Legal Trouble

A federal judge ruled in favor of a defendant who reposted an entire article in a copyright case on Monday, Wired reports. The lawsuit was brought by Righthaven, a Las Vegas-based “copyright litigation factory,” according to Wired, that has sued more than 200 websites, bloggers, and commenters for copyright infringement. This particular lawsuit targeted Wayne Hoehn, who posted an entire editorial from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and its headline, “Public Employee Pensions: We Can’t Afford Them” on a website medjacksports.com. Hoehn was not an employee of the site.

The “fair use” doctrine can be used as a copyright infringement defense in a situation where a defendant has used a copyrighted work without permission. In short, it provides a defense where the work has been used for limited, noncommecial purposes, including commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, and scholarship.  Whether or not “fair use” applies is based on a balancing test. Let’s (roughly) go over the elements as applied to this case.

For one, the doctrine looks at the effect of the reproduction on the monetary value of the original piece. While Righthaven argued that Hoehn’s reposting had cost the article’s original website some eyeballs, the judge found that no evidence was presented that “the market for the work was harmed.”

Second, the doctrine considers whether the reproduction itself is intended to make money off of using the original work. In this case, the judge found that Hahn’s use was “noncommercial,” and just for the purposes of “online discussion.”

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That’s a pretty serious accusation. But Felix Salmon questions the New York Times‘ story about the court case against Goldman’s Fabrice Tourre (written by Louise Story and Gretchen Morgenson) for its dubious sourcing.

This is how they got the information: The story was sourced because a New York woman found emails in a laptop discarded in the garbage. Email messages for Tourre continued to stream in, but the woman ignored them until she heard Tourre’s name in the news for the SEC case. Then she gave the data to the Times.

That was the (heavily lawyered) explanation provided. But — even if that is the full truth — is it ethical? Even legal? Writes Salmon:

I understand that the computer was found in a garbage area, and that there’s a long tradition of investigative reporters using information found in the trash. But if Tourre left a key to his apartment in the trash, that wouldn’t give reporters the right to use that key to enter his apartment and snoop around. The laptop was essentially a key to Tourre’s email account — which held highly confidential correspondence between Tourre and his lawyers. An email account, these days, is arguably more private than an apartment, and breaking into a password-protected email account is clearly wrong.

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On Tuesday, a judge refused to throw out a lawsuit by two political consultants, Peter Daou and James Boyce, who allege that The Huffington Post’s founders stole the idea for the online news website from them, Fox News reports.

The two sued Arianna Huffington‘s site in November 2010, alleging they had originally come up with the plan for the site’s “blend of blogs by prominent contributors, news aggregation and original content.” Huffington Post denied this, and also pointed out that it was odd that both consultants waited six years before speaking up. But if the whole thing sounds like a stretch to you, it didn’t to the judge, who denied a motion by Huffington Post lawyers to dismiss the lawsuit. It’s now time for fact-finding and discovery.

Former CIA agent Jeffrey Sterling was was indicted in January for telling New York Times reporter James Risen secret details of a failed CIA plot to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program in 2000. Though Risen never wrote about the plot in the Times, as the CIA convinced him it would harm national security, he did write about it in a 2006 book.

Now, the Times reports, federal prosecutors, with the approval of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., are “trying to force” Risen to testify at a criminal trial about his source.

To what extent are reporters’ conversations with sources protected? Not by any specific federal law. Nonetheless, Justice Department rules try to avoid forcing reporters to reveal information about their sources.

Justice Department regulations instruct prosecutors to “ordinarily refrain” from issuing subpoenas to the news media that could damage its “news gathering function,” citing “the importance of freedom of the press to a free and democratic society.”

But the rules also allow the attorney general to make an exception after weighing “the proper balance between the public’s interest in the free dissemination of information and effective law enforcement.”

Still, Risen plans to fight this subpoena as he has fought others on this case in the past.  “I am going to fight this subpoena,” Risen told the Times. “I will always protect my sources, and I think this is a fight about the First Amendment and the freedom of the press.”

(h/t Gawker)

Popular legal industry gossip blog Above The Law and its parent company, Breaking Media, are being sued by Chicago attorney Meanith Huon, reports Forbes Mixed Media, for an erroneous blog post about rape that allegedly destroyed Huon’s reputation.

The author, Elie Mystal, linked to a story about Huon, who was arrested and charged with sexual assault (he was acquitted of all charges ultimately). But then Mystal linked to two other articles, one about Huon being charged with sexual assault and another about him being charged with cyber-stalking, making it seem like there were three separate instances (which was what Mystal probably thought had occurred).

Problem was that all three articles were actually about the same victim and incident. So Huon is suing Above The Law for making him look like a serial alleged sex-offender, instead of just a one-time alleged sex offender. For $50 million.

Yeah, that strikes us as optimistic as well. But you know lawyers, they love to sue. Huon, representing himself in the case, is also seeking control of Above The Law’s web domain (would be amazing if this worked out for him), and is also suing Madison Country for $130 million in a separate suit.

A longtime WABC/Channel 7 editor, Gerardo Lago has filed an $18 million lawsuit against ABC and Disney. Lago alleges that he suffered verbal abuse at the station on multiple occasions.

Reuters reports Lago is accusing three WABC reporters, Lauren Glassberg, Kemberly Richardson, and Stacey Sager of making “abusive, offensive and demeaning” comments towards him based on his Hispanic heritage.

Lago worked at WABC for over two decades before being put on medical leave last October, according to Reuters. After he refused to undergo an independent, psychological examination, the station suspended Lago without pay on February 3rd.

Our sister site TVSpy has more details on the story.

The legal troubles of former WABC-TV weathercaster Heidi Jones may have taken a turn in her favor. Our sister site TVSpy reports that police officers who took her false claims may have inappropriately questioned her.

In January, Jones was charged with two misdemeanors–punishable by up to one year in prison–for allegedly faking the story of a sexual assault in Central Park last September.

TVSpy has the latest developments.

Bloomberg reports that News Corp.’s Myspace was accused in a lawsuit of giving data to aggregators that associates members’ names with their Internet browsing history, without member’s consent.

“Myspace knowingly serves as and profits handsomely from being a conduit through which details of the most intimate aspects of its members’ lives…are transmitted to data aggregators,” wrote the complaint, filed today in federal court in Brooklyn.

Hmm. We’re not so sure about the “profits handsomely” part. The complaint may be the only document we’ve seen accusing the failing company of doing well at anything.

News Corp. is in talks to hand over control of Myspace to Vevo.com, and it remains to be seen if this lawsuit will affect the transfer. Myspace, we think it’s fair to say, has been having a really, really bad run of things lately.

Be careful when asking your employees to tell you what they really think in a public space.

A supervisor at Thomson Reuters invited employees to post about how to make Reuters the best place to work, the New York Times reports. Deborah Zabarenko, Reuter’s environmental reporter in Washington and the head of the Newspaper Guild, sent the following tweet: “One way to make this the best place to work is to deal honestly with Guild members.”

Well, could be worse, right? But then the next day Zabarenko received a call at home from the bureau chief:

He told me that Reuters had a policy that we were not supposed to say something that would damage the reputation of Reuters News or Thomson Reuters. I felt kind of threatened. I thought it was some kind of intimidation.

Really, really bad move on behalf of Reuters, as Zabarenko was not in fact intimidated, and decided to step forward. Now the National Labor Relations Board is suing Reuters on the grounds that it violated her right to discuss working conditions, and everyone knows about the story, and whether or not there is a cause of action here, Reuters just looks evil.

The Apple iPad news reader app Zite has been making some powerful enemies.

Kara Swisher reports that a round-up of scary media giants including The Washington Post, AP, Gannett, Getty Images, Time, Dow Jones, and many other organizations issued a cease-and-desist letter today to Zite, a content aggregator, citing a ton of copyright violations.

“The Zite application is plainly unlawful,” said the letter to Zite CEO Ali Davar.

“It’s a bummer that they did this, but we expected it,” Davar told Swisher, sounding less terrified than we would have thought. Yeah, it does seem like sort of a bummer.

Davar said Zite, which aggregates personalized content by getting cues from user interest, would comply with the cease-and-desist letter by shifting the content from its “reading” mode to a Web one, which actually points to publisher sites.