Righthaven: copyright troll zombie!

Remember Righthaven, the copyright troll whose ass was handed to them by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others, who got a court to declare that fair use exists, you can't license the right to sue over a copyright without licensing the copyright itself, and terrifying random bloggers into turning over their life's savings for quoting a news-article wasn't a fit business model? They're dead and dusted, domain name sold off to pay their legal bills, but they want to rise from the grave in order to appeal key rulings against them.

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Business • Copyfight • copyright trolls • law • zombies

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

http://twitter.com/J_Plotkin James Plotkin

I don’t understand how these people sleep. And this is coming from someone who hopes to make a career in copyright law. It’s just dirty and abusive. A true travesty of the law.
- Yacko
  
  They make money, hand over fist. You’d be surprised what a wonderful sleep sedative that can be. Especially since the riff-raff will likely not uprise and put a bullet in their heads. And I’m sure they have the money to pay for advanced security, both in travel and at their Mcmansions.
  
  Not to mention they are likely narcissists and psychopaths with zero empathy, filling economic niches that get no legal scrutiny by a society that has philosophically given them a thumbs up.
  
  What? Us Worry?
http://twitter.com/manuelcheta Cheța Manuel

Somebody shoot those guys. Honestly, shoot them.
- EH
  
  Like the sex-offender registration lists, there should be a commerce-offender list.
khherrmann

Interestingly the German print media companies talked the government into proposing a new law on “Leistungsschutzrechte” in which the print media companies are granted all rights to commercial use of their printed content (including their online portals) for a full year. This would be valid even for part-sentences and headlines. To fall under the then forbidden commercial reuse its sufficient to have some kind of advertising on the citing blog/web/whatever site. This of course aims at suing google and other aggregators for reposting links to the original content which include some kind of short summary or headline of the original. I myself rarely heard of a more sure to backfire idea … suing the guys who link and distribute your content is not gonna work.
A google search on “Gesetz Leistungsschutzrecht” gets you plenty oflinks to German newspapers, the majority (all?) quite critical judgements or reports on critisism by political parties and activist groups.
$16228947

As long as a good number recognize Righthaven for its overflowing stool of ilk, there will be no resurrection, no rising from the grave … only memories of the stench it left behind.
RayCornwall

“…they want to rise from the grave in order to appeal key rulings against them.”

Worst Kickstarter ever.
Cowicide

Guess the only way to really kill zombies is to burn them to ashes.