Free Republic

Hugh Pickens writes "Judge Roger Hunt has unsealed the confidential agreement between Righthaven and the Las Vegas Review-Journal that has allowed Righthaven to sue over more than 250 charities, impoverished hobby bloggers, reporters, and the newspaper's own sources, for $150,000 each in damages and forfeiture of the sites' domain names, and the contents of the agreement could end up being ruinous for Righthaven's campaign of copyright lawsuits. The problem is that Stephens Media, the company that owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal, didn't actually assign any of the rights related to copyright to Righthaven except the right to sue — and...

You have to go through Google because of posting rules.

Righthaven LLC -- a bottom feeding legal outfit -- has teamed up with the Las Vegas Review-Journal to sue 'mom and pop' websites, as well as nonprofit, political action, public interest, writers, and forum board operators for copyright violations. The strategy of Righthaven is to sue hundreds and thousands of these websites and counts on the fact that many are unfunded and will be forced to "settle out of court." All cases are being filed in a Nevada Federal Court and must be fought in this jurisdiction. You are not safe from Righthaven if you are out-of-state. - How Do...

Righthaven, the company "grubstaked" by the Las Vegas Review Journal, which is basically going around suing any and every site that posts any of its content, continues to up the ante in abusing copyright law. Every week, it's filing more lawsuits. We've actually been hearing from some of the sites that have been sued, and many are lawyering up to fight Righthaven, because the claims are getting increasingly ridiculous. Righthaven appears to not take into account any of the context of the pages on the sites it's suing. For example, many of the sites it's suing involve users -- not...

The Righthaven lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas at first glance seem pretty simple: They show bloggers, nonprofits and generally small-time websites around North America for years have been cutting and pasting entire Las Vegas Review-Journal stories on to their websites without authorization. That seems like obvious copyright infringement. But, as defendants with and without attorneys fight back in some of the cases, Righthaven’s claims don’t appear to be so cut and dried.... //snip ...On July 20, the freerepublic.com message board was filled with “here we go again” comments after users of the site learned it had...

On July 21st, The Armed Citizen received an indirect and informal notice of a lawsuit against this website and its owners, David Burnett and Clayton Cramer. The suit, reportedly filed in US District Court on July 20th, alleges that The Armed Citizen and its owners "willfully copied" and infringed on original source content from the Las Vegas Review-Journal. According to news reports, Righthaven LLC has filed lawsuits against no less than 80 other political websites and individual blogs for "infringement." Righthaven has offered no prior contact, cease-and-desist warnings or any attempt at good-faith resolution whatsoever. Other defendants include FreeRepublic.com, the...

Story Newspaper Enlists Startup To Police Web For Copyright Violations Wendy Davis, Apr 22, 2010 07:13 PM As part of a copyright crackdown, a startup called Righthaven has filed five lawsuits against Web sites that allegedly lifted articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal. In recent weeks, Righthaven has sued the nonprofit group NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), the association Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, real estate agent and blogger Matt Farnham, gambling site MajorWager.com and the company MoneyReign, which allegedly runs the site casinoreign.com. The lawsuits allege that the defendants reposted articles,...

Four more website operators were hit with copyright infringement lawsuits Wednesday and Thursday alleging they copied and displayed Las Vegas Review-Journal stories without authorization. In one case filed in Las Vegas federal court, Righthaven LLC sued Portside Inc., a New York City nonprofit, and Portside official Barry Cohen, alleging that in February they posted on Portside's website a Review-Journal story about layoffs. Righthaven is a Las Vegas company that this year obtained copyrights to Review-Journal stories and has now sued 18 website operators claiming they infringed on those copyrights by posting -- without authorization -- R-J stories.

A conservative news-sharing website with plenty of experience in dealing with copyright issues has been sued for copyright infringement after Las Vegas Review-Journal stories allegedly were posted on its site. Free Republic LLC, James C. Robinson and John Robinson, who are associated with the website www.freerepublic.com in Fresno, Calif., were sued in federal court in Las Vegas on Monday over the postings.

Imagine for a moment your grandmother creating a blog to talk about her gardening. One of her friends leaves a comment on her blog with a news article about gardens in her area. Sounds innocent enough? Actions like this happen every second on the Internet. Now imagine the news source in the comment suddenly, without warning, suing your grandmother for the comment left on her blog, demanding high monetary compensation and possibly even control of her blog. Incidents like this happen all the time. The latest targets of these types of lawsuits include Jim Robinson, a disabled veteran, and his website FreeRepublic.com. Free Republic...

Copyright enforcement group Righthaven has filed two more lawsuits against Web site operators for allegedly copying and linking to articles that originally appeared in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. In the latest lawsuits, against the nonprofit Ecological Internet and the operator of the sports betting site madjacksports.com, as with the prior 11 filed since March, Righthaven says it obtained the copyrights to the newspapers' articles. In all cases, Righthaven apparently went to court without first asking that the articles be removed. While sending takedown notices isn't legally required, it's extremely unusual for content owners to sue over newspaper articles when no...