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2012-04-25 Home Front: Culture Wars

The Righthaven Experiment: A Journalist Wonders If a Copyright Troll Was Right to Sue Him

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Posted by gromky 2012-04-25 00:00|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top

#1 Gibson could have easily represented Stephens Media as its outside counsel. Instead, he chose to step outside the lawyer's typical role and create a shell company whose sole purpose was to sue. Why?

New business model; a low cost,limited liability corporation contracting out its legal and business operations.

There was an entire nation available. Just contract the work to a young and hungry lawyer who could practice in the state the target was in. It'd be like anchovy fishing. The targets, though small fish, wouldn't have the expertise, experience, or the assets to fight back and would settle. And there'd be a lot of them. Newspaper firms would have jumped on board because they had the targets, it saved them from hiring their own lawyers and they got some cash besides.

Had it been successful, the Stephens family would've raked the money in. Problems were that it was an end-run around the intellectual-property law industry, who noticed, and they went after the left end of the political spectrum, who had organizational ability and legal chops who would work pro bono for a 'cause'.

Posted by Pappy 2012-04-25 09:43|| 2012-04-25 09:43|| Front Page Top

#2 There's a dishonest debate going on with publishers. Copyright is intended to protect a work, not the capital amassed to distribute that work. Copyright law means as a whole the ability of others to take someone's work and build on it, not copy it as their own, but to add their own unique version to it.

Publishers have had such a tremendous advantage literally for hundreds of years a cultural gate keepers that they think that that privileged position gives the more rights than anyone else when it comes to fair use.

Lawyers like Righthaven told publishers, we have a solution: we'll just sue the living sh*t out of everyone, and everything will be okay. Even if Righthaven had won all their suits and was still in business, they won't be able to stop anything because the Internet levels the playing field and makes entry into journalism for pennies of the dollars.

Publishers are so large, so ponderous in their business model they are failing to see their business model is bleeding them dry, not bloggers, and there is nothing they can do about it.

Publishers are in a hail storm. They can't hide and they can't make it stop. Suing may reduce the amount of fair use going on for a while, but genuine fair use will not stop, ever.

And that is a good thing.

Posted by badanov 2012-04-25 16:57|| http://www.freefirezone.org 2012-04-25 16:57|| Front Page Top

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