So I'm wondering if you've pulled a "Microsoft" (as I call it) and have several domains pointing or re-directing to your master domain... I'd assume you'd have to list all those as well with the added $30.00 fee for each & if you exceed 10, then you have to fill out another form with another $105 fee, plus every 30.00 fee for each domain.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to just move your domain to country which does not indorse or approve of DMCA

("Pulling a Microsoft" means if I type out not just Microsoft.com, but also .net, .info. org, ect... And also anything with the name Windows, Office, DirectX, ect...ect... I end up going to Microsoft. I always called it that, because to the best of my knowledge they were the first to do so)

Well if the domain redirects there certainly would be no issue, the URL in the browser would always be .com.

If however you actively use multiple domains I could maybe see your issue but in truth they should all link to the same privacy policy and terms of service and list the "official" website URL so I wouldn't worry about that either IMO.

That does not make since..I see nothing in this form that would prevent
a lawsuit, i see no info of importance to be honest...This could very well be RHaven.

I am a little confused..I thought forums could not be sued or had at least certain
3rd party rights from what other posters post...

This is the same as running into the backend of someone on purpose, then
sue the other party to say, its your fault...but if a millionaire runs into
the back of him, are you really going to take him on in court?

like one person said, this person/company can go around posting his crap on
your forum, wait a few months, then take you to court...is it really that easy?

I have heard of Ripoffreport.com being sued several times, and ripoffreport.com
is still online today, so how come this RHaven has taken down so many, and
not one person has taken out Ripoff for copyright claims?

The form is legit, it is from the copyright.gov website:
http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/agent.pdf

The article and a lawyer I talked to said that in order to be eligible for protection under the DMCA you must register an agent using this form, it is not enough to simply have a take down agent and instructions in your terms of service even though most admins seem to think this is the case.

Agent? What do you mean by agent?

But how does this prevent a lawsuit?

Its like trying to sell me horsecrap, and not tell me whats in it :)

It seems logical that at some point the tactics used by Righthaven LLC. will be found to be unlawful, and no longer of consequence, but until such a time as this occurs, it is prudent to be aware of the 'clients' that Righthaven represents when you choose to cite information for any means of publication...What does this mean? It means one day some attorney is going
to have some big jingles and stand up to them misusing the justice system for financial gain.

In my opinion if they had ever run across me in such a manner, I would sue them for abuse, and fraud.
They outright knew when they purchased these article rights that they were out on the internet, and
sites had these articles and can prove by post date that they were there before their purchase of the rights,
at best they should have been sent a warning to remove said articles, this is clearly abuse of the justice
system, fraud, and maybe some other crimes as well...Someone will stand up to them one day, if they havent already.

I'm not a lawyer so I can't be sure how it will help exactly only that I've been told from multiple sources with no financial stake in this that paying this fee and filling out the form is a good idea.

If you don't feel it's in your best interest to do so that's fine too, I'm not going to worry about what other people choose or choose not to do.

It is my understanding that filling out this form and registering an agent (you can be your own agent) gives you official protection from lawsuits under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA says if a website has an official agent (basically the name and address) of the person personally responsible for removing copyright infringing material from said website than that website can not be sued for copyright violations due to the activity of its users IF the agent (you) deal with take down notices in a timely manner. There is also something about requiring you to take action (ban) repeat offenders as well... I believe.

I'm not trying to sell anything to anyone- I don't make money off these forms, the US Government does.

ok, that makes since..basicly they want your info so they know who to
contact in case such disputes come in, is that about right?

--------------- Added [DATE]1292645550[/DATE] at [TIME]1292645550[/TIME] ---------------

This is interesting, look at this link before the form:
http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/

You can actually see sites that are registered.

I thought sites were protected from 3rd party posters,
but I did not know about this....so there is something
that does actually protect or limit a lawsuit against your site.

Soooooooo, what happened to the article? Did he sue these guys, too?

Maybe they want you to pay to read articles now... not sure... but there is plenty of info out there if you Google RightHaven LLC.

Did you actually fill out the forum and pay the fee?

About to mail it today actually.

Well, to be honest, it sounds more like a scam than anything else.

It's possible I guess but look at this link:
http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/

Every major website in the United States from Amazon to Ebay to Craigslist and CNN have all fallen for the same "scam." At least I'll be in good company...

If everyone was jumping off a bridge, wouldn't you?

No, I wouldn't jump.

I guess I'm confused as to what that form will really do or prevent. Too much lawyer-speak for me.

Yes. Yes I would. Especially if there's donuts.

So is this knucklehead is still exploiting this loophole actively? Is he even bothering with niche sites that don't generate revenue? I mean, you could try and sue me for $75,000. But my occupation is stay-at-home-dad. I'm pretty sure my daughter can't be garnished.

I'll try again...

currently if someone on your forum decides they are going to paste the full text of the Harry Potter books into your forum your forum is now breaching copyright... The publisher could sue your forum (and by extension you) for up to $150,000 per copyright claim. Even though you personally didn't post it, it's you forum held responsible under the old copyright laws which never considered the internet. They would treat you like a newspaper who printed an entire copyrighted book as an article.

The DMCA was enacted because it was obvious old copyright laws would be foolish to apply to modern websites where users contribute content rather than an edtior of a paper say. So under DMCA you are protected from being sued under the old rules so long as you agree to take down stuff the copyright owner sends you official notice to take down (a 'take down' notice.) - Many admins believe by simply putting instructions for others to follow in their Terms of Service on how to request a "take down" they are covered by DMCA. However this isn't true- to be truly covered by DMCA you MUST have a take down agent registered with the Copyright office. That is what this form does.

--------------- Added [DATE]1292696288[/DATE] at [TIME]1292696288[/TIME] ---------------

Yes he is and you are the target... he sues regular people for $75K knowing they can't pay... he also wants you to forfeit your domain name to him... but he settles for a few thousand dollars, whatever he thinks you could pay him if you try really hard.

So what happens if they post only like 25% of something and then a link to the actual of the story?

This is a point of argument, what is "fair use" - I've researched this and the answer is there is no answer- it is decided on a case by case basis. If you quote 1 sentence of a book, that is probably fair use. If you quote one paragraph of a 3 paragraph article (33%) now you're really pushing your luck.

Unfortunately since there is no magic line where you can say "I only used 20 words so I'm safe." RightHaven, or anyone, could sue you for using as little as 1 sentence if they want- and the RightHaven model is to sue people who can't fight back so no matter how little someone might copy you would lose more money defending yourself that it is worth, even if you did ultimately prevail- but RightHaven knows you won't even try.

RightHaven usually sues people who copy full or significant parts of articles but have also sued people for using as little as 1 full paragraph.

--------------- Added [DATE]1292698884[/DATE] at [TIME]1292698884[/TIME] ---------------

The thing is the guy behind RightHaven is both trying to make money but in a way he's also trying to "save" newspapers who are hurting. With the Internet people have decided they should be getting all their news for free when this had never been true in the past... You either paid for a newspaper or watched network tv news in which case you watched commercials, or paid for cable which in turned paid for cable news.

On the Internet now we expect free news and that means the news sites lose big money. Their only hope is to sell advertising, but anytime you or a user copies any significant part of an article that is money lost to the news site- because likely the visitor will not click on the link and not be subject to the advertisements they'd otherwise see.

So he has a valid point- it's not something I ever worried about before as an admin- if a user copied all or most of a short article I never thought twice about it- but in fact that wasn't a "victimless" crime... if everyone copied every article elsewhere online the news site that published the article to begin with would go out of business... RightHaven's goal is to make admins think twice about this behavior and while I don't agree with his tactics I can agree with his goals.

Sounds like his goal is to make money, not care about what it right or wrong. He found a loophole and he is going to exploit it for all it is worth. In the past, when I had my Father's Rights Forums going, I ALWAYS got permission from authors of any posts I made of their articles. My rule of thumb on other articles was no more than 25% and a link to the "Rest of the story...". That worked pretty well and I never had any complaints of copyright infringement.

But again, he's likely not going to sue anyone with no income. When it comes to litigation, you only sue when there's money in it. When you think there's a chance that person might settle. It wouldn't be worth the cost of litigation or arbitration to go after people who can't offset the cost. Anyone who litigates like this is treating it like a business. He isn't concerned about "getting" people. He's concerned about how much money he can make off of them. Penny anti forums like mine might be fun if he's just mean spirited, but he'd get nothing out of it, other than a domain name that doesn't get that much traffic to begin with.

Just because you have a non-free forum and domain name is enough for them. Look at their past victims, some even consist of free Wordpress blogs with subdomains. Just because you have no income doesn't mean that they won't try to put you into debt for the next 10 years.

Remember, you're not dealing with people here, you're dealing with scum.

Example of some aforementioned blogs:
http://righthavenvictims.blogspot.com/

Everything about RightHaven defies logic. That's why I brought up the money is one thing, he's also trying to "Send a message" too... so if that means brining you to court and you losing because you can't defend yourself and you getting stuck with a $75,000 judgement against you that you need to declare bankruptcy he'll take that. He is a lawyer himself so it's not like he needs to pay people to file these suits and such.

He'd have a very hard time coming after me as I get VA Disability and even the tax man can't touch it so I don't see how he would be able to.

Right, if he's just mean spirited, then he can try and do whatever he wants. If the whole point of this is to make people miserable, then I'm sure he'll try and go after whomever.

But I don't think that's the point. I think the point is making money. As much as he can as quickly as he can. He could, conceivably, go for any profit I make, one day. But case, by case, that's iffy. He might get something, he might not. His most profitable bets are going after websites turning a profit. Still classless. But more likely.

Do you realize what you just said?

"$75,000 judgement against you that you need to declare bankruptcy he'll take that"

The problem with this statement is, if you file BK, he gets nothing, and I personally
have debt in excess of $100k but coming after me would not be cost effective.


This guy is using the legal system to his advantage, the problem is his
victims are not using the legal system to their advantage, some are giving up,
then again, maybe they should, but this company seems to be worth a lot
of money, and money means a lawsuit against him worth fighting.

--------------- Added [DATE]1292723038[/DATE] at [TIME]1292723038[/TIME] ---------------

From what I understand, you would register your domain with the US copyright so
it would make it easy for people to contact with DMCA notices, so the govt is
basicly saying your site will be protected if you register your site, and you must
be given fair notice and opportunity to remove content in violation before
the party could file a lawsuit against you/your site, and if you do not have this
US copyright protection, then you are fair game of at will lawsuits...he is
saying if those other sites would have paid this fee, then their outcomes would
have been much different as they would have had to notify them and give
them fair opportunity before they could file a lawsuit in other words those
websites he sued did not have us copyright protection.

copyright.gov appears to be legit.

1: only government can use *.gov domains
2: domain is PR9
3: domain has 1.2m+ backlinks

If this is a fraud domain, then he is doing a good job, and if
caught would spend a lifetime in jail taking money on the governments behalf.

--------------- Added [DATE]1292725020[/DATE] at [TIME]1292725020[/TIME] ---------------

To be honest with you, this site truly deserves to be sued for fraud:

http://Gocopyright.com

I have found several complaints regarding this scam site.

there is a clause if you post a article and you put a link to where the article is originated then i heard there is nothing much he can do. but dam i am thinking of the terminology.

How he can get you is if you modify the story to try to make it your own then there is a problem.

I had done some research ways back and i even had a great link on the laws about copyright
literature . there are some rule also is you keep the name of the author .

I am going to look into this again . man i should of kept the information.

update do some searching under the "fair use" this is a gray matter but it could help you get out of trouble.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

--------------- Added [DATE]1292732338[/DATE] at [TIME]1292732338[/TIME] ---------------

plus i think in order to sue you he has to prov lost of income and damages

It depends on what type of content it is...is the type of content that you need publicity,
and you need all the backlinks you can get? or is the type of content that could cause
a company to loose money because if it is all over the net, they may have a backlink,
but so what if it can be got on the net for free, which sorta makes the backlink
pointless and worthless if they are no longer can sell their content...

and I do not see offering a backlink being permission
to place anyones content online.

again, it depends on what type of content it is.

Is it money making content that you want to get out for backlinks...or is it
content for Mary Had a Little Lamb which can cause less sales if the content
is all over the internet...? Depends on the content, and if the copyright holder
wants the content online, so offering a backlink goes not grant permission,
unless you are going through RSS feeds, then of course they would want
their content out for exposure and such, but it would make since that some
do not want their content out so they can keep their hands around making money.

You are ignoring it's not JUST the money. He will be HAPPY to send a message and bankrupting some forum owners who didn't protect copyrights of articles he owns the rights to will be just fine for RightHaven even if it costs him a few hours time to file some paperwork and go before a judge.

This is completely incorrect. A link makes no legal difference... You might find some Copyright holders won't complain if you leave a link but it doesn't protect you in any way shape or form.
There are rules of etiquette where you'd keep the author's name but it is in no way any more legal to infringe copyrighted material with or without the author's name.

Wikipedia is not going to defend you or aide in your defense in court.

Absolutely not true... You do not need to prove damages to file a copyright infringement claim.

LOOK... I'm not trying to sell anyone on this- I'm not going to debate whether RightHaven is right or wrong in what they are doing- I'm just telling you what they are doing and you can choose to listen or not. I'm not going to try and convince anyone else.

I was trying to enlighten people like mrt12345, I was like him too... I "always heard" or thought I knew the "facts" about copyright law but the last few months following RightHaven were a a GIANT wake up call- Everything you think you know about copyright law and the DMCA is wrong.

Every major website in the USA, and even many foreign sites, have Registered Agents. You can follow the link I gave... Amazon, EBay, CNN, Fox News, Craigslist, Internet Brands, vBulletin.com, vBulletin Solutions, AOL, Google, and Facebook are just some of the sites who have registered...

What do they all have in common? Teams of lawyers who know more about the law than I and probably you ever will.

I am not debating, to be honest, I would be on the end that has US copyright
protection, then not having it, and being sued, from anyone, or for whatever
copyright reasons they might claim to have or hold...

I noticed it says $105, but i do not understand the $30 block below
that...does that mean if you put anything on that line then it
will cost an extra $30?

10 years ago, their rates where like $20

The Govt's greed is showing over the years :)

The Registered Agent also serves DMCA notices. Should a forum receive a takedown notice claiming CNN copyright, the forum owner can check the Registered Agent filing on Copyright.gov to verify that it is a legitimate takedown notice.

If your website generates unique content, registering an agent shows that you intend to protect your work. Should you ever file a DMCA takedown against another website, the other website doesn't comply, and you push it to court, then the judge would look more favorably toward the party that followed DMCA procedure.

That's the whole point of a Registered Agent -- all copyright issues regarding that site go through that agent, no matter if the issue is "CNN stole from you" or "you stole from CNN".

What I was told was that if you use more than 1 name you might as well fill up that line to the 10 max because it cost's the same... If you need 11 to 20 then you have to pay $60, or so on. Personally I paid the extra $30 because I have multiple domain names all going to the same site. I don't know if it was necessary but $30 was cheaper then getting a professional opinion on it.

Thank you for the explanation. I'm still learning, didn't know the Agent would also initiate claims. Good stuff. :up:

Access denied
You are not authorized to access this page.

They've removed or hidden the original article... (posted 3 months ago) but other links in this thread still work and give good info.

I am still at a loss on how copyright.gov is supposed to protect you if you
register with them. I understand the theory, but what I do not see on
their site is the "how". What is going to keep an attorney from filing
suit against you regardless (before making DMCA contact). I really do not
see anything on copyright.gov that explains to atty's on what to
expect or what they can, or can not do. All copyright.gov pretty says
is that you are protected to some degree, but does not explain more then that.

I've had Copyright.gov bookmarked for years. It's just the place you go to register your works with the government offices.

Nothing, except maybe they might know they likely won't win if you complied with the terms of the DMCA.

Well, I don't think it's their purpose to teach law to lawyers, but there's a lot of info on that site.

unless you read this entire section, you will not know what I am
talking about, at no time was we ever talking about getting
our works copyrighted....this is concerning protection for
websites found using copyright content...

you need to read all threads to understand what I am talking about.

--------------- Added [DATE]1292860614[/DATE] at [TIME]1292860614[/TIME] ---------------

You can have all the info you want on the site, but if you evade the actual
"how does this actually protect" rather then saying it just does, then you
end up with more questions then answers...

If you got your site registered, your first question is going to be
ok, im protected, but how...? It does not matter at this point
if the other side win's or loses, its going to court to begin with
that could financially ruin you...if i register, is dot.gov going to pay my
legal fees should some atty not care if I am registered or not?

the moral of this story is, exactly how am I protected?
If you are going to setup a site to collect money..
well I think I deserve to know, not some hot shot answer...
your just protected, that is careless, and not good enough for me.

registered or not, the chances of most sites being able to afford
going through the entire legal process is just about slim to none.

What I'm suggesting is that it doesn't really do much more than that what registering copyrights always has. Protect you in the event someone tries to steal your idea. In other words, I don't see how it protects you from RightHaven, either.

kh99 answered you correctly. You seem to want Copyright.gov to guarantee that your content isn't infringing... and you can't find it on Copyright.gov because they don't do that.

Filing a Registered Agent form with Copyright.gov simply tells others who you've designated to handle any copyright concerns regarding your website -- it's an entry in a database, not an insurance policy.

If you're outside of the US, then all this talk about DMCA and Copyright.gov is irrelevant to you, and you should consult a legal advisor in your own country.

And I'm saying the information's on the site, if you can't understand it then you probably need to hire a lawyer. That's just the way stuff works. The copyright office doesn't make or enforce the laws. They can't tell you you're protected just by registering, because you're not. If you find the document about DMCA you'll see that it's not the only requirement. And even if you meet them all someone could still file suit because that's just they way the legal system works.

(ETA: I hadn't read JamesC70's post before posting so I'm kind of repeating some of it...)

But, hey, if you think there should be more info for people wondering what to do, maybe you should contact them and suggest it. It does say that one of their purposes is to provide expert legal advice regarding copyright issues. Was that your original point? Are you saying you don't get it, or that you just think they should explain it as a public service?

(I am not a lawyer or anything like that.)