Righthaven Loss: Judge Rules Reposting Entire Article is Fair Use | Hacker News Reader

Righthaven Loss: Judge Rules Reposting Entire Article is Fair Use

wired.com

16 pointsjonah5 comments

This is an interesting article about an interesting ruling.

Of course, the overriding fact determined by Judge Pro was that Righthaven did not have standing to sue. Good for Judge Pro.

Also:

> "Righthaven did not present any evidence that the market for the work was harmed by Hoehn’s noncommercial use for the 40 days it appeared on the website. Accordingly, there is no genuine issue of material fact that Hoehn’s use of the work was fair and summary judgment is appropriate,” Judge Pro ruled.

That sounds to me like he is saying that Righthaven just wrote up the wrong stuff. They did not address the things that the judge considered to be the major issues.

But all that aside, there is, IMHO, one very striking thing in this article:

> “While the work does have some creative or editorial elements, these elements are not enough to consider the work a purely ‘creative work’ in the realm of fictional stories, song lyrics, or Barbie dolls,” he wrote. “Accordingly, the work is not within ‘the core of intended copyright protection.’”

Seriously? The judge is saying that a 19-paragraph newspaper editorial is not covered by copyright law??? That sounds huge, to me.

IANAL, so I have a couple of questions for any actual lawyers who may be reading this.

(1) Am I correct, that the above statement is, as I said, "huge"?

(2) Since that statement was not required for the support of the actual decision -- due to Righthaven's lack of standing -- does the statement that the editorial is not within "the core of intended copyright protection", have the force of legal precedent?

translation: If the editorial was longer with more independent created content it would be under copyright.

However, than that opens up a new can of worms as most user generated content is editorial yet we claim or grant copyrights on it all the time..it means Google can scrape FB without violating copyrights

Since the standing issue was decided and made the rest of the case moot, the fair use analysis is dicta. Thus, it is not legal precedent.

Even if the judge did decide the fair use issue, it's precedential value would be low - applying only in the district where the decision was made. In this case, that would be the entire state of Nevada.

Thank goodness. Don't get me wrong -- glad Righthaven lost for many reasons -- but if this judge's ruling on the fair use of full reprint were to become precedent I think the web would be lost to a landslide of "scraper" sites (more than it already is). They'd just add a line of commentary and go.

That's... Troublesome.

Now some people have copyright protection on their creative works and others don't? Ugh.

And let's be honest... A 19 paragraph article is a creative work, even if it's not fiction. There's more than just facts there. It took time and effort to assemble it in just that way.

Art is always molding something into something more aesthetically pleasing... Or at least molding one thing into another. Clay into statues, paint and canvas into portaits, words and facts into articles.

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