagement is memorialized in a Strategic Alliance Agreement between Righthaven LLC and Stephens Media LLC (an arrangement that some commentators (here) argue renders void Stephens Media's copyright assignments to Righthaven, thereby nullifying Righthaven's standing to bring its copyright infringement actions).

...[A] a third media company - Media News Group - is also using Righthaven's "services" - as reflected by numerous copyright infringement lawsuits that have been filed by Righthaven in the Colorado over material appearing in the Denver Post, which is owned by Media News Group. News coverage of Righthaven's Colorado "client" can be found here and here (see also Denver Posts' "Notice to readers about Denver Post copyright protections" on November 14, 2010).

You can thank Righthaven's partner in these predatory practices, The Denver Post/Media News Group, for my particular case.

Righthaven founder Steven Gibson says that he continues to add new partners. Among them: The Denver Post, which teamed with the copyright-holding company in December. Since then, Righthaven has sued numerous bloggers-the most prominent being Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report--alleging infringement of a Post photograph of a Transportation Security Administration airport pat-down. (Drudge and Righthaven reached an undisclosed settlement in February.)

The Post's publisher is William Dean Singleton, who also serves as executive chairman of MediaNews Group, which bills itself as the country's second-largest newspaper chain. Singleton holds another title: chairman of the board of The Associated Press. Is it possible that Singleton-who said at the AP's 2009 annual meeting that the news service would seek "legal and legislative remedies" against those that it believes unfairly use its material-views the AP as a potential Righthaven partner?

It turns out that the heat on Righthaven's model and practices may have made the AP distance itself, and think up a different kind of "relationship." Feb 3, 2011:

The Associated Press Board of Directors today approved the establishment of an independent news licensing agency that will allow broader and better access to original news content while providing publishers support for innovative new business models. When launched this summer, the enterprise will include news content from AP and more than a thousand publications.

AP will spin off its News Registry into the newly created entity, called the News Licensing Group, and expects to raise funding from the news industry. The News Licensing Group will be owned by news publishers, and fulfill a need for an efficient means to protect and license digital news content from thousands of news organizations to the wide and growing range of digital communications products and services.

How bad is this predatory mess? The numbers are below the fold.
Look at the stats so far, via RighthavenLawsuits.com:

Number

of Copyright Infringement Lawsuits Filed by Righthaven:

265

(as of April 8, 2011)

Estimated Total Money Settlements

Righthaven's Efforts Have Earned to Date:

$451,500

(based on 129 cases

closed as of April 4, 2011 and an educated guesstimate of an average

of $3,500

settled per case)

(NOTE:

Number of closed cases excludes those cases closed after being

dismissed without prejudice by the court for lack of service or cases knowingly dismissed by Righthaven without any action)

Those caught up by fate -- Righthaven's investigative model was equally shoddy, they did Googles to find its targets quite randomly. The lawsuits overreached (Righthaven lawsuits are demanding that courts freeze and transfer the defendants' domain names. Imagine if a single copyright infringement on Huffingtonpost.com or Redstate.com could result in forfeiture of the entire domain. Effectively asking for control of all of a website's existing and future content -- instead of only targeting the allegedly infringing material -- is an overreaching remedy for a single copyright infringement not validated by copyright law or any legal precedent. This also indicates that the attorneys are willing to make overreaching claims in order to scare defendants into a fast settlement.

Righthaven goes straight for litigation. Righthaven isn't sending cease and desist letters or DMCA takedown notices that would allow the targeted bloggers or website operators to remove or amend only the news articles owned by Righthaven. Instead, Righthaven starts with a full-fledged lawsuit in federal court with no warning. It's sue first and ask questions later, which smacks of a strategy designed to churn up legal costs and intimidate defendants into paying up immediately, rather than a strategy aimed at remedying specific copyright infringements.And big names were caught up in this -- Democratic Underground (its case was taken up by the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF); as you read above, The Drudge Report was sued (and settled). Raw Story was sued (and settled). By the way, I contacted the EFF - I was given a referral to one of our cooperating attorneys that was dealing with the onslaught of cases. Alas, it would not going to be a pro-bono angel. It was going to be all on the meter for me.

Righthaven's downfall?

So that graphic at the top of this post is where Righthaven is now, after a torrent of rulings that went against it:

After a few rounds of negotiations with Righthaven's vampires, I settled a couple of weeks ago, effectively bankrupting PHB. The lawsuit was dropped by RH last week, and while I cannot disclose the amount, it wiped out any ad revenue -- and then some -- that would have helped offset travel expenses I saved up to send PHB baristas to conferences - no Netroots Nation, no Southern Comfort, etc., - nada is left to do jacksh*t. It's all out of our pockets (and I'm still personally twisting in the wind because I still have to pay the attorneys). Talk about in the personal hole.

I've set up an LLC for the Blend, but that's cold comfort after this. So you probably can guess why it's an attractive idea to shut PHB down and return to relative anonymity.