What Is Copyright Trolling

What Is Copyright Trolling?

The term ’copyright’ refers to the right that a creator has to stop the unauthorized use of his/her work. It awards the rightful owner the credit for his/her original work and safeguards the rights. It applies to a wide range of creative, literary, intellectual works but it does not cover any ideas. The copyright owner will get to enjoy certain exclusive rights which are for his enjoyment only. These include the right to perform/ display the work in public, reproduce the original work, sell the copies of the work, sell the rights to any other person and to import or export the work. However, there is a practice called copyright trolling in which the owner of the rights enforces litigation in order to make money.

There are certain copyright owners who claim to be guardians of copyright and indulge in trolling by suing users for extracting money from them. The copyright holders bring about litigations against several possible infringers at once which reduce their court costs and the entire burden of litigation fees has to borne by the sued party. Moreover, they are also required to pay the damages along with the legal fees. This undue practice hurts the genuine copyright owners and paints them in a bad light too This is a very opportunistic and unnecessary practice which is pejorative in every sense and is absolutely against the legality and ethics. The main aim of such people is to aggressively litigate several possible infringers for monetary advantages. They have no interest in reproducing or selling or distributing the work to the masses. Their actions have forced people to adopt a hostile attitude towards the copyright owners and have created trouble for genuine copyright infringement cases. Not only the public will view such genuine cases with disdain but the court will also get skeptical when such cases are filed.

Nowadays, even the naive internet users and bloggers are also not spared. In US the Copyright Enforcement Group (CEG) demanded payments from several sites as they had posted a picture found in Google search. Indeed, this incident shows that reposting of photos can be regarded as copyright infringement but it is still hard to fathom and not really appropriate. There are famous troll cases like the Righthaven and Prenda Law. Righthaven entered in agreement with newspaper for certain articles and then went on to sue several bloggers, internet authors and publishers. Righthaven accused them of unauthorized usage of their articles which were under copyright. The Electronic Frontier Foundation soon advocated the case on the behalf of the infringed and branded Righthaven as internet bullies. The case was lost by Righthaven and they were required to pay the amount of $34,045.50 as attorney's fees and court costs.

Litigation can be a powerful strategy to protect the rights of copyright owners and rightful enforcement but when it is used to bully and threaten innocent people it loses its credibility. Copyright trolls are making the bad situation even worse and the sooner this practice is stopped the better it will be for all.