Righthaven: A Blitzkrieg War on Internet Speech

[Tangoland]

What do you call a thousand lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean? A good start.

But let's begin with just three lawyers:
Barak Obama, Michelle Obama and Steve Gibson.

All three worked for Chicago Law firm Sidley Austin LLP, where Gibson and Michelle Obama specialized in "intellectual property" law for the firm. You know..... copyright law and such.

Now, in a totally coincidental move, Steve Gibson, via his Righthaven firm, has launched a salvo of legal suits demanding a payoff of $75,000 from internet websites, for alleged copyright law infringements incurred when the sites posted extracts from major media news articles.

The tactic is designed to severely damage internet free speech; and to bolster the declining fortunes of major media --while also raking in the RICO dollars for Mr. Gibson. When I say 'RICO,' I mean: as in racket.

The clever part that only a lawyer could have thought up, is that Gibson's firm first identifies news articles which have been widely reprinted in part or in full on internet sites. Gibson then buys the copyright for these news articles from a major media client. Finally, as new owner of the copyright for these articles, Gibson launches lawsuits against bloggers and websites.

The firm does not first issue any "cease and desist" notice warning bloggers that they are infringing copyright. No, step one is straight to court --for maximum intimidation and a sure shakedown.

Gibson's opening tranche of 107 lawsuits to date, features articles first published by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Now it gets chilling:

The Review-Journal’s publisher, Stephens Media in Las Vegas, runs over 70 other newspapers in nine states, and Gibson says he already has an agreement to expand his practice to cover those properties. (Stephens Media declined comment, and referred inquiries to Gibson.)

Newspaper Chain’s New Business Plan: Copyright Suits
from Wired, by David Kravets - July 22, 2010


So if Gibson gets away with this first nibble at internet websites, he can scale up to target many more websites based on articles from 70 further Stephens Media online newspapers. Theoretically this might inflate the number of websites targeted by suits to around 7,000.

Doubtless other corporate media conglomerates are waiting in the wings to contract with Gibson. All this could rival in scope the infamous RIAA music copyright issue, with likely tens of thousands of lawsuits coming down the legal pipe and striking websites of whom most would lack the financial resources to fight.

Already, the websites targeted in the first wave are settling the lawsuits, with reported payments to Gibson's firm averaging around $2,500. It's a well chosen settlement amount by Gibson. Small enough to encourage websites to settle -large enough to act as a intimidating threat.

If all this goes to plan, many bloggers and website owners will not be exercising their free speech online. They will be too busy scrambling to trawl back through their archives and delete major media articles which might make them a target. If they don't simply decommission their blogs and websites entirely, that is.

The music industry challenge to downloader's was innocuous in it's effect, by comparison to this gambit. The difference is that many of the news articles on blogs and sites are about political issues as blogger's debate the content of online political news topics. So this is likely to deeply affect the kind of open debate we have taken for granted.

Until now.

This is a war on free speech. A political war, led by a member of the Chicago legal mob who has close connections to the Obama's.

If you think it's only about money and not about politics you need to factor that the second ever Gibson's lawsuit was against the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. You might know them better by the acronym NORML.

The fourth Gibson target was Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Inc.. Other political targets of this internet witch hunt include:

Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada
Independent Political Report
Free Republic
Americans For Democratic Action
Americans For Immigration Reform
Democratic Underground
American Political Action Committee
Americans for Legal Immigration PAC
Americans Against Food Taxes
Michael A. Nystrom of DailyPaul.com


These are the opening salvos in a war on internet free speech.

One effective defensive measure by the internet blogging community would be to blacklist media outlets who join as clients with Gibson and his Righthaven firm. Another would be to ensure reputational damage to corporate media which participate. Another would be so-called 'Google Bombing' to associate such media outlets with derogatory search terms like "hates internet free speech."

Whatever it takes, must be done --and quickly. This is a blitzkrieg war, and before you know it this devious plot will have deeply damaged the cause of free speech online.

By the way, you can republish some, any or all of this article.

I won't be suing you.

Fintan Dunne

http://fintandunne.blogspot.com/2010/09/righthaven-blitzkrieg-war-on-internet.html

[sailingaway]

Thanks.

I think they are going to regret this, and particularly will regret bringing the Daily Paul into it.

I mean, this is precisely the sort of community you DON'T want to target if you want someone easy to intimidate into just rolling over on their rights.

[TheOraclePaul]

BIG QUESTION: why are they allowed to sue? i thought that news stories were covered under 'fair use' once they were published?

[Kylie]

BIG QUESTION: why are they allowed to sue? i thought that news stories were covered under 'fair use' once they were published?

Yeah. It's the news. :confused:

[WaltM]

what's so pathetic is that they don't even take the 5 minutes to find out if they're suing the right guy.

they just WHOIS your domain name and serve the person registered on the domain.

[Live_Free_Or_Die]

A voluntary defense effort should organize around this immediately. All of the targeted sites should be contacted and invited to participate in a discussion forum. I think a counter claim should be filed against such blatant fraud and I fucking hate some members of the private lawyer union and would be happy to contribute to any academic legal discussion to send this ass wipe attorney back to the stone ages obtaining liens on all of his assets for being a legal predator.

[Indy Vidual]

...By the way, you can republish some, any or all of this article.

I won't be suing you....

FYI: Your OP includes all, or most, of an entire article from Wired Mag.
This would be a great time to get the habit of not posting whole articles at any (and all) websites you care about.

[Stary Hickory]

This looks like just an attack on liberty sites to me. Some idiots are attempting to deny folks their free speech. They ought to be counter sued and this put to rest.

[Stary Hickory]

A voluntary defense effort should organize around this immediately. All of the targeted sites should be contacted and invited to participate in a discussion forum. I think a counter claim should be filed against such blatant fraud and I fucking hate some members of the private lawyer union and would be happy to contribute to any academic legal discussion to send this ass wipe attorney back to the stone ages obtaining liens on all of his assets for being a legal predator.

I am in this needs to stop immediately.

[WaltM]

This looks like just an attack on liberty sites to me. Some idiots are attempting to deny folks their free speech. They ought to be counter sued and this put to rest.

No, they include a State Democratic Party, DU, FreeRepublic and Americans for Democratic Action.
http://righthavenlawsuits.com/lawsuits.html

[Stary Hickory]

No, they include a State Democratic Party, DU, FreeRepublic and Americans for Democratic Action.
http://righthavenlawsuits.com/lawsuits.html

Well then it sill remains that they are assaulting free speech.

[WaltM]

Well then it sill remains that they are assaulting free speech.

not even, if they wanted to take them down to censor, they'd ask nicely.

they're doing it for money, and they'll do it as much as they can, knowing it wont prevent spread of any copyrighted information

[LibForestPaul]

BIG QUESTION: why are they allowed to sue? i thought that news stories were covered under 'fair use' once they were published?

Aww, shucks, who knew Judges were not impartial and honest.

The silver-haired Brooklyn judge was led out of Former Judge Victor Barron speaking as thecourtroom in handcuffs to begin a three- to
he was sentenced in Brooklyn N.Y. last nine-year prison term for taking thousands of
October. (Photo AP) dollars in bribes - perhaps the most troubling scene so far in a judicial corruption scandal that one watchdog group calls the worst in the nation.


"You have to be connected to get on the bench in Brooklyn," said Alan Fleishman, a reform-minded Democratic district leader. "Are there payoffs? There's always been that buzz in the court community."

[Indy Vidual]

Well then it sill remains that they are assaulting free speech.

How are they assaulting free speech?
^^^

Example A: Sue me for copyright violations

The Moral Promise of Freedom

by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)
The Free Market
March 1994

The moral promise of a free society involves the boundaries of private property. The promise is this: property boundaries cannot be legally invaded or trampled upon. When property is protected, people can keep the fruits of their labor and investment, and not have them plundered by others. People can own land, for example, and this land can be used as the owners see fit. Private property allows wide latitude for experimentation. Property holders can form communities with internal cultures. Just as business can conduct its own affairs, people can separate themselves out entirely from the rest of society if they so desire. They need only respect the rights of others to do the same.

It's the nature of private property and a free society that it allows room for diversity of work, modes of production, and ways of life. That's how Mr. Jefferson wanted it, and that's what the authors of the Constitution promised. In the sixties, for example, hippie communes sprang up all over the country. The participants were eccentric and the utopias didn't work, but the attempts were tolerated by society and state.

Today the promise of private property is routinely violated by both private criminals and government. The attack on property began subtly at first, but today it has become explicit, sometimes brutal, and sometimes even deadly.

The community of faith that once lived at Mount Carmel in Waco, Texas, believed the promise of free society. They chose to separate themselves from society, as so many others have done in our nation's history. This was not allowed in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, or Maoist China. That's one reason we regard these regimes as tyrannical.

Yet in its dealings with the Waco religious dissenters, the central government revealed that it has become intractably opposed to any individual or group that represents a challenge to its singular authority. To counter this challenge, the central government resorted to tactics that resulted in the death of 86 men, women, and children. As for the survivors, the government has put them on trial.

This sort of brutality is inevitable in a system of absolute and centralized power. A government that invades private business by demanding confiscatory taxes, imposes unbearable regulations, and rules over business culture through pervasive labor controls, builds an appetite for even more power. As the power builds, so does the extent of corruption at the top and the disinformation that covers up the truth about its tyranny.

So it was in Waco, where the tragic events combined all the elements of a government out of control. Most of what the public thinks it knows about David Koresh, the group's spiritual leader, is false. But as with war, military invasions, and other acts of state – as J.S. Griffey of the University of Houston argued in an outstanding article in the Southern Partisan – the first impression is the one that lasts.

For example, most people probably believe that the government attacked the Waco Christians because they were "stockpiling" weapons. Were they? Texans own 60 million firearms, about 3.5 per person. At Mt. Carmel there were two firearms per person, most of them locked away. The rest of their protection consisted of hay bales and plywood.

The stockpiling accusation was an act of projection, for the real stockpiler was the government. In the attack on Waco, agents used MI 13 personnel carriers, M2AO Bradley fighting vehicles, Sikorsky Blackhawks, Apache and UH-1 Bell helicopters, Abrams MI tanks, 7.62mm machine guns, FBI SWAT snipers, two varieties of hand grenades, and the FBI's psychological warfare experts. The government even fired canisters of CS gas, banned in warfare by international treaty, through windows and walls.

The BATF got their helicopters from the Texas National Guard. Under the law, the military cannot be involved in domestic law enforcement. But a special provision of the U.S. Code allows the government to use military equipment in drug cases. So the BATF told Texas governor Ann Richards that they suspected Mount Carmel had a drug lab. This canard was not in the BATF's search warrants and it hasn't been mentioned since.

Did Koresh want a confrontation with law enforcement agents? All evidence indicates he desired good relations with the law. In 1992, Koresh had actually invited the BATF into the compound so agents could see for themselves. But the government reneged. "Why do you all have to be so big all the time?" Koresh asked the FBI during the month-long standoff. "Why didn't you just talk to me?"

Did the community have a death wish? Twenty minutes before the fire began, the community hung out a sign reading: "We want our phones fixed." (The government had cut them off, along with the electricity.) That's not a message sent by people hungering for the Apocalypse. None of the survivors report discussion of suicide plans.

There is still no evidence that the religious people set the fire that destroyed their building. The place was a firetrap, entirely made of wood and sealed shut. Since the government had cut off their electricity, lanterns were their only light. The government shot out the windows, so sheets were their only protection from the weather. The tanks that battered the building probably set the fire, either accidentally or deliberately.

The initial raid was on February 28, 1993. Several people say the government shot through the roof from a helicopter, but we cannot know for sure. The physical evidence is reduced to ashes, and the government plowed the land over a week after the home went up in flames.

As the standoff continued, the women and children were upstairs because they were afraid of the government. The tanks destroyed the stairways that would have allowed them to escape the fire. The underground shelter was destroyed as well.

After the fire, the FBI made three claims it later retracted. First, the Bureau said that two agents saw community members lighting a fire. Second, the Bureau said one agent saw someone dressed in black "cupping his hands," as if to light a fire. Third, the Bureau said some members trying to flee the fire were shot by others. All assertions were false and were subsequently dropped.

The Justice Department contributed its share of lies. Spokesmen said an "independent arson investigator" concluded that members of the community started the fire. But the "independent investigator" turned out to be Paul Gray, an agent for the BATF from 1962 to 1990 whose wife stills works for the agency as secretary to the man who planned the raid. They apparently could not be sure a genuinely independent investigator would come to the preordained conclusion.

The stated purpose of the raid was to save children from abuse. Yet Janet Reno lied about that too. The information she used was already discredited, and she later admitted it. The real child abuse was committed by the government: to harass community members, the FBI turned on massive floodlights at night and played recordings of Buddhist chants, dental drills, and screaming, slaughtered rabbits. Reno herself ordered the house to be saturated with CS gas, knowing that the community's gas masks couldn't fit the children.

In ways that have become typical, the media and government worked together in this disaster. One day before the raid, the Waco Tribune-Herald started a series on "The Sinful Messiah." On the morning of February 28, 1993, before BATF arrived at Mt. Carmel, at least 11 reporters were on the scene already. After the religious community was torched, the entire media participated in the beatification of Janet Reno for her actions in Waco.

The consequences for the victims were public humiliation and death. There were zero consequences for the perpetrators, unless we consider the three agents who were suspended with pay and perks, which is no punishment at all.

The methods and strategies of the government's assault against Waco had been used for years by the military, but against foreign governments and their leaders, not against the domestic citizenry. The most familiar case of foreign intrigue was the government's attack on Manuel Noriega, in which it used similar tactics (blaring music, planting evidence, spreading disinformation), and therein lies the connection between foreign policy and domestic. Anything a government allows itself to do to foreign countries will eventually be done at home. That's one reason George Washington warned us against foreign entanglements.

We may never know the full truth about Waco or the extent of government perfidy, but we can draw lessons from the experience. This particular event was a fiasco, but it also tells something about what our government has become: "the organizer-in-chief of society," as Bertrand de Jouvenel said, which is "making its monopoly of this role ever more complete." It is a parasite and a monster that acts to protect itself. Mises was right: government's nature is coercive. It is "beating, killing, hanging." Coercion is necessary in society to protect the rights of property holders against those who do not respect property. But when government itself become the source of arbitrary violence, we have tyranny. That's why unchecked power should never be invested in a centralized government, even one with a democratic mandate. This power will invariably be exercised at the expense of peaceful social relations.

In its dealings with the community of believers at Mount Carmel, the central government abandoned the moral promise of a free society, and, as all tyrannies eventually do, ignored its own standards of law and ethics. But it paid the price of losing some measure of public confidence, which is already at historic lows. A government that governs by fear alone eventually finds itself unable to govern at all.

Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.

!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't wish to discuss Waco, but if I did my opinions would go here.............................................. ..............


Example B: Proper Usage


The Moral Promise of Freedom

by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)
The Free Market
March 1994

The moral promise of a free society involves the boundaries of private property. The promise is this: property boundaries cannot be legally invaded or trampled upon. When property is protected, people can keep the fruits of their labor and investment, and not have them plundered by others....

...In the attack on Waco, agents used MI 13 personnel carriers, M2AO Bradley fighting vehicles, Sikorsky Blackhawks, Apache and UH-1 Bell helicopters, Abrams MI tanks, 7.62mm machine guns, FBI SWAT snipers, two varieties of hand grenades, and the FBI's psychological warfare experts. The government even fired canisters of CS gas, banned in warfare by international treaty, through windows and walls.

Full article here (http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/paul1.html)

!!!!!!!!!!!!

I still don't wish to discuss Waco, but if I did my opinions would go here.............................................. ..............


%%%%%%%%


Which example limits my free speech in any way?
The only limitation is don't post entire articles.

[Tangoland]

FYI: Your OP includes all, or most, of an entire article from Wired Mag.
This would be a great time to get the habit of not posting whole articles at any (and all) websites you care about.

He told me to post the entire article :)

[Brian4Liberty]

The only limitation is don't post entire articles.


So every single individual person who posts a comment on the internet has to be an expert in copyright law?

[qh4dotcom]

what's so pathetic is that they don't even take the 5 minutes to find out if they're suing the right guy.

they just WHOIS your domain name and serve the person registered on the domain.

What about folks who have private domain registrations?

[WaltM]

What about folks who have private domain registrations?

for that, this happened.

http://dockets.justia.com/docket/nevada/nvdce/2:2010cv00864/73848/

retarded?

[lynnf]

BIG QUESTION: why are they allowed to sue? i thought that news stories were covered under 'fair use' once they were published?


fair use gives the right to make excerpts for educational purposes, not copy the whole thing. since the fair use practice doesn't define exactly how much copying is allowed, there is much left open to interpretation.

you can't just assume that once it's published that it's all fair game -- it isn't.

lynn

[WaltM]

fair use gives the right to make excerpts for educational purposes, not copy the whole thing. since the fair use practice doesn't define exactly how much copying is allowed, there is much left open to interpretation.


and I have yet to see, in any of these cases, ONE was actually "copy the whole thing", because it's a common understanding not to do it.




you can't just assume that once it's published that it's all fair game -- it isn't.

lynn

i agree, and I haven't heard righthaven actually accuse ONE person for copying a whole article.

[Indy Vidual]

So every single individual person who posts a comment on the internet has to be an expert in copyright law?

No, I did not say that or anything similar.
1) One way for site owners to avoid getting sued is to follow this type of example: (i.e.Example 'B')


How are they assaulting free speech?
^^^

Example A: Sue me for copyright violations

The Moral Promise of Freedom

by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)
The Free Market
March 1994

The moral promise of a free society involves the boundaries of private property. The promise is this: property boundaries cannot be legally invaded or trampled upon. When property is protected, people can keep the fruits of their labor and investment, and not have them plundered by others. People can own land, for example, and this land can be used as the owners see fit. Private property allows wide latitude for experimentation. Property holders can form communities with internal cultures. Just as business can conduct its own affairs, people can separate themselves out entirely from the rest of society if they so desire. They need only respect the rights of others to do the same.

It's the nature of private property and a free society that it allows room for diversity of work, modes of production, and ways of life. That's how Mr. Jefferson wanted it, and that's what the authors of the Constitution promised. In the sixties, for example, hippie communes sprang up all over the country. The participants were eccentric and the utopias didn't work, but the attempts were tolerated by society and state.

Today the promise of private property is routinely violated by both private criminals and government. The attack on property began subtly at first, but today it has become explicit, sometimes brutal, and sometimes even deadly.

The community of faith that once lived at Mount Carmel in Waco, Texas, believed the promise of free society. They chose to separate themselves from society, as so many others have done in our nation's history. This was not allowed in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, or Maoist China. That's one reason we regard these regimes as tyrannical.

Yet in its dealings with the Waco religious dissenters, the central government revealed that it has become intractably opposed to any individual or group that represents a challenge to its singular authority. To counter this challenge, the central government resorted to tactics that resulted in the death of 86 men, women, and children. As for the survivors, the government has put them on trial.

This sort of brutality is inevitable in a system of absolute and centralized power. A government that invades private business by demanding confiscatory taxes, imposes unbearable regulations, and rules over business culture through pervasive labor controls, builds an appetite for even more power. As the power builds, so does the extent of corruption at the top and the disinformation that covers up the truth about its tyranny.

So it was in Waco, where the tragic events combined all the elements of a government out of control. Most of what the public thinks it knows about David Koresh, the group's spiritual leader, is false. But as with war, military invasions, and other acts of state – as J.S. Griffey of the University of Houston argued in an outstanding article in the Southern Partisan – the first impression is the one that lasts.

For example, most people probably believe that the government attacked the Waco Christians because they were "stockpiling" weapons. Were they? Texans own 60 million firearms, about 3.5 per person. At Mt. Carmel there were two firearms per person, most of them locked away. The rest of their protection consisted of hay bales and plywood.

The stockpiling accusation was an act of projection, for the real stockpiler was the government. In the attack on Waco, agents used MI 13 personnel carriers, M2AO Bradley fighting vehicles, Sikorsky Blackhawks, Apache and UH-1 Bell helicopters, Abrams MI tanks, 7.62mm machine guns, FBI SWAT snipers, two varieties of hand grenades, and the FBI's psychological warfare experts. The government even fired canisters of CS gas, banned in warfare by international treaty, through windows and walls.

The BATF got their helicopters from the Texas National Guard. Under the law, the military cannot be involved in domestic law enforcement. But a special provision of the U.S. Code allows the government to use military equipment in drug cases. So the BATF told Texas governor Ann Richards that they suspected Mount Carmel had a drug lab. This canard was not in the BATF's search warrants and it hasn't been mentioned since.

Did Koresh want a confrontation with law enforcement agents? All evidence indicates he desired good relations with the law. In 1992, Koresh had actually invited the BATF into the compound so agents could see for themselves. But the government reneged. "Why do you all have to be so big all the time?" Koresh asked the FBI during the month-long standoff. "Why didn't you just talk to me?"

Did the community have a death wish? Twenty minutes before the fire began, the community hung out a sign reading: "We want our phones fixed." (The government had cut them off, along with the electricity.) That's not a message sent by people hungering for the Apocalypse. None of the survivors report discussion of suicide plans.

There is still no evidence that the religious people set the fire that destroyed their building. The place was a firetrap, entirely made of wood and sealed shut. Since the government had cut off their electricity, lanterns were their only light. The government shot out the windows, so sheets were their only protection from the weather. The tanks that battered the building probably set the fire, either accidentally or deliberately.

The initial raid was on February 28, 1993. Several people say the government shot through the roof from a helicopter, but we cannot know for sure. The physical evidence is reduced to ashes, and the government plowed the land over a week after the home went up in flames.

As the standoff continued, the women and children were upstairs because they were afraid of the government. The tanks destroyed the stairways that would have allowed them to escape the fire. The underground shelter was destroyed as well.

After the fire, the FBI made three claims it later retracted. First, the Bureau said that two agents saw community members lighting a fire. Second, the Bureau said one agent saw someone dressed in black "cupping his hands," as if to light a fire. Third, the Bureau said some members trying to flee the fire were shot by others. All assertions were false and were subsequently dropped.

The Justice Department contributed its share of lies. Spokesmen said an "independent arson investigator" concluded that members of the community started the fire. But the "independent investigator" turned out to be Paul Gray, an agent for the BATF from 1962 to 1990 whose wife stills works for the agency as secretary to the man who planned the raid. They apparently could not be sure a genuinely independent investigator would come to the preordained conclusion.

The stated purpose of the raid was to save children from abuse. Yet Janet Reno lied about that too. The information she used was already discredited, and she later admitted it. The real child abuse was committed by the government: to harass community members, the FBI turned on massive floodlights at night and played recordings of Buddhist chants, dental drills, and screaming, slaughtered rabbits. Reno herself ordered the house to be saturated with CS gas, knowing that the community's gas masks couldn't fit the children.

In ways that have become typical, the media and government worked together in this disaster. One day before the raid, the Waco Tribune-Herald started a series on "The Sinful Messiah." On the morning of February 28, 1993, before BATF arrived at Mt. Carmel, at least 11 reporters were on the scene already. After the religious community was torched, the entire media participated in the beatification of Janet Reno for her actions in Waco.

The consequences for the victims were public humiliation and death. There were zero consequences for the perpetrators, unless we consider the three agents who were suspended with pay and perks, which is no punishment at all.

The methods and strategies of the government's assault against Waco had been used for years by the military, but against foreign governments and their leaders, not against the domestic citizenry. The most familiar case of foreign intrigue was the government's attack on Manuel Noriega, in which it used similar tactics (blaring music, planting evidence, spreading disinformation), and therein lies the connection between foreign policy and domestic. Anything a government allows itself to do to foreign countries will eventually be done at home. That's one reason George Washington warned us against foreign entanglements.

We may never know the full truth about Waco or the extent of government perfidy, but we can draw lessons from the experience. This particular event was a fiasco, but it also tells something about what our government has become: "the organizer-in-chief of society," as Bertrand de Jouvenel said, which is "making its monopoly of this role ever more complete." It is a parasite and a monster that acts to protect itself. Mises was right: government's nature is coercive. It is "beating, killing, hanging." Coercion is necessary in society to protect the rights of property holders against those who do not respect property. But when government itself become the source of arbitrary violence, we have tyranny. That's why unchecked power should never be invested in a centralized government, even one with a democratic mandate. This power will invariably be exercised at the expense of peaceful social relations.

In its dealings with the community of believers at Mount Carmel, the central government abandoned the moral promise of a free society, and, as all tyrannies eventually do, ignored its own standards of law and ethics. But it paid the price of losing some measure of public confidence, which is already at historic lows. A government that governs by fear alone eventually finds itself unable to govern at all.

Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.

!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't wish to discuss Waco, but if I did my opinions would go here.............................................. ..............


Example B: Proper Usage


The Moral Promise of Freedom

by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)
The Free Market
March 1994

The moral promise of a free society involves the boundaries of private property. The promise is this: property boundaries cannot be legally invaded or trampled upon. When property is protected, people can keep the fruits of their labor and investment, and not have them plundered by others....

...In the attack on Waco, agents used MI 13 personnel carriers, M2AO Bradley fighting vehicles, Sikorsky Blackhawks, Apache and UH-1 Bell helicopters, Abrams MI tanks, 7.62mm machine guns, FBI SWAT snipers, two varieties of hand grenades, and the FBI's psychological warfare experts. The government even fired canisters of CS gas, banned in warfare by international treaty, through windows and walls.

Full article here (http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/paul1.html)

!!!!!!!!!!!!

I still don't wish to discuss Waco, but if I did my opinions would go here.............................................. ..............


%%%%%%%%


Which example limits my free speech in any way?
The only limitation is don't post entire articles.


2) How they can educate their members and actually avoid having people post full articles was not the subject of my post.

[WaltM]

No, I did not say that or anything similar.
1) One way for site owners to avoid getting sued is to follow this type of example: (i.e.Example 'B')



and that's exactly what most do.

I've not heard an actual case where righthaven actually accused one person of posting a full article.

they're not specific as to how much was posted, or justify their damages.

[Indy Vidual]

and that's exactly what most do.

I've not heard an actual case where righthaven actually accused one person of posting a full article.

they're not specific as to how much was posted, or justify their damages.

My memory is much different than yours re: righthaven.
Most (or "some') of the suits were over full articles, and there was a quote "someone even got sued over 4 paragraphs" (or very similar)


The lowest amount was 4 paragraphs, any less should still be called "fair use."

[WaltM]

My memory is much different than yours re: righthaven.
Most (many) of the suits were over full articles, and there was a quote "someone even got sued over 4 paragraphs" (or very similar)


The lowest amount was 4 paragraphs, any less should still be called "fair use."


ok, thanks.

but just to add, righthaven also knew that some were not posted by the site owner, but by users (granted, if it was illegal, the siteowner is somewhat responsible, but it's common sense to at least send a warning)

[Brian4Liberty]

2) How they can educate their members and actually avoid having people post full articles was not the subject of my post.

Yeah, that seems to be the new "problem" that government will solve for us.

It was my understanding that they were going after websites with user content. (Is that true?) In that case, this is the precedent set by Napster, and further implemented with Youtube. It looks like the legal system is now going to make every single person liable. Every website that has user content (forums, news sites with comments, Facebook, etc) will be liable for the postings of the users. And after that, they will hold each individual liable. More courts and government involved in our daily lives. What a victory for liberty.

[Brian4Liberty]

My memory is much different than yours re: righthaven.
Most (or "some') of the suits were over full articles, and there was a quote "someone even got sued over 4 paragraphs" (or very similar)


The lowest amount was 4 paragraphs, any less should still be called "fair use."


I believe I read somewhere that if the "heart" of the article is used, then the violation occurs. Which could be one sentence from a short article.

[Indy Vidual]

...It was my understanding that they were going after websites with user content. (Is that true?)

I'm interested in finding out...

[WaltM]

Yeah, that seems to be the new "problem" that government will solve for us.

It was my understanding that they were going after websites with user content. (Is that true?) In that case, this is the precedent set by Napster, and further implemented with Youtube. It looks like the legal system is now going to make every single person liable. Every website that has user content (forums, news sites with comments, Facebook, etc) will be liable for the postings of the users. And after that, they will hold each individual liable. More courts and government involved in our daily lives. What a victory for liberty.

which is why it won't happen (as in, righthaven won't win this if they go all the way, they know it)

of course, the courts CAN side with righthaven, either for a bad agenda, out of sympathy, or because they followed the proper procedures while the defendant didnt.

if righthaven wins, a whole new copyright paradigm will be introduce, to the point where sites like facebook, myspace will countersue or make sure their profits are still legal (need me to tell you who has more money?)