I talked to a very well-known attorney who does copyright law--and he agreed, we have a strong case that what The Armed Citizen was doing was Fair Use, because of the noncommercial, scholarly purpose of it. But we should settle, because that would be cheaper than hiring anyone to defend us. The system is set up to make sure that the plaintiffs in copyright cases win.
Short of finding some organization that cares enough about gun rights or freedom of expression to fund such a defense (and I doubt that such an organization exists anywhere in this country), it looks like these creeps are going to get a settlement.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is not a gun group but they are solid and do this kind of work pro bono. I would contact them.
ReplyDeleteContacted EFF this morning. Still waiting for an answer.
ReplyDeleteAs I recall they do a lot more amicus curiae brief filing than actually taking on cases (they're a lot smaller than the ACLU).
ReplyDeleteYour problem might be that the situation is not "ripe" in a general sense. If RightHaven stays small or goes poof within a year (e.g. the numbers in their business model are unachievable, they make an error in target selection such as an unreformed Animal or someone who's wealthy enough to take them on out of pocket, etc.) there's not yet a sufficiently compelling reason to nuke them from orbit immediately (I don't have to point out to you that the "clock cycle" of law makes real estate look frenetic).
If they become big enough we can be pretty sure they'll meet an ugly end; this isn't a RIAA situation where the argument was officially about means instead of ends. The collateral damage from their ends is unacceptable if the scale is large enough.
Please: don't be putting ideas in my head. Fortunately, I'm plumb out of plutonium and beryllium at the moment, and I can't afford getting into low Earth orbit.
ReplyDeleteWell ... I seem to remember reading about some company that will put a tiny cubesat into a decaying after a few months orbit for only $8K or so, and if you can get hooked up to the Abdul Qadeer Khan network it's got a fine, proven PRC enriched uranium implosion design with a theoretical yield of 44kT (although neither the DPRK or Pakistan are reported to have achieved the design goal).
ReplyDeleteJust want to make sure you know all your options....
Seriously, if you decide to retain legal council on your own, Friday or later, be sure to advertise that widely. I at least would be sending in a bit for a specific purpose like that, although labor will continue to be the biggest resource I can donate.
We've had contributions ranging for $10 to $100, and you know, even the little chunks start to add up! I've just made a request to ACLU of Nevada (which is very progun) to help, arguing that these suits have a "chilling effect" on political speech. I am not holding out much hope.
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