elmernag01: Righthaven Demands Servers Of Website Sued, Even After Court Rejects Demands For Domain

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Righthaven Demands Servers Of Website Sued, Even After Court Rejects Demands For Domain

Righthaven has faced a big series of setbacks in a bunch of its cases lately, and yet it seems to continue to push forward, whistling along as if nothing bad has happened. You may recall that a court has laughed off its attempt to be given the domain name of one of the sites it sued. The court pointed out that there is no such remedy for copyright violations. No matter for the lawyers at Righthaven, however. Just days later it filed a new lawsuit that doesn't just demand forfeiture of the domain name, but also the website's hardware and software:

Order the surrender to Righthaven of all hardware, software, electronic media and domains, including the Domain used to store, disseminate and display the unauthorized versions of any and all copyrighted works as provided for under 17 U.S.C. § 505(b) and/or as authorized by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 64

The EFF nicely debunks both the "laws" cited by Righthaven here, including pointing out that section 505 doesn't even have a section (b) and is about attorney's fees:

Not only has the domain name claim been specifically and completely rejected by that very court, but Righthaven's new citations do nothing to help its claim. As an initial matter, Section 505 does not have a subsection (b), and concerns attorneys' fees, not the surrender of domains and hardware. While Righthaven probably meant to cite to some other section and was simply sloppy in the drafting, no section of the Copyright Act will help them. Indeed, Righthaven has already "concede[d] that such relief is not authorized under the Copyright Act."

Nor is the citation to Rule 64 going to help Righthaven. This is the same argument it raised in Righthaven v. DiBiase, and which the court flatly rejected. Indeed, the argument was silly to begin with, since Rule 64 concerns state law remedies and copyright is a federal law.