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Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2011 | 7:30 p.m.
Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report will likely keep his valuable website domain name after settling a newspaper copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Righthaven LLC of Las Vegas.
Righthaven, which sues over allegedly unauthorized posts of Las Vegas Review-Journal and Denver Post material, sued Drudge Dec. 8 in U.S. District Court for Nevada, charging a Denver Post “enhanced TSA pat-down photo” was displayed on the Drudge Report website without authorization.
Righthaven later sued 33 more website operators over the same photo in federal courts in Nevada and Colorado.
As in most of its recent lawsuits, Righthaven sought in its complaint against Drudge damages of $150,000 and forfeiture to Righthaven of the drudgereport.com and drudgereportarchives.com website domain names.
Drudge has not responded to requests for comment on the lawsuit, and documents filed in court by Righthaven on Tuesday show the case has been settled. Neither Drudge nor his attorneys ever filed papers in court answering the complaint.
“Righthaven and defendants have agreed to settle the matter by a written agreement,” Righthaven said in a court filing closing the case.
Righthaven typically settles its lawsuits for less than five figures and allows defendants to keep their domain names.
Defense attorneys and critics say Righthaven's standard lawsuit demand for forfeiture of domain names has no basis in U.S. copyright law and is included in the lawsuits to pressure defendants to settle.
Righthaven, however, says these demands are appropriate as a matter of equity.
Observers noted the Drudge Report domain name is worth $10 million or more — many multiples of the maximum damages Righthaven sought, $150,000.
Drudge is probably the highest-profile defendant sued by Righthaven, which has sued defendants ranging from unknown Boston cat blogger Allegra Wong to well-known individuals and groups such as former Nevada U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle, white supremacist David Duke and the Democratic Party of Nevada.
In all, Righthaven has filed at least 238 lawsuits since March.
Is it too much to ask that I wish that both sides had lost, and had forfeited their rights to exist? A pox on both of their houses.
drudgereportarchives.com is not and was not owned by Matt Drudge so they went after the wrong person on that domain.
I hope Righthaven got enough to offset what they lost out on with Drudgereport now basically boycotting anything from them.
If anyone doesn't know how those two websites worked, It's simple. Photographs at the top of the page are the MAIN HEADLINES. Click on them and you are linked directly to those newspaper or other publications websites. Common sense says that you give up a little to get a lot back. You "let" other people use the photo and you get back free views to your website. Thousands of websites would pay good money to have headline photos being redirected back to their site. For Righthaven, they take offense to that and sue.
So now Righthaven won't even have links from Drudgereport to any article, EVER AGAIN.
Do advertisers know that they are losing out on thousands of views, in order to get a settlement check to pay off lawyers?
I am profoundly disappointed in Matt Drudge. While someone as powerful as Drudge who could have brought newspapers to their knees simply by vowing to not link to Righthaven newspapers there is a soft spoken mildly autistic and powerless Brian Hill from North Carolina who is like David confronting Goliath and dares to speak out for what is right and just. Brian you are an inspiration to all against the spineless great men of renown that scurry like rats when trouble finds them.
I hope that the judges start throwing out these frivolous lawsuits. They sound like extortion to me. The lawyers are Righthaven need to get real jobs.
The Righthaven business model works. It is cheaper to settle than to pay lawyers to fight. So Righthaven makes money. And will go on making money until the Courts get tired of being used for this purpose.
Interesting that it's a "written" settlement, with no cash, apparently anyway.
I'm pretty sure most of the defendants in these lawsuits are not denying that copyright law needs to exist. After all, we're all entitled to own our own creation/property.
However, the main issue is that there is no clear distinction between the minimum $200 penalty and the maximum $150,000 penalty, which unfairly forces the defendants to settle in fear of getting slammed with the maximum penalty, even if they know very well that their infringement was innocent and not willful and caused no economic damage to either parties.
What's clearly wrong is the fact that Righthaven knows this and uses this to their advantage. These small bloggers aren't going to fight if they potentially face a $150,000 penalty. This is blatant intimidation and extortion and any person should be able to see that.
Again, on a completely unbiased standpoint, no one's going to argue that these defendants did infringe in the technical legal sense. But to threaten them with a ridiculous $150,000 figure, forcing them to settle, is straight up bullying.
I guess it was asking too much for Drudge to contest the lawsuit. Anyway, Righthaven (Stephen Gibson and company) has to fight this brewing PR battle about suing an autistic and diabetic kid, Brian Hill. We emailed each other the other day, and I am sickened the way Gibson is treating this kid. For those who may want to know what copyrights Gibson has purchased, just go to this link:
http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrec...
Enter "Righthaven" in the search box and in the search by, click "keyword." It'll give you these copyrights (151 so far) and what bloggers/web sites should look for if they might have his content on their site. Happy searching.
American Justice Dot Org
http://www.americanjustice.org
I suspect that the conversation between Drudge's attorneys and Righthaven were one-sided with Gibson blinking first.
Rightklaven is racist. It is like the old "white citizen's counsels" that would shake down businesses that didn't boycott blacks.
Drudge is the best news digest going. I notice that the commentators and bloggers use it everyday.
Maybe if the Sun looked at it they would be more successful.
Steve Gibson, ruining the reputation of the legal profession one lawsuit at a time.