The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for Nevada, charges a Nov. 18 Denver Post "illustration" called "Transportation Security Administration agents perform enhanced pat-downs" was posted without authorization the same day on the Drudge Report website as well as the drudgereportarchives.com site.

A court exhibit, however, indicates the illustration is actually a Denver Post photograph of a TSA officer patting down a passenger at Denver International Airport. Righthaven usually sues over unauthorized online postings of news stories, columns and editorials. Lately it has sued over alleged infringements involving graphics and, now, a photograph.

"Mr. Drudge has willfully engaged in the copyright infringement of the work," Wednesday's lawsuit charges.

A message for comment was left with Drudge, who was sued personally, as well as codefendant drudgereportarchives.com.

Righthaven since March has now filed at least 181 copyright infringement lawsuits against website operators and bloggers. It usually sues over Las Vegas Review-Journal material. An affiliate of Stephens Media LLC, owner of the Review-Journal, is an investor in Righthaven. Last week, Righthaven started suing over Denver Post material.

Jim, I remember back when FR was a defendant in a lawsuite, related to “fair use”, IIRC. FR’s lawyer would occasionally post threads, explaining what what happening. Since this case appears to be equally important, might we somehow have some FReeper legal talent explain what’s going on, and why, and the merits..

Death by a thousand cuts...............
It would be interesting to know if the Denver Post website hit count went up after the photograph in question was posted. If so they cannot claim any damages. And if they truly wanted to “protect” their copyright, they can use software to prevent any hotlinks, it’s done all the time.................

I have taken to posting links to images at Google.images. Since they have enlarged the thumbnails they use they are quite suitable for posting and the actual images are at google. Let them file an action against google and see how far they get with that.

For example...these images are google thumbnails hosted on google servers.Google usually indexes and posts thumbs for images on news sites within minutes.The google spiders are very busy.

28
posted on 12/09/2010 11:11:28 AM PST
by Bobalu
( "Israel must be like a mad dog, too dangerous to bother." ..Moshe Dayan:)

Righthaven is attempting to make a business out of suing Internet websites for copyright infringement. It has filed 180 copyright actions so far without ever first asking that a work be removed from the target websitein each case alleging willful infringement and attempting to extract settlements by threats of statutory damages (up to $150,000), attorneys fees and seizure of the domain name.

Democratic Underground — represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Fenwick & West LLP, and attorney Chad Bowers — was sued by Righthaven on August 10 for a five-sentence excerpt of a Las Vegas Review-Journal news story that a user posted on the forum, with a link back to the Review-Journal website.

Democratic Underground, a political message forum, refused to be intimidated by Righthavens action. They retained counsel and responded with a counterclaim that joined Righthaven affiliate and funder, Stephens Media, LLC (publisher of the Review-Journal), and laid bare the numerous defects not only in Righthavens claims, but in its business model itself. Not surprisingly, Righthaven now wants outso badly, in fact, that it has moved to voluntarily dismiss its claim with prejudice in order to avoid a decision on the merits. However, Righthaven pleads to be let off the hook for Democratic Underground’s fees and costs defending the lawsuit.

Democratic Underground responded to Righthaven’s motion yesterday. DU agrees that this case should be overindeed, it should never have started. But it should not end until Righthaven is called to account for the cost of the defense it provoked. To allow Righthaven to avoid compensating innocent defendants who refused to be coerced would be unjust and unsupportable. Accordingly, Democratic Underground asked the Court to deny the conditions Righthaven wrongfully proposed for the motion for voluntary dismissal and instead grant summary judgment in its favor.

In addition, Stephens Media has filed a motion to be let out of the case, piously claiming that it is just an innocent bystander, having done nothing but assign a copyright to Righthaven. To the contrary, Stephens Media has publicly admitted that it grubstaked and contracted with a company called Righthaven,” and made numerous public statements discussing Stephens Medias ownership interest in Righthaven, its control over who Righthaven sues, and Righthavens business practices that are based on agreements with Stephens Media: with its general counsel representing, for instance, that I can tell Righthaven not to sue somebody. Democratic Underground responded to that motion as well, asking the court to reject Stephens Media’s attempt to walk away from the copyright troll it created, and allow the counter-claim so that the online forum can receive full justice.

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