Obscure law firm sues web sites over freedom of speech

[Jack Bennest]

Oliver Daily News reports

This story is so dangerous I must disguise the story to tell it. A freedom of speech group from San Fransisco is taking on a Las Vegas lawfirm it says is shaking down Internet websites with copyright infringement lawsuits.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is challenging Righthaven LLC's campaign to police the sharing of news content on blogs and political sites along with others who clip and paste alot to seem worldly.

What is fair use? When and how is it appropriate to share content in an age where newsmakers increasingly encourage readers to share stories on social networking sites.

The EFF argues that the lawsuits bully defendants into quick settlements by threatening $150,000 in damages and the transfer of domain names.

Would be interested to know if we and others might be affected by this crazy suit.

The subject of discussion is that we might have to become a bit better at the chop and pasting here. Give two headlines and a link is my recommendation.

[slowhand]

The way this scam works is that a law firm cuts a deal with a newspaper for ownership of all its copyrights in exchange for a share of the winnings from suing anyone the law firm can find that used any copyright materials, even just once, in any manner beyond what the law firm stated as allowable in terms of usage described on the newspaper web site. The $150,000 number is from current U.S. copyright law. The Vegas law firm has filed over 150 lawsuits in the last month against 150+ different web sites. They don't seem to have done much investigation as to whether there is any money behind the web sites they went after, so it is conceivable that they'll end up with 150 web sites and no money. Though the law of averages likely means they'll hit the $150 C Note jackpot at some point.