Legal attack dog sicked on websites accused of violating R-J copyrights
Websites and blogs that post Las Vegas Review-Journal content, however innocent their intent, can expect to be sued without warning
Las Vegas Sun
August 4, 2010
When it comes to fighting copyright theft in the news industry — the piracy of stories, editorials, columns, photos and videos — there are watchdogs and there are attack dogs.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal and its copyright enforcement partner, a Las Vegas startup called Righthaven LLC, are squarely in the attack-dog category.
In a strategic campaign that is attracting growing interest nationwide in legal and media circles, Righthaven — without warning — has sued at least 86 website owners in federal court in Las Vegas since March for copyright infringement.
Such aggressiveness is unusual in the newspaper industry because most newspapers have acted like watchdogs — playing nice but firm with copyright infringers by asking them to take down their stories and replace them with links that direct readers to the source newspaper. That softball tactic avoids wasting money and time on lawyers and lawsuits, and turns copyright infringers into allies who drive traffic to newspaper websites.
When a call or e-mail to an infringing website doesn’t do the trick, newspapers have issued “takedown orders” — requests to remove the lifted content.
But from the get-go, Righthaven hits copyright violators with lawsuits seeking $75,000 in damages and forfeiture of their website domain names.
Righthaven’s legal initiative has critics calling it a frivolous-lawsuit-and-shakedown campaign aimed not at gaining justice for Righthaven, but at putting money in its pockets — charges denied by Righthaven and its entrepreneurial CEO, Las Vegas attorney Steven Gibson.
To Read More: http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/aug/04/unlikely-targets-emerging-war-media-content/
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