Righthaven loses copyright case against online contributor

NEWSPAPER COPYRIGHT LITIGANT Righthaven has lost another case in its attempts to get hundreds of bloggers to pay up for alleged copyright infringement, while in a deeply ironic act one of Righthaven's primary supporters apparently copied most of a lawyer's blog posting.

Righthaven was set up in early 2010 with the express purpose of acquiring copyright to newspaper content and then suing bloggers and other online users who reproduce content without permission or go beyond Fair Use. It filed over 200 lawsuits, but many of the cases have been dismissed in court.

The latest is the case of Wayne Hoehne, who contributed content to the web site Madjacksports as a voluntary unpaid contributor. On 29 November, 2010 he reposted the article Public Employee Pensions. We Can't Afford Them from the Las Vegas Review Journal, in its entirety and without permission, though a citation was given.

Righthaven used this as grounds to sue him, but Hoehne attested that he did not post the article for profit and there was no way for him to make a profit on it since he was not employed by the web site. US District Judge Philip Pro agreed with him, ruling that Hoehne's republication of the story was consistent with the provisions of the US Copyright Act governing Fair Use, because he made no profit and it did not have an adverse effect on the market for the original article.

Hoehme was not the only defendant to win. US Judge Roger Hunt recently ruled that the majority of Righthaven's hundreds of lawsuits have no legal standing. However, Righthaven was still able to obtain payments from a number of sued individuals who decided to settle instead of going to court.

There's an ironic twist in the Righthaven tale involving the former publisher of the Las Vegas Review Journal, Sherman Frederick. He is a keen supporter of Rightaven and posted a commentary on the recent court dismissals that was largely copied from the Gametime IP blog of lawyer Patrick Anderson, according to Paidcontent. The hypocritical nature of this blog posting is clearly evident and we wonder if Frederick would be able to argue Fair Use to defend a copyright infringement lawsuit against him. µ