Righthaven, cave trolls and copyright

The copyright trolling is a popular trend among those who in the name of the law, abuse the intellectual property system to monetize the litigation involves a claim for copyright infringement. Then there are the patent trolls.

Not long ago I interviewed Leon Felipe Sanchez , a large Mexican attorney intellectual property specialist, about the dangerous trend of turning the legal system in a business model in relation to the case of the missing signature ASC: Law, to which his greed cost him his life.

The New York Times yesterday published a note setting out the parasitic Righthaven American firm , which engages a troll blogs to find images and articles have been published on the Web, copyright search and purchase to later sue anyone who has dared to publish the material.

Although major electronic media such as Drudge Report and Ars Technica have fallen prey to Righthaven, the NYT article indicates that the major problem is that their targets are minorities. Ordinary people who uses her blog to post what interests them and discuss it.

The specific case of the article refers to the case of a 20 year old blogger posted on his post a picture of reviewing TSA (or rather fingering) to passengers in the airport security area. An image widely available in Google. Remember to link content is not an infringement , according to an English court as well as something called common sense.

Electronic Frontier Foundation lists the characteristics of the operations of Righthaven:

• Do not send notifications indicating Milleum Digital Copyright Act (DMCA) so that the sites remove material that is allegedly infringed. Righthaven goes straight to the application, to intimidate their targets to pay the compensation demand (Settlements) and thus avoiding the exorbitant costs of going to trial.

• Their target is individuals who use a "copy paste" to excerpts from articles and discuss it. EFF notes that this is very serious, since in fact the possibility of citing the network exactly, enriches the debate. Righthaven directly attacks the freedom of expression.

• Ask the judge to freeze the sites of the alleged offenders and confiscate his domain which is an abuse because they have to pursue individual cases do not try to take control of the site. This is done to terrorize the applicants and accept sums of money to fix monetarily.

• They focus on informative articles and news sites. In fact Righthaven has a partnership with various media.

Righthaven justification according to EFF legal aggressiveness is going to stop the publication of articles online, although the NGO says it is very difficult to believe them, because their operations are purely monetary, since they are not in the business or the information, let alone journalism. A judge also describes the business model Righthaven as abusive.

Righthaven rhizomatic ignores the characteristics of the Internet that allow the news to be discussed in many other areas (such as blogs, forums, Twitter) than where they were created. It's called cultural movement, but also apparently ignored the law of the U.S. Copyright which specifies that fair use (fair use) allows any individual to copy, cite and publish parts of a copyrighted work for purposes of comment, criticism , news reporting, scholarship or cartoons.

The good news in the United States those aware of the effects of actions in the ecosystem Righthaven of information and culture network, freedom of expression and fair use, will not remain with folded arms:

EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) will destroy them.

Righthaven actions demonstrate (for the umpteenth time) the mindless exploitation which have fallen copyright extremists. This system was not designed to be suing the company, which by the way, thanks to rights holders who have the privilege to monopolize the exploitation of their work and benefit. A copyright is a matter quite public, not private .

But as Leon Felipe Sanchez said in an interview with ALT1040, the biggest problem is that people do not know their rights. I invite you therefore to read the copyright laws of your country (not as boring as believe) to receive as deserve to copyright trolls who could come out of dark caves near his blog or comment.

This was another episode of "The copyright is no longer useful." Until next time ... I hope someday there is good news.

DC Image Ullviu

Righthaven, cave trolls and copyright written in ALT1040 on 4 May, 2011 by geraldine
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