The $105 Fix That Could Protect You From Copyright-Troll Lawsuits

[somone]

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/dmca-righthaven-loophole/

The $105 Fix That Could Protect You From Copyright-Troll Lawsuits
By David Kravets

Call it ingenious, call it evil or call it a little of both: Copyright troll Righthaven is exploiting a loophole in intellectual property law, suing websites that might have avoided any trace of civil liability had they spent a mere $105. That’s the fee for a blog or other website to register a DMCA takedown agent with the U.S. Copyright Office, an obscure bureaucratic prerequisite to enjoying a legal “safe harbor” from copyright lawsuits over third-party posts, such as reader comments...

Founded in March, the Las Vegas-based Righthaven has begun buying out the copyrights to newspaper content of the Las Vegas Review-Journal for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post, or even excerpt, those articles without permission. The company has settled about 60 of 160 cases for a few thousand dollars each, and plans to expand its operations to other newspapers across the country.

Many of its lawsuits arise, not from articles posted by a website’s proprietors, but from comments and forum posts by the site’s readers. Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a website enjoys effective immunity from civil copyright liability for user content, provided they promptly remove infringing material at the request of a rightsholder. That’s how sites like YouTube are able to exist, and why Wired.com allows users to post comments to our stories without fear that a single user’s cut-and-paste will cost us $150,000 in court.

But to dock in that legal safe harbor, a site has to register an official contact point for DMCA takedown notices, a process that involves filling out a form and mailing a check to the government. An examination of Righthaven’s lawsuits targeting user content suggests it’s specifically going after sites that failed to fill out that paperwork...

[Greyskye]

1. Good catch, someone!

Welcome to DU. :hi:

[Ian David]

2. Small bloggers may not have this option if they want to maintain anonymity.

However, wouldn't sites like blogspot be the responsible party in such lawsuits?

[Heywood J]

3. DMCA: Why have sensible copyright law when crazy will do?

If copyright is automatically claimed and recognized without displaying a notice or filing with the copyright office, why isn't the takedown agent handled automatically as well?

[Hissyspit]

4. Yup. Anti-Founding Father's concept of the marketplace of ideas...

that was just another example in the progression of the money-religion corporate love- and welfare-fest that has been going on since Reagan.

[Occulus]

5. I like the EU model

The owners of the intellectual property that has been copied in an unauthorized fashion are entitled to the cost of the copy.

That's how it should be. Punitive damages should be eliminated. We're destroying people's lives over things that can be copied perfectly at virtually zero cost. It needs to stop, and stop right now.

[Hannah Bell]

6. why doesn't the gov just go after the trolls instead of extracting protection money.

[autorank]

7. Thanks!!! k*r