Flood of Righthaven copyright lawsuits lifts total to 225

By Steve Green

Published Friday, Jan. 28, 2011 | 5:10 p.m.

Updated Saturday, Jan. 29, 2011 | 11 a.m.

Las Vegas company Righthaven LLC this week flooded the federal court in Colorado with a dozen more lawsuits alleging copyright infringement by website operators -- all over the same Denver Post "TSA enhanced pat-down" photo.

Righthaven detects online copyright infringements of material from the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Denver Post, obtains copyrights to that material and then sues the alleged offenders. Lately in each suit it's been demanding damages of $150,000 apiece and forfeiture of the defendants' website domain names.

The latest suits bring to at least 225 the number of lawsuits Righthaven has filed since March, and to at least 21 the number it has filed over the Denver Post photo.

The latest defendants in Righthaven suits and the websites they're allegedly associated with are:

-- Torq Cisek (politicaldisgust.com)

-- Ron Eldridge (anythingurban.typepad.com)

-- Glenn Church (foolocracy.com)

-- Brian D. Hill (uswgo.com)

-- Bill Meyer and Bicoastal Rogue Valley LLC. Bicoastal owns radio station KMED (AM), Medford, Ore., Righthaven said. (KMED.com)

-- DDS Enterprises Inc. and David D. Schultz (oldhippie.com)

-- J.J.E.F. (Jackson, Johnson, Edwards & Fountain) Holdings and Miles J. Edwards, general partner in J.J.E.F. Holdings (atlwebmag.com)

-- David Peterson and Social Rev Make Money Online (socialrev.com)

-- Care2.com Inc. (care2.com)

-- Death and Taxes Media LLC, Joe Weber and Stephen Blackwell (deathandtaxesmag.com)

-- William Sumner and DailyKix.com (dailykix.com)

-- Andy Hwang, Jay Daniels and The Fat Brat (thefatbrat.com)

The suits claim the Denver Post photo was posted on the defendants' websites without authorization.

At atlwebmag.com, which is a site covering arts, trade and lifestyle in Atlanta, executive Miles J. Edwards said: "The mentioned photo was used as a reference in one of our stories that points to an unrelated website that was using the photo for a story of their own. Upon publishing the story we researched the photo to determine its origins and were only able to come up with the source that was mentioned in our article."

A court exhibit indicates atlwebmag.com posted information about TSA pat downs from an Internet news site called "deadseriousnews.com".

The Denver Post TSA photo appeared to be posted on the Dead Serious News site on Nov. 21 and as of Saturday it was still displayed there, along with some off-color commentary suggesting passengers face arrest if they become sexually aroused during TSA enhanced pat-downs.

Records indicate Dead Serious News has not been named as a defendant in any Righthaven lawsuits.

Requests for comment were placed with the other new Righthaven defendants.