Science fiction fans may face flood of copyright lawsuits

There is a new copyright cop in town and he means business. If you have been posting news stories on your blog or forum, you need to stop doing that — and it would probably be a good idea to go back and clean up your sites as soon as possible.

Earlier this year a company named Righthaven LLC began buying the rights to newspaper stories that have been copied without authorization on Websites and filing lawsuits against those sites’ operators for copyright infringement. Righthaven LLC is reportedly seeking around $75,000 in damages per infringement.

Through the years many science fiction fans have republished copyright material on their Websites in the misguided belief that there are so many of us the chances of being caught are slim. The RIAA went after file sharing network users and filed thousands of lawsuits. The MPAA is going after bit torrent network users who share movies and TV shows online (to date more than 20,000 such lawsuits have been filed so far).

Righthaven LLC is acting like a collection agency. Some collection agencies buy up “charged off” debts from banks for as little as 1% and seek to collect the full amount of the debts. They keep any payments the consumers make. Righthaven’s business model works in much the same way. They are only buying the rights to newspaper articles that they have already documented as being copied without permission.

This narrows the odds of their finding you considerably. Furthermore, except where third-parties publish protected content on your site without your knowledge, you have absolutely no legal protection against these kinds of lawsuits. You WILL lose and you MUST pay (or live with a judgement that will prevent you from buying a house, a new car, obtaining credit cards, or participating in other consumer debt plans).

Forum operators may be entitled to protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act but according to reports I have read Righthaven appears to be ignoring the DMCA and just filing lawsuits anyway. In order to win the suit you have to hire an attorney, which will cost several thousand dollars at the least.

Righthaven is betting that most people will settle out of court for $1500 to $3500, and apparently that has been the pattern so far. Their incentive — their business model — calls for them to file as many lawsuits as possible in order to collect as many out-of-court settlements as possible.

So there is no protection for you in the sheer weight of numbers. Righthaven (and the companies sure to follow in their footsteps) are not looking for any specific trees in the forest — they are going after the entire forest. Millions of Websites have infringed newspaper copyrights so the potential for financial reward is HUGE. Righthaven can keep going for years.

You do NOT want to be their next target. If you have been publishing newspaper articles on your Websites you should take action to clean them up immediately. Under “fair use” doctrine it’s usually deemed acceptable to publish a few sentences from a copyrighted work and provide a link to the original.

At SF-Fandom we have asked our members to follow that policy for years, but I have nonetheless posted a reminder discussion titled Before You Post That News Story On Your Site because I don’t want to see my online friends get sued (and I’d prefer not to have to deal with Righthaven myself).

If I feel I’m protected under the DMCA I WILL fight any lawsuit (and countersue for damages) but that’s not an option most of you would have to consider. This is not a battle worth fighting — it’s not a war that can be won.

When liars dominate the Web

Life is a harsh mistress. And we all make mistakes in life we come to regret in unexpected ways.

In 1997, when someone lied about me on the Tolken news groups, I did what seemed like the right thing: I defended myself. In so doing I helped promulgate a flame war that lasted for many years. After 3 years of vigorously defending myself I attempted to move forward by ignoring as many flames as possible but in 2001 I finally realized there were some people who were so determined to keep the flame wars going they would do anything, say anything, to provoke me.

I left the Tolkien news groups and restricted my online discussion to Web forums and mailing lists. And yet, for the next 2-3 years I had to endure unprovoked attacks from people coming out of the news groups, tracking me down, in efforts to get me thrown out of the Web forums. That some of these people were themselves banned from forums didn’t matter. One of them in particular, Conrad Dunkerson, was prone to ignoring and bypassing bans imposed on him in order to continue his attacks (such behavior under current U.S. Law would constitute cyberstalking, a crime punishable by up to 2 years in prison).

I’m not the only person whom Dunkerson harassed but he wasn’t the only person who attacked me, either. I haven’t heard from the guy in years (thank God) but nonetheless every now and then I still see someone repeating the old lies in some Web forum.

The real problem is that people who never interacted with you read these lies and start to repeat them. One such person, David Gransby, whom I don’t remember ever getting into an argument with, has recently resurrected the old lies. This stuff gets really old after 12 years.

So here is what I would ask of anyone reading this article: If you see other people on the Web attacking the character of another person with whom you’ve never interacted, DON’T REPEAT THE ATTACK.

Most people might think that’s common sense. Unfortunately, common sense runs in short supply on the Internet. People think nothing of repeating lies and derogatory comments about total strangers on the Internet. I’ve encountered many, many victims of such abuse through the years. My experience is really not unusual.

But the fact that it happens all the time doesn’t mean we should accept it — or that we should dismiss it as harmless. It’s anything but harmless. If you have never lived under the burden of being cyberstalked, or had your reputation totally shredded by people who have nothing truthful to say about you, waiting until it happens to you is the wrong attitude to take.

People are too easily convinced by allegations and insults that someone else is not right. You should question yourself the next time you repeat some “minor” insult or accusation about another person in a Web forum, mailing list, news group, blog, or chat room. Why are you saying that?

You can’t stop other people from lying about each other, but you don’t have to engage in that kind of behavior yourself.

When I first joined the Internet in the early 1990s people made a real effort to be polite to each other. If an argument erupted in online discussion groups bystanders sometimes tried to calm things down. Those days of practicing good netiquette seem to be gone.

This is why I created the SF-Fandom forums in 2000. I was tired of the flame wars and I wanted a community where people could engage with each other without fear of being attacked, ridiculed, or lied about. We have had to ban a few bad people through the years but SF-Fandom has continued to welcome people who don’t want to harass and stalk others.

The truth may be out there as Mulder says, but the lies are, too. And as Harry Potter fans might recognize, “How do you sort out the liars” is a question that isn’t easily answered.