The Conservative Cave
Current Events => General Discussion => Topic started by: Chris_ on November 01, 2010, 09:58:40 PM
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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.
There’s no better time to become acquainted with that requirement.
But to dock in that legal safe harbor, a site has to, among other things, 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.
Wired.com (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/dmca-righthaven-loophole/)
i've got $20 in my pocket. Who's with me? :angryvillagers:
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If it works I'll chip in too.
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i've got $20 in my pocket. Who's with me? :angryvillagers:
For this site? I'm in! :-)
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I'll chip in too if it is legit.
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This is totally off-topic, but I thought you couldn't copy & paste an AP article due to that whole Right Haven lawsuit thing?
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This is totally off-topic, but I thought you couldn't copy & paste an AP article due to that whole Right Haven lawsuit thing?
That's Skins's problem, though, not ours.
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That's Skins's problem, though, not ours.
No, I know. But just wanted to point that out. They breakin' rulez!
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This is totally off-topic, but I thought you couldn't copy & paste an AP article due to that whole Right Haven lawsuit thing?
IIRC a circuit court spanked Right Haven down on that. It mostly had to do with the Las Vegas Journal.
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That's Skins's problem, though, not ours.
It's copy and pasted onto this site from their site, so it is our problem also.
I think I have posted AP articles -- shoot. I will stop.
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IIRC a circuit court spanked Right Haven down on that. It mostly had to do with the Las Vegas Journal.
DU won their suit against RH as well. The RJ's new revenue stream has been roundly spanked in court.
There was a discussion on it earlier this year and Conservative Cave has filed a DMCA Takedown Notice (http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/dmca-righthaven-loophole/) with the US Copyright office as a precaution. This gives us some legal protection against wholesale copy-and-paste infringements and (I believe) some breathing room with regards to fair use, which has been interpreted in various forms.
The issue with the AP is that they wanted to charge for the use of their articles. We have asked people not to post AP material as a precaution, but there doesn't seem to have been any progress from Associated Press on that front. We could hardly be considered repeat offenders in that respect. We have not heard from any representatives or agents of Associated Press.
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The one right thing DU did was stand up to those assholes.