Irony? Righthaven Accuses One Of The 239 Sites It has Sued Of 'Litigation Overkill'

from the you-did-what-now? dept

Fri, Mar 11th 2011 2:37pm — Mike Masnick

It's true. With apparently no self-awareness whatsoever, Righthaven -- the highly questionable company that has sued 239 websites/companies for reposting some content from the Las Vegas Review Journal or the Denver Post -- is now claiming that one of the sites it's sued, Democratic Underground, is engaged in "litigation overkill." That's because of the EFF and Democractic Underground submitting new "key evidence," that apparently proves the copyright assignment from the newspapers in question is a "sham" and not a legitimate assignment. We've seen that charge in the past, and it hasn't stuck, so it's interesting to hear there's "new evidence" on that question. Unfortunately, for now, that evidence is hidden. Still, Righthaven isn't happy about this and is claiming the whole thing is litigation overkill. I guess it would know what litigation overkill is...

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Filed Under: assignment, copyright
Companies: democratic underground, eff, righthaven

10 Comments

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EG, 11 Mar 2011 @ 3:03pm

Why, don't you know?
Litigation overkill would be any process or discovery that works against them in a court case.
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Tim, 11 Mar 2011 @ 3:05pm

Irony
Either that or hypocrisy.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Mar 2011 @ 3:41pm

A taste of their own medicine is evidently disagreeing them. Some one find some other medicine for colic.

I don't think they have one out yet for ironic sputters.
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lostalaska (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 4:40pm

Poetic...
I guess they're finding it less than fun to be on the receiving end of litigation thats only point is to utterly screw you over.
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Beta (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 6:02pm

lawyers who don't know that words have meanings
Has anyone else noticed... "Overkill" means excessive use of something appropriate. Righthaven's use of the word here implies that Democratic Underground is in the right, and could have won with less effort.

Righthaven's lawyers seem to have a penchant for this kind of sloppy language: �Righthaven intends to fully expose the readily apparent flaws presented in defendants� arguments that would completely eviscerate countless years of licensing and related transactions throughout the country." Fully expose flaws that are already apparent? Eviscerate past transactions? Whah?
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The eejit (profile), 11 Mar 2011 @ 11:58pm

I have only one question:
Will the Righthaven site be seized by ICE for criminal copyright infringement?
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Mar 2011 @ 1:02am

Re: Irony
I'm going to go with "shamelessness".
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Victim, 12 Mar 2011 @ 6:24am

Timeline
In our case:
1st, story posted at Las Vegas Review-Journal.
2 days later, story posted at Ely Times.
2 days later, we reproduced Ely Times story.
1 month later, Righthaven queries private registration for owner of domain. We find one story we neglected to excerpt and correct that oversight (which turns out to be the story in question).
1 week later, Righthaven submits copyright of story (under LVRJ title).
1 week later, Righthaven sues us.

Being a volunteer, spare-time nonprofit, we reluctantly settled. 6 months later, the stories at LVRJ and Ely Times still have no notice of Righthaven's copyright.
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John Horstman, 14 Mar 2011 @ 8:57pm

Re: lawyers who don't know that words have meanings
Huh, that sort of sloppy language use makes me wonder what they could have written that wasn't worth re-writing in a much clearer, more engaging style, avoiding the problem entirely. :-P
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Ken, 17 Mar 2011 @ 11:37pm

Boo Hoo Righthaven
Righthaven is now fighting 7 counter-suits and more of their litigants are choosing not to settle but fight. Clearly Righthaven misjudged the resistance they would encounter when they set up their business model. They assumed it would be similar to the RIAA that had only a couple of their litigants fight but they forgot to add in the equation that downloading illegal music is much more cut and dry than posting an article or image. Downloading a song has few fair use arguments while using an image or article has a wide range of arguments that can be used.

Just these 7 counter suits alone will wipe out the estimated 350,000 that Righthaven has squeezed out of victims. Unless Righthaven's backers are willing to lose a lot of money over this I would suspect Righthaven's rein of terror will soon come to an abrupt halt.
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