Buying Copyrights, Then Patrolling the Web for Infringement | Hacker News Reader

Buying Copyrights, Then Patrolling the Web for Infringement

nytimes.com

19 pointsraju11 comments

If I understand the article properly, Righthaven may also be doing the reverse of the title: Finding the infringement, and then buying the rights, possibly by cutting a deal with the original "owner" for a split of the settlements.

Actually, according to Ars, it looks like they're not even buying the rights, as in the exclusive rights, as enumerated by the copyright acts (which, importantly, do not include a specific the right to sue).

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/righthaven-r...

If you have received a legal notice from Righthaven make sure you add it to the Chilling Effects db: http://chillingeffects.org/input.cgi

This article is astonishingly biased. It brushes off the important "escape valve" of fair use like this:

Eric Goldman, director of the high-tech law institute at the Santa Clara University School of Law, said reposting published material online could qualify as "fair use" if it didn’t diminish the market value of the original. Other critics of the suits contend that reposting material for the purposes of discussion does not constitute infringement.

That brush off both misleads and diminishes the purpose of fair use. Fair use isn't not-for-profit, it's for the purpose of education, criticism and some other things. Fair use isn't just "a small piece", either. Recently, reposting of an entire article was found to constitute fair use.

The "critics contend" part seems particularly misleading, in that fair use is a part of both case and statute law. It's not some lame-o pundit's opinion, it's the law.

Unfortunately, you have to actually go to trial to get a fair use judgement, and that's where the anti-free-speech nature of "copyright infringement" shows up. Without a presumption of fair use, the government-granted monopoly of copyright impedes free speech.

I think the most significant part of this story is that it appeared in the New York Times. This means that even people who aren't tech enthusiasts are becoming aware of how copyright laws are affecting bloggers and other small-time users of content.

I hope that this increased awareness will lead to better laws, but realistically those will be ten years away, at least.

I sincerely hope that this is mostly a generational thing. Younger people (<30) have a drastically different ethical valuation of copyright related issues. Older people (>45-50) who still make up a large number of the judges who field these cases and executives who feel strongly about being infringed upon, have a different valuation. Unfortunately, they have a disproportionate amount of the power. I think that over time, the idea that posting someone else's picture on your blog is worthy of a lawsuit will become laughable and more cases will be dismissed by more understanding judges and less people will try to bring these suits. This may not be the case, but I think it will prove to be one of those fundamental differences between those of us who grew up in the internet age vs. those who wrapped their old moral/ethical framework around it.

>Younger people (<30) have a drastically different ethical valuation of copyright related issues. Older people (>45-50) who still make up a large number of the judges who field these cases and executives who feel strongly about being infringed upon, have a different valuation.

In theory judges cast their judgement based on the statute. Whilst I think you have a point that there is a probably a general generational divide on public perception of copyright issues it is irrelevant to the position of the judge. Unless the law is changed their judgement should not change.

Judges are not (usually, in a democratic country) there to judge the zeitgeist and modify the law accordingly, that's partially what your administration is in power for.

>the idea that posting someone else's picture on your blog is worthy of a lawsuit will become laughable

Maybe. This won't happen until all news becomes free-gratis.

For example if that picture is a scoop on alien life, that might have cost a lot to obtain, then it creates a great commercial harm to the source to print the image without a license.

Of course you may believe that the right to commercial control of information should not exist. I could live with that, I think, but it would take many decades (probably several generations) to transform the world in to such a place IMO.

Yes, judge's should not judge the zeitgeist. I'm confused as to what you mean by "your administration." I'm assuming you assumed I voted for Obama, which I did not (I also didn't vote for the previous administration as I was not old enough). I would, and believe I could successfully, argue that the interpretation of the law is greatly affected by popular societal conceptions, however. I don't think news needs to become free-gratis for such lawsuits to be thrown out of courts. I'd like to see a system where those without material gain cannot be punished for failing to cite (that doesn't mean I think they shouldn't have to, so much as they shouldn't get in trouble for not doing it, which I understand is effectively saying they don't have to).

>what you mean by "your administration."

My intended meaning was "The administration in whatever country you reside".

The problem with making your test for commercial action simply "financial gain" is that, for example, a large company can kill a smaller one by copying their stuff and giving it away until the smaller company goes out of business. Or, a large number of individuals can copy your stuff and give it away until your company goes out of business. At which point the content creator is removed from the system - the copyists win but at the expense of commercial content creation.

In short forcing someone else financial loss is a highly commercial action (and is currently judged that way).

This sort of scenario (effective PD or copyzero for consumers) to my mind will only work in a communist environment. We have to be prepared to support content creators from a public purse if we want the established levels of higher quality content to be made.

Of course arguments against commercial artistic and craft creation may work too ("we don't need journalists", "we don't need paid musicians", etc.).

Basically the copyright equivilent of patent trolls, how lovely.

>“I was shocked,” Mr. Hill said. “I thought maybe it was a joke or something to scare me. I didn’t know the picture was copyrighted.”

I highly doubt the verity of his claim to ignorance of the law in this respect. I suspect it to be more like "I thought I wouldn't get caught". If he didn't know that images like this would be protected by copyright law then why would he need to post a disclaimer alongside the content?

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