Forums under Legal Attack
 

<a href="http://www.dailypaul.com/node/143700" target="_blank">http://www.dailypaul.com/node/143700</a>

There's a Lawyer with an LLC out there buying the rights to old news stories and then suing forums and bloggers who have parts of "his" articles copied on their sites... So a user wants to comment on a newspaper article they link to it and usually post a paragraph or two, if not the whole article (if it's short enough) and BAM now this guy will sue the site owner for $75,000 and demand their forfeit their domain to him... apparently it's a legal loophole he's able to use and gets away with this crap... None of the 100+ sites he's sued so far have been able to defend against this and haad to settle for thousands of dollars and/or close up.

This is a major issue for forum owners and quite frankly I think IB should be putting up the legal capital to combat this- he will hurt/ruin forums and by extension, their business.

I will post a request they get involved on .com, but this post here is a warning for other forum owners.

I don''t think this will have any influence for forum owners hosted in Europe. We have other laws about suing. It is not like in the States where everyone sues everyone else for almost anything.

While it's probably not financially worth it for this guy to sue Europeans I'm sure Europe has agreements to respect US Copyrights (as we do yours) so I'd bet there's some risk for forums hosted in any developed nation.

Yes, of course but not like that. You can''t do that so easily here. Like this guy is doing at the link you posted.

I thought you could only get sued if it was the entire article posted? I remember reading about FOX or Reuters trying this and they lost...

interesting, but I'm not really worried about it
worst case serino, I remove the post

you only can get sued if you refuse to delete the post when he notifies you.

That article dates from January.

Edit: *sigh* NM, just realised its a backward US date.

this guy isn't notifying anyone. he simply finds it and sues from what I read here.

That's the problem- this guy doesn't give you warning or notice to remove, he just sues you as soon as he has secured the rights to the article... You have no defense- he has proof it was posted and that's all he needs to sue you and your forum.

--------------- Added [DATE]1285012306[/DATE] at [TIME]1285012306[/TIME] ---------------

In the link I posted it's this this guy has sued over 4 paragraphs from a 36 paragraph article...

I really don't know much about the laws regarding this stuff, but there has to be some judge out there somewhere that's going to think this is stupid based on giving no prior notifications.

how can you be sued for something you didn't know you had to remove, and would have happily removed if asked.

what does it boil down to? locking down the board to all but existing members and go on a vouche only system???

The problem is to get in front of a judge is going to cost someone thousands of dollars in lawyers and legal fees that virtually no one they go after has- they aren't going to sue Facebook over this because they know Facebook's lawyers will laugh this out of court... but for the average forum owner who makes little if any money on their forum- we can't spend $10,000 on a team of lawyers... he knows we'll settle for $2,000 or $3,000 rather than risk getting a $75,000 judgement against us potentially ruining our real lives over an internet "hobby."

Everyone should have a notice that posts on your forum belong to the post author, not your forum.

Like how youtube removes copyrighted material when its notified.

Yah for the US legal system. They would be laughed out of a UK court, and face a legal bill for losing.

Same in canada.

The point is he did not own the articles when they were published and people posted/commented about them. You can't claim retrospective rights like this anywhere else in the world and if the posts/comments acknowledge source/authorship and link back to the original there is no legal/copyright issue.

How would any newspaper,news service TV/Radio station avoid litigation for their reporting if this principle is allowed?

Weird: I was able to view the link (http://www.dailypaul.com/node/143700) from the first post in this thread this morning. Now I'm receiving an 'Access Denied' message, even using a proxy.

According to Wikipedia Righthaven LLC is a copyright litigation firm 'grubstaked' by Stephens Media ....
You can visit StephensMedia's website to see a list of their publications, should you feel inclined to boycott their product. I'd be inclined to deliberately ask before parting with my money for any service or product "Do you advertise with XXXX?". If the answer is "Yes" then oh well, "I'm sorry but I'll be buying my product from your competitor".

Over here in NZ we don't have to be concerned about an out-of-control legal industry such as exists in the US. One of our Government Departments tried to sue me a few years back and backed off before our first Court date after I threatened to represent myself in Court, as is my legal right. It would've taken yeeeears (at my pace) and they would've accumulated huge costs. They'd never have recouped a penny from me.

If their motive is money, kick them fair and square in their own money sacks! Don't wait to be a victim.

I even wouldn't be surpprised if this was a political motivated hoax. I am not familiar enough with US politics, but isn't this website (dailypaul) an anti-Obama site?

Seeing they also posted an article trying to link Obama to this scam, it does seem so to me: http://www.dailypaul.com/node/143767

PS Just my first personal impression after reading that 2nd page, not based on any knowledge of this.

Interesting

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...&ct=clnk&gl=us

couldn't this idiot sue google and a ton of other sites for caching the articles from the sites that have been sued??

I'd love to see this idiot take on google lol.

He would never sue Google or Facebook or any giant because they have lawyers to fight this. He specifically targets the "little guys" who can't afford to defend themselves but can manage to throw together a few thousand dollars to make him go away.

Lots more info here: http://www.righthavenlawsuits.com/

Marco- I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss this as a hoax, although bloggers may try to link this guy to Obama, Clinton, or GW Bush depending on what suits their audience the fact is there have been 100+ real victims of this guy so far from both liberal and conservative leaning blogs and forums.

So what happens when this guy does sue someone who had an article up, and that article is cached already?

and what happens in such a case as mine would be, where i'm literally broke..... I couldn't give the guy $50 let alone a couple of thousand.

He's after money... he'd probably look to settle for a couple thousand dollars paid over time- something you could live with but still be a major PITA... If it did go to trial you'd have to hire a lawyer or represent yourself in which case he'd probably win and you'd have a judgement against you. Might be able to garish wages of seize bank accounts... you'd probably have to declare bankruptcy.

I'm unemployed and going to school. my unemployment benefits run out in jan, then im funded entirely (and very meagerly) by the another agency for my schooling.

I think he would have a hard time coming after me. I'm Canadian anyway if that means anything.

It's hypothetical though, My board isn't live yet, and it's Canadian based(except the server who hosts me) so I doubt I'd see many articles from las vegas or wherever the articles are from that this asshat is suing for.

It's times like these I'm glad I live in a country like Australia. A case like this would get laughed out of court.

Aslong as I and my members keep linking back (and not using the full article) I am almost untouchable.

A very stupid way to make little money for guys like that, I think they lost more in reputation than they make money...
This story is overrated! sue me!

Internet Brands is being sued too!
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010...-legal-system/

Same thing here where I live as well. But in the USA is seems like everyone can sue everyone about almost anything.

I hope the new owners chew them up and spit them out tbo.

Apparently so, sadly it seems that way even cases in the past where burglars sue homeowners after being shot while in the process of robbing the house!

Basically this is what most of us in the south call "Hogwash" as it might be legal however to those with morals, values, and ethics it's flat out wrong... just like the Ally Bank commercials where the gentlemen gives the little girl a bike, she goes to pedal he stops her within the red box of tape about twice the width of the bike and explains in bank terms how she's not allowed to ride outside the red box...

I know...

me too...

:erm:

At least now it is crystal clear that full moderation control over all new content is necessary. If new content is not checked by staff, it can contain copyrighted material, which can result in such law suits.

Currently vbulletin does not allow us to to review all new content and mark it checked.

:confused: Doesn't the moderation queue do exactly that?

Try that on a big board. That simply doesnt work. Not only is it extremely user unfriendly, limits forum activity, its also unmanageable and results in a mass of replies that would never have been posted, had the members seen the other replies in the moderation queue.

Moderators should be able to review all content effectively as a group. There is a hack that made Kirk Y for AV forums to resolve this for forum content.

There should be default functions in vb to streamline moderation across all content types, so that is becomes feasible to prevent problematic or illegal content from being posted.

In Germany you even can get sued if your members quote a sentence from artists or writers, that's horrible. Normally it's no more possible to run a forum without the fear to get sued for every bs. Just had to search and remove 10 quotes from my forum.

Please do not turn this thread into a discussion on vBulletin features. The Community Lounge is not the place for that. If needed please use 1 of the appropriate forums for that.

What he probably does is called "sewer service" where he gets a document server to fill out and affidavit stating that you were served the complaint/subpoena. You then never get the paper work and the trial date happens and you don't show up and lose by default. He can then get the sheriff to garnish your wages and take whatever property and money you have in the bank.

The easy way to fight this is as soon as you've found out there is a judgment against you, go to court and file a motion to vacate pending a new trial because you were never served the papers. The judgement is then thrown out and a new court date set.

At this point get a lawyer and file for discovery to see exactly what he has against you. Usually and since these people are scam artists, they won't have the needed paperwork to prove injury and won't have any standing in the court.

Whereas it pertains to copyrights, under the DMCRA, he has to show he's given you written communication to cease and desist and you refused. This proof is usually a certified letter postmarked by the post office.

Whatever you do, once you find out there is litigation against you do not ignore it! These scammers are depending on your to not show up to court and present you defense. But you can beat these guys and even counter sue them for misuse of the court if push comes to shove.

Load of bull. Where did the $75,000 number come from?

If this were true it would mean that person could go around the internet and copy/paste the articles he owns everywhere under a proxy and then in 3 months go and sue all of those people and auto-win. He'd be a billionaire.

all content on our forum is owned by the forum
the users sign a tos when they sign up
also in our rules it says not to copy and past articles

I'm still not losing any sleep over it :up:

As far as I know recent lawsuits here in Germany, came out with the result to give us forum owners more rights, but requers still a good lawyer to defend ....

Well, we can still use offshore hosting (something not only interesting for criminals anymore ...)

Thanks...

This article may be of interest to forum owners:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...aven-loophole/

They claim there is a form to be filled out and a $105 fee that basically makes you immune to these lawsuits.