See also Ron Paul’s San Franciso speech:
Daily Archives: 6 September 2010
Newspaper Chain’s New Business Plan: Copyright Suits
Borrowing a page from patent trolls, the CEO of fledgling Las Vegas-based Righthaven has begun buying out the copyrights to newspaper content for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post those articles without permission. And he says he’s making money.
. . . .
Gibson’s vision is to monetize news content on the backend, by scouring the internet for infringing copies of his client’s articles, then suing and relying on the harsh penalties in the Copyright Act — up to $150,000 for a single infringement — to compel quick settlements. Since Righthaven’s formation in March, the company has filed at least 80 federal lawsuits against website operators and individual bloggers who’ve re-posted articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, his first client.
(Read more from wired.com)
1) The media is not in trouble, contrary to what many “media studies” students are taught in their University classrooms. The media is in a golden age. Competition with bloggers and independant media have established this golden age. It’s the old media whose lies are no longer effective that are in trouble. They hate losing money and influence.
2) Lets hope this isn’t the avenue the establishment to take back its lost influence over society.
3) Philosophically, intellectual property is not property. More:
California Council of Churches IMPACT Endorses Proposition 19
Today, the California Council of Churches IMPACT, which represents 21 different denominations and over 1.5 million members within the mainstream and progressive Protestant communities of faith, endorsed Proposition 19, the initiative to control and tax cannabis in California.
“Proposition 19 is the moral choice for California,” said Rev. Dr. Rick Schlosser, Executive Director of the California Council of Churches IMPACT. “The prohibition of marijuana has failed. It’s created a culture of criminality around a substance that is less harmful than both alcohol and tobacco, which are both legal, controlled, and taxed. Let’s control marijuana like alcohol by passing Proposition 19 in November.” (Read more from yeson19.com)
In many ways, this is a nullification issue, i.e. states imposing their authority under the 10th amendment over unconstitutional federal laws.