Righthaven Cases...

[parkerbenson]

Wow, it's not just Getty... Righthaven finds copied news articles, purchases the copyright, and then sends extortion letters and files lawsuits...  Electcronic Frontier Foundation attorneys are taking them on...  Has anyone hear spoken to EFF or been following this story?

There's some intersting articles online in the las vegas sun from august 2010, including legal arguments like this one:

Jason Wiley of the Henderson law firm Woods Erickson Whitaker & Maurice LLP argues that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has found "passive" websites don't create sufficient contacts with particular states to warrant jurisdiction by those states.

[Matthew Chan]

Parker,

I think you found a goldmine of info and uncovered something significant. I have not read the complaints and controversy in detail but I do think the Righthaven controversy is very much analogous to the Getty Images controversy.

Not that I would want to inject myself into the Righthaven controversy but there certainly seems like a LOT of website coverage.

Good find. A Google search on "Righthaven" reveals a lot of info.

In fact, I think your discovering Righthaven is so significant, I think some of the information and arguments on that side can be applied to the Getty Images Controversy.

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-colorado-judge-is-seething-at-righthavenand-hes-handling-all-their-case/

This is a major contribution to the Getty Images community. It would seem Righthaven has opened a path in the litigation department that Getty Images might want to be careful to follow.

Matthew

[parkerbenson]

great, glad to help, i've been following a number of recent legal changes and this one is most interesting...  one of which is the TSA nudie scope or feel-me-up situation at the airports...  a number of constitutional and consumer protection issues there...  we are slowly losing our freedoms here in America... freedom to travel without unreasonable searches, freedom to make simple mistakes about copyright infringement, freedom to rent our homes at the beach without cities taking those rights away, freedom after freedom is being sued away or taken away, and this is just another example of how our legal system is being used to put us all in a smaller box in which to live...

yes, recent articles suggest some interesting information about righthaven's copyright contracts with the news publisher, apparently they got it entered into evidence, and suggest it would overturn all their previous rulings.  we should stay tuned, and if you guys have any pull, perhaps convince EFF they can take on Getty without creating a lot of new arguments.

[Matthew Chan]

ELI is still a niche site and the Getty Images controversy is still contained because they have not YET pulled the trigger in a big way. However, if they decide to pull that trigger and start filing suit, I suspect EFF will jump in and get involved thanks to the Righthaven controversy.

In fact, I believe EFF and many of the people involved with fighting Righthaven are calling them Copyright Trolls.

Well, guess what?  As far as I am concerned, the stock photo industry are behaving like Copyright Trolls.

Matthew

[parkerbenson]

They are trolls, in the worst sense, they are seeking out injuries, like throwing themselves in front moving buses, they are out looking for trouble... I understand why they are doing it, and why they have a right to do it, but we actually have no way to know if they are using their pic bot to find images on websites, find companies listing those websites, and then inform Getty to buy those websites so Getty can then retroactively file claims against the websites that have the images.