With sale of domain name, tables are turned on Righthaven
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Spencer Holladay
Friday
6 January 2012
1:45 p.m.
Righthaven Archives
Just one year ago, Las Vegas copyright lawsuit filer Righthaven LLC was busy collecting settlement money from the unsuspecting recipients of its no-warning lawsuits.
On Friday, the tables were turned when a defendant who refused to settle won back some of the money he had paid attorneys to fight — and ultimately defeat — Righthaven in court. The first-ever sale of a Righthaven asset to cover the expenses of a prevailing defendant concluded Friday, with Righthaven's website domain name, righthaven.com, being sold for $3,300 in an online auction.
The court-appointed receiver auctioning the assets of Righthaven didn’t immediately identify the winning bidder, so it wasn't immediately known how the bidder would use the name.
There were a dozen bidders for the domain name, according to auctioneer SnapNames.com.
Righthaven, which filed 275 no-warning copyright infringement lawsuits over Las Vegas Review-Journal and Denver Post content starting in March 2010, has been ordered to turn its assets over to the receiver for auction so Righthaven creditors can get paid. The receiver seized the domain name, but earlier this week reported Righthaven had been uncooperative in turning over its copyrights and trademark for auction.
The receiver was put in place after Righthaven said it wouldn't or couldn't comply with a court order to pay $216,335 to several defendants that had defeated the company in court.
After collecting what are believed to be hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements, Righthaven stumbled this summer with adverse court decisions and has faced financial difficulties since then because of a combination of factors. Those include Righthaven's inability to prosecute pending lawsuits and collect more settlement money after judges ruled it lacked standing to sue, and the company's own hefty legal fees litigating its lawsuits as well as appeals now under way.
The domain name auction that concluded Friday will specifically benefit Righthaven defendant Wayne Hoehn, who is owed $63,720. No auctions have been scheduled to benefit the other defendants.
Hoehn, a Kentucky resident, posted a Las Vegas Review-Journal column on a sports betting website’s message board without authorization from the R-J.
After Righthaven obtained a copyright to the column for lawsuit purposes, it sued Hoehn for copyright infringement.
U.S. District Judge Philip Pro in Las Vegas ruled last year that Righthaven lacked standing to sue Hoehn because the R-J maintained control of the column, despite Righthaven’s claims of ownership.
On top of that, Pro found Hoehn was protected by the fair use doctrine of copyright law in his posting of the column.
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Discussion 6 comments
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Okay, one just has to wonder who'd spend $3k+ for that domain, unless it's a "beard" for the RJ or Righthaven, how absurd. It's all fast coming to an end, which I regret for Steve Green and the Sun, but I do rejoice in the fact that Sherm Frederick will be remember for this foolishness and nothing more.
My guess is that some entity related to the Stephens Family bought the domain.
I was thinking of bidding myself. It is very likely worth considerably more. Imagine all the links to it from websites across the net. That equals Google page rank, and thus money. Put related content, perhaps how to find a lawyer, reap the rewards. Actually, now I'm kicking my self in the butt for not placing the winning bid. I would have gone as high as 5k.
For those that don't understand, links are the currency of the web. A link from a highly regarded website (think news sites), can be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. That domain is gold.
Links are what newspapers do not understand. Most the people being sued by Righthaven had linked to the source and sent traffic to the newspapers sites and for the reward they were sued by Righthaven.
Newspapers think blogs siting them is hurting their business but in reality these links have been instrumental in keeping them afloat in the Internet age.
Newspapers understand links very well.
The entire problem was created by Righthaven including people who took reasonable excerpts as well as those who copied entire articles. I think that *all* the fair use rulings that allowed for the entire article to be used were wrong and have set very bad precedents.
Simply put, Sherm and RH got incredibly greedy and used very poor judgement with their tactics. The entire online community has been hurt by them. Judge Mahan in particular put out a bad ruling when he said editorial content was not as creative as a Barbie doll design and as such did not enjoy the same level of copyright protection. Both Mahan and Judge Pro put out bad rulings that allowed for entire articles to be used.
On the other hand, Judge Hunt handed down a very good ruling, in my opinion.
Righthaven has done incredible harm to copyright law by acting in such an irresponsible and short-sighted fashion.
In the right hands, that domain could be very profitable for at least another year or two from all the traffic generated by the news articles on the company..
Future value will be when this company and its stupidity is used in classrooms on how NOT to try to change the world and what happens when try to convince the world that you know more about the law than a sitting federal judge.
On the internet, its all about traffic
boftx
I should say some newspapers do not understand them. Other papers like the Las Vegas Sun have thrived in the Internet age because they take advantage of the opportunities. It is rags like the LVRJ who miss the days of being the only game in town. They hate the competition the Internet brings and fail to see the potential.
@kbingh (Ken Bingham) said...
Links are what newspapers do not understand. Most the people being sued by Righthaven had linked to the source and sent traffic to the newspapers sites and for the reward they were sued by Righthaven
This is an absolute falsehood. No suit was ever brought here because of links. And linking (when reposting entire texts) has no bearing on the actual infringement.
I hate Righthaven but will not stand by and watch the rights available to all of under the U.S. Copyright Act be trampled by misinformation.
I still think turning it into Bit Torrent site would be perfect.