Doug Franklin wrote: >On 2011-05-04 15:26, Mark Roberts wrote: > >> NPR did a story on Righthaven last week. They seem to walk a zig-zag >> line oscillating between legitimate prosecution of real copyright >> infringers and opportunistic abuse of fair-use infringers who don't >> have the resources to fight back. > >Having followed the Righthaven story for months now, the only line they >zig-zag across is that between douchebag and thief.
I'm under the impression that they've hit some legitimate targets (which don't get any news coverage - man bites dog, etc.), but they certainly have gone way overboard in lawsuits that seem to be specifically targeted at people without enough money to fight back, going after out-of-court settlements that are cheaper than going to Federal court. I've also really enjoyed their recent setbacks. One of the criteria for Fair Use is how much the infringement takes value away from the copyright owner. Last week a judge decided that since the defendant used the material for news coverage and Righthaven isn't in the news business - owning copyrights strictly for the purpose of filing lawsuits - Righthaven hadn't been harmed at all and the use was Fair Use! *That's* a precedent that could definitely hurt their business model! -- Mark Roberts - Photography & Multimedia www.robertstech.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
