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Monday, Feb. 7, 2011 | 4:26 p.m.
David Duke
David Duke, the nation's best-known white supremacist, is being sued by Las Vegas copyright enforcement company Righthaven LLC.
Righthaven, which sues over alleged online infringements of material from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Denver Post, filed suit against Duke last week in U.S. District Court in Denver.
Also sued was Duke's nonprofit Louisiana-based European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO).
Righthaven charged in its lawsuit that a Denver Post photo of a Transportation Security Administration officer patting down a passenger at Denver International Airport from Nov. 18 was posted on a website controlled by Duke and EURO, whitecivilrights.com.
"The defendants knew, or reasonably should have known, that websites, such as the (whitecivilrights.com) website, are the habitual subject of postings by others of copyright-infringing content," Righthaven charged in the lawsuit.
Yet Duke and EURO did not block the postings by others of copyright-infringing content on the website, didn't monitor for such content and didn't have a proactive policy of deleting such content, the lawsuit charged.
"The defendants’ failure to institute any proactive policies intended to address the postings by others of copyright-infringing content on the website constituted and constitutes the defendants’ willful blindness to copyright infringements occurring on the website," the lawsuit charges.
Righthaven, which has now filed at least 235 copyright infringement lawsuits since March, as usual in the lawsuit against Duke seeks $150,000 in damages as well as forfeiture to Righthaven of the whitecivilrights.com website domain name.
A Righthaven court exhibit shows the Denver Post photo on Duke's website accompanying a column by James Buchanan complaining about the "highly intrusive" enhanced TSA screening and pat-down procedures.
The exhibit shows the Denver Post was not credited as the source of the photo on Duke's website.
It's unclear from the exhibit who posted Buchanan's column and the photo on the website.
Numerous Righthaven lawsuits have been filed over the photo at issue in the suit against Duke. This appears to be the first lawsuit showing the photo illustrating a Buchanan column.
Duke, a former national director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and a former Louisiana state legislator, was in the news in 2009 when he was kicked out of the Czech Republic. He had been promoting a book there and was arrested on suspicion of denying the Holocaust, a crime in that nation.
Groups that track the neo-Nazi and white supremacist movements in the United States -- the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League -- call Duke, respectively, the most recognizable figure of the American radical right and perhaps America's best-known racist and anti-Semite.
A request for comment on the Righthaven lawsuit was placed with Duke's office.
Megadolla settlement, that's the lawyer way. Steal the website name-Stalin would be proud.
The only organization that could make me feel sorry about something happening to David Duke. What sharks they are...
Rightklaven sues the Klaven, it's come full circle. I hope they get enough money to pay for the expensive "Shermacare" medical insurance for part time employees with major preexisting medical conditions.
Chunky says:
Slime meets slime; he wouldn't shake hands with either party!
That's what Chunky thinks!
A couple of white supremacist Nazi web domain names? That's something the RJ can really use.
Every once in awhile, you really gotta like what Righthaven is doing. Duke is a disgrace and I certainly have no sympathy for him or his organization.
I'm with Chunky and mred on this one!
So they are basically looking around for websites that have no DMCA protection and RH themselves could be possibly planting their own evidence as "random" posters and are telling these websites, "You aren't policing anything or anyone". It sounds like blackmail to me. Let's find a vulnerable website and post that photo everywhere. It doesn't matter if we, the owner of the photo, plant the photo in odd places, We can sue for failure to police. Am I off base here?
"Duke's nonprofit Louisiana-based European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO)."
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LoL! WooT!
*sighs*
I'm no fan of Duke, but fer Christmas sake Righthaven, get over yourself already.