YOU could be Sued by RightHaven

I’m too pissed off about this to even rant about it. First off, Hat Tip to Jolly Roger at Reconstitution, where I first read about this.

RightHaven is a gang of lawyers with one mission: Scouring the Internet to look for any website or blog that contains ANY written content that originated in the Las Vegas Journal Review. It doesn’t matter whether an entire article was copied, or just a sentence or two. And it doesn’t matter that the blogger or webmaster linked the quoted sentences back to the Las Vegas Journal Review.

Needless to say, search your own site for ANYTHING quoted from or linked to the Las Vegas Journal Review; and delete that post, or at least remove the “offending” text.

This is RightHaven’s M.O.: When they find a sentence or paragraph somewhere on the Internet that was quoted from a Las Vegas Journal Review article or column, RightHaven buys the copyright to that particular story. Then RightHaven threatens the offending blogger/website operator with a federal lawsuit for copyright infringement.

RightHaven has filed over a hundred of these lawsuits so far. More often than not, the website operator is too intimidated to go to court so they pay a few thousand dollars in shakedown fees.

There’s nothing political about this. Nevada’s favorite tinfoil hatter, Sharron Angle, was sued by RightHaven for $150,000 because her website contained some text from a Las Vegas Journal Review article About HER.

The Las Vegas Review Journal is RightHaven’s only client — so far. But they reportedly are looking for additional customers.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is observing and monitoring RightHaven’s activities, but hasn’t taken any action yet.

Here are some more links to RightHaven.