Website democraticunderground.com Alexa rank 11,936 (2846 in US) (As of 29 November 2015) Launched January 20, 2001; 16 years ago (2001-01-20) | ||
Democratic Underground, also known as DU, is an online community for U.S. Democrats. Its membership is restricted by policy to those who are supportive of the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates for political office. DU was established on January 20, 2001, the day Republican George W. Bush was inaugurated president.
Contents
Criticism
Discussions from posters at DU have drawn criticism. One example of this was the dialog about the 2004 tsunami disaster, in which a few posts explored the possibility of "earthquake weapons". The posts were reported by The New York Times and Fox News. The DU administrators deleted these posts and the threads were locked. The administrators officially disavowed what they called "kooky tsunami conspiracy theories". They added, "One wonders why the author [of the Times article] did not spend five minutes over at Free Republic and instead write an article about how conservatives think the tsunami was some sort of retribution from God, or how Muslims deserved it." The administrators also sent a letter to the Times, which was printed.
Another example is the conspiracy theories revolving around the August 2006 terror plot to blow up airliners between the UK and the US, which received mention in USA Today. Some posters felt that the American government's push to release the announcement of the plot was a conspiracy to bump Joe Lieberman's primary loss out of the news cycle.
The site also saw criticism when, in 2003, a poster explained why he or she wished to see continued bloodshed in Iraq.
The site was also criticized by the online Oregon newspaper Salem-News.com for a thread about a video posted by the newspaper in which a former Israeli soldier described what the newspaper called "the war crimes committed against the Palestinians back in 1948." Because some DU posters criticized the piece, the newspaper wrote that DU had "decided to take a stand for apartheid", although it described another post in the thread (one critical of Israel) as "absolutely correct".
Copyright infringement lawsuit
In 2010, Democratic Underground was sued for alleged copyright infringement in a member's posting of a few paragraphs from an article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. The suit was brought by Righthaven, an entity that finds Review-Journal quotations online, buys the copyright for that story from the newspaper, and retroactively sues for copyright infringement. In response to the lawsuit, DU asserted that the quoted excerpt (five sentences of a 54-sentence article) was fair use, and counterclaimed against Righthaven for fraud, barratry, and champerty. DU is being represented in the case pro bono by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, attorneys from the firm of Winston & Strawn, and Las Vegas attorney Chad Bowers. After Righthaven lost a similar suit against Realty One Group over 8 of 30 sentences quoted from a news article, Righthaven asked the judge in the case against Democratic Underground to dismiss Righthaven's claim against DU.
In June 14, 2011, Judge Roger L. Hunt ruled that Righthaven be dismissed from the case because Righthaven had never owned the copyright of the article and gave Righthaven two weeks to explain in writing why it should not be sanctioned.