Forums under Legal Attack

[BirdOPrey5]

<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.

[borbole]

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.

[BirdOPrey5]

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.

[borbole]

Originally Posted by BirdOPrey5

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.

[KevinL]

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...

[Brandon Sheley]

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

[TNCclubman]

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

[Paul M]

That article dates from January.

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

[BigJohnny]

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

[BirdOPrey5]

Originally Posted by Loco.M

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

Originally Posted by TNCclubman

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

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] ---------------

Originally Posted by KevinL

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...

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