During A Police Raid, Russian Activist Uses Drone To Whisk Sensitive Data To Safety

from the video-or-it-didn't-happen dept

Drones have moved beyond the novelty stage, and are now capable of having a global impact. That was shown most dramatically by the recent drone attack on the world's largest oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia. The loss of production has caused the price of oil to spike, and fears about a global recession to mount -- all because of a few tiny drones. An article in the Guardian suggests:

Drones are now an integral part of the inventory of the region's most advanced militaries, and the also-rans. Non state actors have been clamouring to secure them as well -- convinced by the utility of hard-to-detect, dispensable flying toys to be used as weapons of war.

But as Techdirt has noted before, drones are not all about death and destruction. BBC News has an interesting example of a novel use from Russia. It concerns a police raid on the flat of Sergey Boyko, who heads the local branch of the movement of opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Raids were conducted in more than 40 cities across the country, allegedly investigating money laundering, something denied by Navalny's supporters. Elsewhere, the police seized activists' computers and mobile phones. But they came away empty-handed from their raid on Boyko, thanks to the use of a small drone:

The drone was loaded with various hard disks, solid-state drives and flash sticks containing "very important" information that he did not want to fall into the police's hands, according to the activist.

"Done. The evacuation has been carried out. The drone reached its destination," he says at one point.

The drone's destination was an unnamed friend of Boyko, presumably not an obvious one that the police might easily find in their search for the data. Boyko was clearly expecting to be raided. He not only had the presence of mind to have a drone to hand for the delivery, but he also recorded the police raid as it was happening. The video concludes with a plea for viewers to support the Navalny campaign financially -- a neat way of using the police raid against the authorities who ordered it. The whole episode is another indication of how Russians seem able to keep calm in even the most difficult situations, which is probably just as well given the way that some people drive there.

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Filed Under: activists, drones, russia, secrecy, sergey boyko, strategy, technology

The Weird Psychology Of People Fighting Those Who Resell Their Products

from the why-do-this? dept

Every so often, we hear a story about actions taken by someone who is just so upset about someone else doing something that it seems to border on obsessive. For example, when we hear about copyright holders who spend all their time sending DMCA takedowns -- while whining about how they're unable to produce new content and aren't making any money from sending all those takedowns. The obvious response is: maybe stop sending all those takedowns and focus on something that's actually productive, like creating new works and building a fan base willing to support you.

Recently, the Planet Money podcast had an episode with a similar story but in a different realm -- but it was just as stupid and wasteful. It was about this entrepreneurial couple who had created a cat toy product, which was becoming fairly successful through selling it on Amazon. And yet, they were completely freaked out by arbitrageurs. These weren't pirates or counterfeiters. Rather, they discovered that people were posting their cat toy to eBay (for a lot more money), and if someone bought, they'd just order it from Amazon, and have it ship directly to the buyer. I've heard of people having this happen to them -- where they'd order from one place and receive a shipment from Amazon instead (sometimes with the actual invoice price included...).

This is all perfectly legal. There's no law against reselling products. It's just arbitrage. But the couple, Fred and Natasha Ruckel, freaked out about this and spent a ton of time every day sending cease-and-desist letters to these eBay sellers.

First thing in the morning, check for arbitrageurs. Last thing at night, check for arbitrageurs, send out any cease and desists before or after. It was taking up an inordinate amount of time, and it was super stressful.

Ruckel does make a few valid points: the eBay arbitrageurs provide a less satisfying experience -- their sales pages don't look great and Ruckel wishes to have a better experience for the customers to boost brand loyalty. On top of that, the even more valid concern is that when people order via eBay for $60 and receive a box from Amazon showing the price was $40... they get pissed off. And often they return the product, and that leads to restocking fees that Ruckel has to pay -- plus just general hassle. That part is a valid concern, but from all indications this was still making them money.

And if it was really taking up so much time to send out these cease and desist letters -- and it was "super stressful" why not just drop it altogether? Why bother? Just focus on selling your products. Or, hell, just put your own product up on eBay. To be fair, while this is not mentioned in the podcast, in an article in Entrepreneur Magazine about this same story, it does note that he tried, briefly, to put the product up on eBay too, but whines that people still copied him:

This summer, Ruckel tried a new approach: He put his own product on eBay and titled it “All other eBay sellers are fake.” A few weeks later, he stumbled upon an eBay listing with a familiar title. “All other eBay sellers are fake,” it said. It wasn’t his, of course.

Someone had copied that, too.

But, uh, so what? Assuming that he posted them to eBay with the same price as his Amazon sales, then there shouldn't be a problem. All the arbitrageurs should be driven out of business, since his would be priced lower than the arbitrageurs. So who cares if they claim to be the legit provider, when people would likely flock to the cheapest one anyway? Nothing in this story makes sense.

Especially this last part. Ruckel apparently got so frustrated with the "stress" of dealing with arbitrageurs, that he yanked his stuff off of Amazon entirely... and saw his sales drop drastically.

We pulled out of the whole Prime shipping thing in May. And at that point, we were over 60,000 a month in sales. And in a blink, 60,000 went down to 25,000.

Planet Money asks them if it was worth it -- and they said that it was. Because "integrity."

F RUCKEL: Integrity is important to us.

N RUCKEL: And the stress factor...

F RUCKEL: And the stress...

N RUCKEL: ...Was completely removed.

F RUCKEL: So we removed all the stress.

Yeah, and you also removed more than half your business. Again, this reminds me of the person who claimed they were "wasting" half of their royalties sending DMCA takedown notices that weren't effective. Why do that? Why kill your sales just because someone else figured out a way to resell your product better than you have?

There's some weird psychology going on here. It reminds me of the classic economics class game, whereby two students (Student A and Student B) are selected by the professor, and Student A is given $10 and told to share some of it with Student B -- but if Student B rejects Student A's offer, then no one gets any money. Under such conditions, even if Student A offers Student B just $1 (keeping $9), Student B should take it. Both of them are better off than getting nothing. And yet, time and time again, Student B rejects offers that are seen as "too small." Basically, they feel insulted, cheated or ripped off -- even though that's ridiculous. It's a weird attempt to insert a "fairness standard" where it doesn't make any sense, and where "punishing" Student A is more "valuable" to Student B than the small payout.

It feels like something similar must be happening here. People like the Ruckels would prefer to punish others, making their own product harder to find and more difficult to buy, than to allow anyone else to possibly benefit from it. I get that it happens, but it still confuses me to no end why anyone could possibly think it's a good result.

Filed Under: arbitrage, arbitrageurs, e-commerce, online sales, reselling, strategy
Companies: amazon, ebay

Upset About Beyonce Going Digital, Target Refuses To Stock New Album

from the stupidity-in-action dept

As you may have heard, Beyonce took much of the music world by surprise by launching her new album on iTunes only with no buildup. It was an incredibly successful promotion, garnering a ton of sales, and showing that she recognizes that digital is where the music world is these days. However, in a show of pure spite and jealousy, retailer Target responded by saying that it won't sell her physical CD once it comes out, because they don't want to encourage this sort of "going digital" behavior:

"At Target we focus on offering our guests a wide assortment of physical CDs, and when a new album is available digitally before it is available physically, it impacts demand and sales projections," Target spokesperson Erica Julkowski tells Billboard.

She continues, "While there are many aspects that contribute to our approach and we have appreciated partnering with Beyonce in the past, we are primarily focused on offering CDs that will be available in a physical format at the same time as all other formats. At this time, Target will not be carrying Beyonce's new self-titled album 'Beyonce.'"

This reminds me of the petulant and childish response of movie theaters when filmmakers started trying to release films online at the same time they were in the theaters. Like in that situation, these "brick and mortar" guys are fighting back against the tide, looking out of touch and childish at the same time. I would imagine that the basic reaction to Target's decision is to shrug. It's likely that people care a lot more about Beyonce than they do about Target, and if Target wants to send them elsewhere to get the music they want, those people just won't shop at Target. I'm not sure how Target wins in that situation.

Where this gets even more bizarre is that, generally speaking, CDs and such are low margin, or even loss leaders, for retailers like Target. They don't make their profit there, but rather use the CDs to bring people in to sell them much higher margin goods. Yet, in this case, they won't even get that benefit, all because they think they can prevent the natural tide of the move to digital? Oh, and looking childish and petty in the process. Who at Target thought that was a good idea?

Filed Under: beyonce, digital, loss leaders, music, retail, strategy
Companies: target

EA Labels President: DRM Is A Failed Strategy, But SimCity Didn't Have Any DRM

from the wait,-what? dept

I must admit that there are times when I become very concerned about whether or not I can actually read. Or, more concerning yet, whether I have the proper capacity to imbibe reality at all. This, friends, is surely one of those times. Barely a week removed from Super Meat Boy developer Tommy Refenes alerting Electronic Arts to the fact that their own DRM hurts their bottom line more than any amount of piracy, still in the midst of what some might call the wind-down curve of the SimCity fiasco, and with examples like Spore and their single-use codes still in my mind, I find a statement made by EA Labels President Frank Gibeau that seeks to unmake all of those thoughts.

At a developers conference, Gibeau revealed his belief that DRM is a completely useless tool for game developers. Then, to make sure that my brain was as confused as possible, he made sure I knew that SimCity didn't have any DRM component to it.

"DRM is a failed dead-end strategy; it's not a viable strategy for the gaming business. So what we tried to do creatively is build an online service in the SimCity universe and that's what we sought to achieve."

I'll wait for your own cerebellums to cease attempting to commit suicide before beginning with the obvious rebuttal: wut? EA, notorious purveyor of DRM, now says that DRM is a failure. They also insist that requiring an always online connection for their SimCity game to function out of the box was never about DRM, it was about making the game an MMO.

"I was involved in all the meetings. DRM was never even brought up once," Gibeau told GI.biz. "You don't build an MMO because you're thinking of DRM—you're building a massively multiplayer experience, that's what you're building. If you play an MMO, you don't demand an offline mode, you just don't. And in fact, SimCity started out and felt like an MMO more than anything else and it plays like an MMO."

Except, of course, when it doesn't. In fact, if the game can be tweaked to play offline and is essentially the same experience, then your game is almost exactly nothing like a massively multiplayer online game. This, particularly from a company that as been caught with its hand in the lying cookie jar already, is an instantly dismissable pile of BS.

But, SimCity aside, I would issue a challenge to Mr. Gibeau. If in fact you and your company believes that DRM is a "failed strategy", then I am sure we shall never see any form of DRM in your games moving forward. Who wants to take bets on that one?

Filed Under: drm, frank gibeau, simcity, strategy
Companies: ea

MPAA: Millions Of DMCA Takedowns Proves That Google Needs To Stop Piracy

from the huh? dept

The delusions of the MPAA are really impressive sometimes. For years, they've been pushing to make search engines like Google liable for blocking sites they don't like. That was a key provision in SOPA -- that it would force "information location services" to disappear links to sites deemed "dedicated" to infringement. Of course, as we've noted, it was only after SOPA failed that Hollywood finally started using the tools already available to it to ask Google to remove links to infringing works. At the same time, we noted that the fact that Google is now processing an astounding 2.5 million DMCA takedown notices a week suggests that something is really, really broken. We meant copyright law itself -- but our good friends at the MPAA went in the other direction, and suggested it showed how Google needs to do more, and how artists are overly burdened by the DMCA:

There is a staggering amount of copyright infringement taking place every day online and much of it is facilitated by Google, as their own data shows. According to Google, they receive 2.5 million takedown requests per week – and that data does not even include YouTube, where an enormous amount of infringement takes place. That means that by Google’s own accounting, millions of times each week creators are forced to raise a complaint with Google that the company is facilitating the theft of their work and ask that the infringing work or the link to that work be removed. Often, even when the links are removed, they pop right back up a few hours later. That’s not a reasonable -- or sustainable -- system for anyone....

We couldn’t agree more with Google that this data shows that our current system is not working – for creators, or for Google. But we can’t lose sight of the fact that it also confirms the important role that Google has to play in helping curb the theft of creative works while protecting an Internet that works for everyone. We look forward to continuing to work with them to tackle this urgent challenge.

Now, I agree that it's difficult for copyright holders (often not the actual creators, as the MPAA falsely implies) to have to monitor and track all of this stuff. That's a big burden. But... the MPAA ridiculously implies that there are only two options here: (1) "Creators" keep filing DMCA takedowns or (2) Google has to do more. That ignores reality in multiple ways. First off, the staggering number of bogus takedowns highlights the key point that we've made all along, which is that the only party who actually knows if a work is infringing is the copyright holder -- and even then, they often seem to get confused. Somehow thinking that a third party with no direct knowledge can somehow do more or should be more responsible is a little silly.

But the bigger issue is that this assumes -- as the MPAA always seems to assume -- that the only response to infringement is "more enforcement." What it seems to refuse to consider is that there's another path: it's the path in which the MPAA studios stop focusing so much on beating everyone with a stick, and start fixing the broken parts of their business model. Time and time again the evidence shows that if you offer people what they want, at a reasonable price, and with convenience, they pay -- and the "problem" of copyright infringement shrinks to being minimal (or, in some cases, it actually helps you). So, a rational individual or organization would look at the scale of the "problem" that the MPAA is talking about, along with all of the historical data on how little enforcement does to get people to actually buy -- and realize that perhaps that strategy is a mistake. Even the MPAA admits in this very post that the works often pop back up online.

Maybe -- just maybe -- the problem isn't search engines not doing enough, but rather the strategy that focuses on the stick of enforcement, rather than the carrot of providing consumers more of what they want. I recognize it's a crazy idea, especially at the MPAA -- where they have a whole freaking division of "content protection" VPs who need to justify their giant salaries, rather than a division for helping filmmakers embrace useful business models -- but it seems like a more productive path forward.

Oh, and one other thing. Could the MPAA stop with its bullshit claims that enforcing copyright couldn't possibly have an impact on free speech? This blog post has this in it:

One thing that’s important to make clear in any serious discussion about tackling online theft: absolutely no one is advocating for the restriction of speech on the Internet. Freedom of expression is a cornerstone of the Internet, and a cornerstone of the film community, which has spent the last century advocating for artists to be able to express themselves freely on the screen. Removing infringing works online isn’t limiting access to information or ideas, it's ensuring that the creativity and hard work that went into making a film is encouraged to flourish.

If the only thing taken down due to copyright claims was "infringing works," they'd have a point. But it's not. Copyright claims are used all the time to censor or take down sites or content that people just don't like. That's the concern. The massive expansion of copyright law and broad tools like the DMCA's notice-and-takedown lead to massive amounts of collateral damage that -- absolutely and without question -- infringe on free speech rights. Until the MPAA is willing to acknowledge that simple fact, it's difficult to take the organization seriously.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, strategy, takedowns
Companies: google, mpaa

Doubling Down On Secrecy: ITU Believes Secret Media Strategy Key To Avoiding SOPA/ACTA Fate

from the good-luck-with-that dept

As the WCIT (World Conference on International Telecommunications) gets under way in Dubai, the ITU is making its play to regulate the internet, potentially to aid authoritarian governments in censoring or limiting the internet, or to divert money from innovative internet companies to stagnant state telcos out of a claim of "fairness." There's obviously been a lot of talk about it, and the ITU keeps claiming that it's just a neutral body to facilitate discussions, even as increasing evidence suggests it's urging many of the crazier proposals forward itself.

And now it's come out that ITU officials recently held a "secret" meeting to figure out how they were going to avoid getting SOPA'd, having the world rise up in protest as it tries to implement its internet regulatory regime. Following some bizarre and paranoid fantasy about how the anti-ITU, anti-WCIT efforts are really just because an unnamed "lobbying group" didn't like one proposal (the one mentioned above about diverting money from internet companies to telcos), the meeting got down to business: how could they use social media to prevent SOPA- or ACTA-like uprisings from the public:

In response to the anti-WCIT “campaign,” according to the September retreat’s preparatory materials, the ITU reluctantly launched a “counter-campaign,” which the agency believes “has been fairly successful outside the US and somewhat successful even in the US,” where “some of the statements made to denigrate ITU and WCIT are so extreme that they were easy to challenge and rebut.”

Going forward, the ITU focused at its meeting on the possibility of an “intensive anti-ratification campaign in OECD countries, based on the so-called lack of openness of the WCIT process, resulting in a significant number of countries refusing to ratify the new ITRs.” The ITU calls this possibility “the so-called ACTA scenario,” referring to sometimes violent protests against the secret ACTA treaty that took place this year.

To develop the next phase of its “counter-campaign,” the ITU hosted speakers from leading PR and advertising agencies to advise them on the use of social media. For example, Matthias Lufkens, Head of Digital Strategy for global public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, gave a presentation on how his agency helped the World Economic Forum leverage tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr to fend off “occupy”-style protests that occurred both physically in Davos and on the Internet.

“There is a risk that [the ACTA scenario] will happen, but our communication campaign can mitigate this,” the internal document says.

Of course, the campaign doesn't really appear to be going that well -- especially since so much of it revolves around "deflect[ing] media questions from secrecy, taxes and censorship" to the blandly empty (and absolutely silly) statement that "the revised ITRs have the exciting potential to pave the way for a broadband revolution in the 21st century." I'm sure that sounds catchy on a tweet. The problem, of course, is that folks on the internet don't tend to believe that kind of bureaucrat-speak when they know it's not true. As Downes notes:

Here’s the unvarnished truth, which no PR agency can help the agency talk, tweet, or prevaricate their way around: The commercial Internet emerged and matured entirely since the treaty was last reviewed. It developed in spite of the ITRs, not because of them.

There is a familiar pattern here of ambitious regulators who have no expertise and little experience with the Internet proclaiming themselves its benevolent dictators, only to find the peasants revolting before the coup has even started.

The ITU is no different than the sponsors of ACTA, SOPA, PIPA, and other attempts at regulating the Internet, its content, or its users by governments large and small. Like the media lobbyists who continue to see the successful fight to kill SOPA and PIPA as a proxy war waged solely by Google and other Internet companies, the ITU simply can’t accept the reality that Internet users have become their own best advocates.

Once again, these bureaucrats really have no clue what they're doing.

Filed Under: acta, itu, media, secrecy, sopa, strategy, wcit

The DVD Is Dying. Hollywood's Plan? Do Nothing And Cede Ground To File Sharing

from the there's-no-business-like-no-business dept

David Pogue, NY Times columnist and known copyright infringer, has a new post up over at the Scientific American discussing piracy; more specifically, Hollywood's insistence on driving people to piracy with its lack of digital offerings and a distribution system that depends heavily on artificial limitations.

The first issue plaguing Hollywood's thinking? The DVD is dead and no one in control has realized it. The future lies in streaming movies, not plastic discs. It took the recording industry several years to realize the fact that its customers were not nearly as attached to its physical products as it was. Add to that the fact that many people prize convenience over ownership and it's clear that trying to steer people toward purchasing all of their entertainment isn't the way to go.

Netflix's CEO says, “We expect DVD subscribers to decline steadily every quarter, forever.” The latest laptops don't even come with DVD slots. So where are film enthusiasts suppose to rent their flicks? Online, of course.

Streaming movies offers instant gratification: no waiting, no driving—plus great portability: you can watch on gadgets too small for a DVD drive, like phones, tablets and superthin laptops.

The demand is already there and, as the technology catches up, it will only increase. You can take your music anywhere but most DVDs are still relegated to DVD players. Yes, there are workarounds, but when consumers are looking for the least amount of friction, streaming a movie easily trumps burning off a copy or ripping it to the hard drive. If they can't get the films they want in the format they want, they'll either skip it entirely, find a "competing" provider or look for something else readily available through streaming services.

Streaming services or online rentals, if implemented correctly, would give the motion picture industry some steady, if not increasing income well into the future. But it's completely disinterested in implementing these services in a realistic fashion, instead choosing to double-up on artificial scarcity.

For all of the apparent convenience of renting a movie via the Web, there are a surprising number of drawbacks. For example, when you rent the digital version, you often have only 24 hours to finish watching it, which makes no sense. Do these companies really expect us to rent the same movie again tomorrow night if we can't finish it tonight? In the DVD days, a Blockbuster rental was three days. Why should online rentals be any different?

Yeah. Exactly. Why? Why 24 hours? Netflix, your main competition in this arena, will let you keep the DVD(s) all the way up until they actually shut down the DVD service, only this time for real. As for their streaming "rentals?" Whatever's available stays available for repeated viewings all the way up until it's yanked from the lineup, usually by one of you (points accusingly at the Motion Picture Industry).

Speaking of holes in the lineup, when are you (again with the pointing) going to stop doing this sort of thing?

[P]erhaps most important, there's the availability problem. New movies aren't available online until months after they are finished in the theaters, thanks to the “windowing” system—a long-established obligation that makes each movie available, say, first to hotels, then to pay-per-view systems, then to HBO and, only after that, to you for online rental.

Worse, some movies never become available. Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, A Beautiful Mind, Bridget Jones's Diary, Saving Private Ryan, Meet the Fockers, and so on, are not available to rent from the major online distributors.

How's that "plan" working out for you, Hollywood? Keeping those pirates at bay with your sometime/later/still later/possibly never windowing? To be honest, I don't think you really care. Once all the distribution lines have been wrung dry of any cash, it's time to retire back to the boardroom and blame filesharing for any numbers that seem slightly weak. Blame them if you must, but who's screwing who at this point?

Of the 10 most pirated movies of 2011, guess how many of them are available to rent online, as I write this in midsummer 2012? Zero. That's right: Hollywood is actually encouraging the very practice they claim to be fighting (with new laws, for example).

Look, I don't want to tell you how to do your jobs, but sweet something of somewhere, someone needs to be offering a little guidance. You don't offer rentals of movies people actually want. You do offer rentals of movies that everyone's sick of after their multiple appearances in various windows. Other movies you just flat out don't offer at all. And yet, it's piracy that's keeping you from "breaking even." I would assume someone has put a bit a thought into this self-inflicted predicament. Pogue finds something akin to an explanation browsing around Disney's website:

“Unfortunately, it is not possible to release or have all our titles in the market at once.” Oh, okay. So they're not available because they're not available.

"Not possible" being PR code for "not until we're absolutely forced to, but we will fight this every step of the way." But why all the fighting? It didn't work for the recording industry. It won't work for the movie industry. The television industry seems to have weathered the disruption slightly better, but still expends a lot of effort locking up currently running shows and shutting down live streams that would actually GAIN them additional viewers to sell to advertisers.

Pogue has appended a list entitled "5 Ways Hollywood Can Stop Digging Its Own Grave" to his post and they're all common sense (at least to the "layperson"). The largest Hollywood-wielded shovel should have disappeared long ago: the release window. Related: "When it's buyable, it should be rentable."

This is the way things work these days and it's not just something that went into effect over the last 72 hours. If pirates have your stuff several months before you're planning on releasing it to paying customers, how many paying customers do you expect to have left once you deign them worthy of throwing money at your product?

Final word from Pogue:

Listen up, Hollywood: Nobody ever went out of business offering a good product for sale at a reasonable price with an eye toward pleasing the customer. You should try it some time.

Filed Under: copyright, dvds, hollywood, strategy, windows

If Your Business Strategy Relies On Suing Others, You're Not A Business, You're A Leech On The System

from the face-facts dept

Canadian patent troll Wi-LAN has a long history as trying to tax any and all wireless innovation with patent threats. With the news that it's suing a bunch more companies -- including Apple, HTC, HP, Dell, Sierra Wireless and others, the company is merely cementing its reputation as a taxer of innovation, rather than a builder of anything useful. The company doesn't seem shy about this. As the link above notes, the company seems to brag about this "business" strategy:

What's more, Skippen said he believes "that our past investment in litigation could generate a significant return in the future. Our record revenues and earnings in the first quarter signal the beginning of that return to WiLAN and its shareholders."

It's hard to read such a comment and not feel sickened by the pure net loss on the economy and innovation from such leeches. Any company whose business model focuses on litigation is not contributing positively to society and innovation. There are times to file a lawsuit, but when that becomes central to your business model, something is broken.

The very core of a functioning capitalist system is that companies make transactions in which there's a buyer and a seller, and both sides come away from the transaction feeling better off. The buyer values the product or service more than the money paid, and the seller values the money more. That's good business. Any time you involve a lawsuit to force someone to pay, you're doing exactly the opposite of that and you're setting up a system that is not working to benefit everyone, but is actively using the force of the courts to try to force a company to "buy" something it has no interest in buying. It's not good for the economy and it's not good for innovation.

Filed Under: business, economics, patents, strategy
Companies: wi-lan

Former LVRJ Publisher Admits He Was Behind Righthaven Lawsuit

from the ooops dept

Stephens Media and Righthaven have been involved in an important legal battle (mainly in the case involving the Democratic Underground, but it's popping up in other Righthaven cases) concerning who really are the parties of interest in the Righthaven lawsuits. Plenty of the defendants (and now three different judges) have said that Righthaven is really just a Wizard of Oz style front for a legal campaign by Stephens Media and its key publication, the Las Vegas Review-Journal. In fact, the basic argument is that the whole setup of Righthaven was simply a sham to try to isolate Stephens Media from potential liability. In the Democratic Underground case, the judge has even dismissed Righthaven from the case, but is allowing DU's counterclaims against Stephens Media to move forward (Righthaven is trying to beg its way back into the lawsuit).

One of the more entertainingly clueless players in this whole charade has been Sherman Frederick, the former publisher of the LVRJ, who was a major public supporter of Righthaven from the beginning, whose own words keep coming back to haunt both Stephens Media and Righthaven. Frederick appears to have a bit of a reckless overly-confident cowboy attitude, which is the kind of thing that gets people like him into a lot of trouble. We've already noted the rather blatant hypocrisy of Frederick multiple times. Originally he insisted that copying content from the LVRJ -- even small amounts -- was no different than stealing a corvette out of his driveway. And, yet, he's been caught posting infringing content, copying content from Techdirt and other blogs -- sometimes failing to even make it clear that he was quoting someone else.

But Frederick's biggest problem with his big mouth concerning Righthaven has been his habit of occasionally talking about Righthaven as if he controls it... because that's kind of the whole key issue here. Is Righthaven really a separate company... or is it merely a pawn for Stephens Media (or, worse, a law firm that is not licensed to practice law in Nevada)? You would think that sooner or later someone higher up in the ranks of Stephens Media (who demoted Frederick from publisher to mere columnist late last year right after the election) would tell Frederick to close his trap on these things, because he's only making it worse.

No luck. Frederick wrote a blog post on July 14th, blasting critics of the failed Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle, of whom Frederick had been a big booster during the election. In the comments to that blog post, some commenters challenged Frederick on certain points. And in a comment at 1:30 pm, Frederick directly noted, with regard to Angle: "I even sued her for lifting our material." He is, of course, referring to the fact that Righthaven sued Angle. We actually found it amusing that Frederick's "little friend," Righthaven would sue Angle at the same time that he, as publisher, endorsed her as a candidate. Would Frederick endorse a candidate who stole the corvette out of his driveway? Apparently.

Still... in that comment he directly claims that he was the one who sued Angle. That's a pretty big problem for Stephens Media when it's trying to claim that it's not the one suing, but it's Frederick's "little friend," Righthaven. And, indeed, it took all of about a day for at least one of the defendants in a Righthaven lawsuit to point this comment out to a court. I would imagine it does not look good for Stephens Media, in these cases where it's claiming that it's not the one suing, for its former publisher, who was intimately involved in the Righthaven plan, to come out and state publicly that, yes, in fact he was responsible for one of Righthaven's most high profile cases.

Filed Under: business models, copyright, journalism, lawsuits, sherman frederick, strategy
Companies: righthaven, stephens media

Righthaven's Biggest Fan Copies Content As Part Of His Argument Against Copying Content

from the is-this-guy-clueless? dept

Last year, we wrote about how Sherman Frederick, the former publisher (since demoted to columnist) of the Las Vegas Review Journal was caught posting an infringing video on his blog. This was particularly funny, because Frederick was the key supporter of the LVRJ's "deal" with Righthaven, and regularly mocked-by-bad-analogy anyone who disagreed with him.

A few folks had sent in Frederick's latest column -- which, of course, we won't link to, since he's made it clear he doesn't want any traffic -- in which he once again defends Righthaven, despite the fact that a court basically killed off most Righthaven lawsuits due to its sham copyright transfer from LVRJ parent Stephens Media. Frederick's post is barely comprehensible, calling those who disagree with him "the unthinking blogger" and claiming that people who disagree with him "mischaracterize reality." He also seems to ignore the fact that Righthaven lost massively, and claims instead that "they're here to stay and they intend to win the battles they've started." I hope I haven't overstepped the legal boundaries of Frederick's bizarre definition of "content theft" with those quotes.

In the same article, Frederick, hilariously, suggests that everyone should have to pay to link to one of his articles. He references a decision by Radley Balko a few months ago to remove a post that linked to an LVRJ article once someone pointed out LVRJ's Righthaven association, and rather than realize how this makes Frederick and LVRJ look clueless, he claims that Balko did the right thing, and that every blogger can decide if such linking is "worth the price."

But what makes all of this extra funny is that the meat of Frederick's post is all copied content from another blog which is not properly attributed at all. Seriously. ken points us to his own analysis of Frederick's hypocrisy:

Frederick's article contains content from three paragraphs of posts from the blog GametimeIP.com. Frederick fails to even use basic netiquette for citing other sources. The parts taken are not attributed to the author except for a link and not even set in quotation marks which could leave the reader to assume those are Frederick's words and not those of GametimeIP.

It's hilarious. Yes, Frederick links to the articles, but frankly I had no idea he was actually quoting them. From the way he wrote it, it very much looks like they're Frederick's words, defending Righthaven. So, here we have Sherman Frederick, in an article decrying "copying" of content, in which he blatantly copies someone else's content, and even worse, does not properly credit it, or quote it. I also do wonder, if he "paid the price" to GametimeIP for his use of their content. After all, it's the proper way to do things, right?

Filed Under: business models, copyright, journalism, lawsuits, sherman frederick, strategy
Companies: las vegas review journal, righthaven, stephens media