Media Suing Bloggers
The Armed Citizen, which chronicles defensive guns uses reported in the press, is being sued:
Today, The Armed Citizen received informal notice in the form of a media inquiry about a lawsuit against this website and its owners, David Burnett and Clayton Cramer. The lawsuit, reportedly filed in US District Court on July 20th, alleges that The Armed Citizen and its owners “willfully copied” original source content from the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Lawsuit over links and quotes.
July 22nd, 2010 at 11:05 am
FYI, can’t stop the signal!
http://syndicated.livejournal.com/thearmedcitizen/
They’ve been syndicated on LJ for the life of the website, so you can still read all their posts while the site is down.
July 22nd, 2010 at 11:10 am
That’s one reason I kept my site ad-free. The potential revenue wasn’t worth giving up my fair use rights (protections) for quoting and linking other copyrighted sites.
It’s hard to make a case that I’m profiting form their work when I have no revenue.
July 22nd, 2010 at 1:18 pm
Fair Use laws allow the copying of links and quotes.
Tell the judge to throw it out as a frivolous suit.
And then counter-sue!
July 22nd, 2010 at 2:11 pm
You would think that the dead tree media would be happy to have someone consistently pushing traffic their way….
This looks frivolous to me. Hell, if what Cramer did is breach of copyright then virtually every blogger out there is in danger of being sued. This reeks of intimidation and desperation.
July 22nd, 2010 at 5:27 pm
Tangling with Cramer in a court room is a good way to loose.
July 22nd, 2010 at 6:14 pm
All that’s great idea, but it isn’t like Clayton is in a position to fund a legal defense for a hobby blog.
July 22nd, 2010 at 6:40 pm
What really gets me is that the current editor of the dead-tree media source was for this kind of activity before he apparently turned against it. Nice.
July 23rd, 2010 at 9:14 am
A one page response describing fair use and listing precedents, with a strong promise to counter sue for frivolously bringing the suit, ought to suffice to win the case, or get it dismissed real quick by plaintiffs. This looks like a typical “threaten them and maybe they’ll stop doing something perfectly legal” lawsuit.
July 23rd, 2010 at 10:13 am
Apparently this is their new business model.. similar to the RIAA lawsuits against file sharers…
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/copyright-trolling-for-dollars/
July 24th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
Not the R-J business model. They sell the rights to their articles to some group of lawyers.
It’s the ambulance chasers that pursue the lawsuit.
And according to the article I read on the web, they usually settle out of court for $1500+/- per suit.
Will probably have bloggers linking to the R-J by the thousands each day. /s
Nose, meet face!!