Righthaven Moves On To Suing Message Board Posters, Rather Than Just Site Operators

from the oh-come-on dept

visual77 was the first of a few of you to send in the news that copyright-lawsuits-as-a-business-model firm Righthaven has expanded its targets to include posters on various message boards. In the past, it had focused on suing the various operators of sites, but not the users who often posted the content. For sites that had not registered a DMCA agent, the site operators were potentially (though not definitely) liable for any infringing content posted. However, the posters of such content themselves, of course, have always been potentially liable. In this case, they're even suing a guy who had forwarded a Las Vegas Review Journal story to a Google Groups mailing list. While this guy will probably settle, I would imagine it would be a fascinating fair use discussion in court.

Separately, that same article lists a number of other sites that Righthaven has gone after, and there's one surprise: Business Insider, the Harry Blodget-owned blog network that has been growing in popularity quite a bit lately. The site has something of a reputation for copying large segments of articles from other places at times, but you would think that the folks working there would know better than to try that with stories associated with Righthaven, with a primary reason being that Business Insider has had posts (admittedly "aggregated" from other sites) all about Righthaven and its lawsuits against other sites.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, message boards, posters
Companies: righthaven

Whole Foods Board Decides Common Sense Ain't Common Enough: Bans Execs From Web Postings

from the common-sense-ain't-what-it-used-to-be dept

Over the summer, there was some press coverage over the news that the CEO of Whole Foods had, for years, been posting to Yahoo message boards about his company under a fake name. It doesn't look like he did anything illegal, but it was certainly questionable from an ethical standpoint. Whole Foods' board has now responded by changing the company's "code of conduct" to ban execs from posting to non-company-sponsored web forums about company related news. In other words, the board felt the need to basically put what should be common sense into its code of conduct. Of course, the easy retort is that it clearly wasn't common sense to the CEO who engaged in it, but one would think with the ongoing SEC investigation he'd now be pretty aware of this fact, and changing the company's code of conduct is unlikely to have much of an impact.

Filed Under: executives, message boards
Companies: whole foods

Whole Foods CEO Caught In Embarrassing Message Board Brouhaha

from the mackey dept

The FTC's decision to oppose Whole Foods' acquisition of Wild Oats is the result of a misguided and myopic definition of what constitutes the relevant market. And while many expect Whole Foods to ultimately prevail, the proceedings have been unpleasant for the company's CEO, John Mackey. First it was revealed that Mackey championed the merger, in part because he believed that by taking Wild Oats out of play, it would prevent another supermarket chain from quickly becoming a Whole Foods rival. That may or may not be damning (from an antitrust perspective), but a new revelation will prove to be far more embarrassing. As part of its latest legal filing, the FTC dropped the bombshell that John Mackey had, for several years, been posting on the the Yahoo Finance message boards under a pseudonym, cheerleading his company's success and denigrating its rival, Wild Oats. He even made predictions about the company's stock price, putting out extremely high estimates for its performance. It's not clear that what he did was necessarily illegal, but his posting seems unethical and highly foolish, at the very least. If nothing else, the company's stockholders should wonder about what the boss is doing with his time.

Filed Under: message boards
Companies: whole foods