BEWARE! Copyright Troll Demands Drudge Report Domain Name

[Gerry]

I posted about this the other day just an in information pass along.

http://www.dnforum.com/f437/beware-...ghted-material-thread-440760.html#post1958233

This is quite serious and not to be taken lightly.

Beware: This is Real!

I had mentioned that just getting caught up in this "trolling" could be headaches aplenty.

Notice that this service goes to federal court in a "screw you, wipo" move.

The thought of the cost of having to defend oneself or lose a name and a site is not appealing at all.

The thought have having to fight allegations in a federal court (because of federal copyright violations) is troubling. And, this could provide a precedence for companies to protect its assets and brand.

Also notice that out of the 180 plus actions this service has filed, 70 have been settled out of court. This is some serious shit!

Circumventing WIPO and URDP may become the norm and also signal an end to those practices.

Copyright Troll Demands Drudge Report Domain Name

One of the litigation scare tactics employed by copyright troll Righthaven is it routinely demands allegedly infringing sites to forfeit their domain names.

But in private, civil copyright litigation, there is no legal basis for such a demand, even if an allegedly infringing website is ultimately found liable for breaching copyright law. The Electronic Frontier Foundation maintains the tactic is a method to coerce settlements from rank-and-file websites that cannot afford to defend themselves from the newspaper-lawsuit factory that is Righthaven.

To be sure, Las Vegas-based Righthaven’s latest target is no unknown site like most of Righthaven’s targets. It’s the Drudge Report, which is accused of carrying a Denver Post photo of a TSA agent searching an air traveler last month.

Righthaven’s lawsuit comes nearly a month after the Denver Post published a “notice to readers” that it was a breach of copyright law to re-publish its photographs without permission.

Founded this spring, Righthaven sues on behalf of Stephens Media and, as of days ago, MediaNews Group. Righthaven has demanded a federal judge in each of its 180-plus cases to order its targets to hand over their domains. About 70 of its cases have settled out of court, and their terms are confidential.

One of Righthaven’s latest cases, lodged Wednesday on behalf of MediaNews, demands a Nevada federal judge to “direct Network Solutions, and any successor domain name registrar for the Drudge Report domain, to lock the Drudge Report domain and transfer control of the Drudge Report domain to Righthaven.” (.pdf) The suit also demands the judge order the same for drudgereportarchives.com, the archival site of drudgereport.com.

Matt Drudge, who is personally named in the lawsuit, did not immediately respond for comment. Steve Gibson, Righthaven’s chief executive, said in a Tuesday telephone interview that Righthaven would soon begin lodging lawsuits on behalf of other, yet-to-named media outlets.

 

[Mark Talbot]

Yes I have been aware of this for a few months.

A website I use is named on their hitlist, but now it is marked as case closed, and they arent allowed to talk.

So I dont know how it is settled or the terms.


But basically as I understand it, this is copyright hijacking by a legal firm, and they dont seem to mind who they attack.

Their hit list consists of some pretty powerful people too.


But if you dont have a few thousand to get them off your backs, and cant afford to fight it, you will end up losing your website and domain name to them.


There needs to be legislation on this soon, or at least a court needs to set precidence to protect or limit the website owners.

 

[cyberlaw]

I advised a defendant in a Righthaven case. One thing that appeared to be true of their cases is that they did not file suits against sites that had designated a DMCA agent. The reason for this is simple: having a designated agent precludes higher damages awards in copyright cases. No guarantees that this won't change overnight, but it is something that really slows down copyright claimants.

Here is the Copyright Office form for anyone interested in registering an agent with the Office:

http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/agent.pdf

There is a one-time fee for designating an agent, and there are additional requirements under the DMCA, but it's a good idea to do it for content-oriented sites.