Posts Tagged ‘Righthaven’

Las Vegas Newspaper Continues to Sue Bloggers Into Submission

Posted on August 2nd, 2010 • Filed under Uncategorized • 1 Comment

As we’ve reported before, the Las Vegas Review-Journal has become quite aggressive in its approach to copyright enforcement. It assigns rights to a firm called Righthaven, which then sues the alleged infringers. An article in Vegas Seven explores the controversy in greater depth. A communications professor calls Righthaven’s pattern of suing without issuing cease-and-desist letters or takedown notices “legal but sleazy.” Righthaven’s CEO responds that his company could not “get compensated in an appropriate way… if all we did was send out takedown letters like a charitable organization.”

Wired is covering the Righthaven story as well, reporting that, as many suspected, the Review-Journal and Righthaven are pursuing these suits not as a means of protecting the value of the Review-Journal’s work but in order to create a separate revenue stream from settlements. One Righthaven defendant states in the article that the allegedly infringing material on his site was posted by a user, entitling him to a takedown notice prior to suit under the DMCA, but that no such notice was issued.

Meanwhile, the Blog Law Blog (great blog name and subject matter!) reports that Righthaven sued Anthony Curtis, editor of the Las Vegas Advisor, for reposting a Las Vegas Review-Journal article that was written about Curtis and a survey he conducted of Las Vegas entertainment ticket prices. Back in the pre-Internet era, this was known as saving your press clippings. Today, it’s potential lawsuit fodder, it seems. Read more at the Daily Online Examiner.

Techdirt offers more coverage under the blunt headline “Righthaven Ramping Up its Copyright Trolling Business.”