One thing that should be investigated is that Righthaven's expenses far outpace any potential income and now the hiring of this expensive New York Lawyer sends up some red flags about who is financially propping up Righthaven and how much financial support is Stephens Media giving them?

Yes there is a long history of multi-million dollar awards for "pain and suffering" so this may be a good way for victims to go after Righthaven and Stephens media for large sums of money.

Every new lawsuit is now a potential counter-suit. People are not going to be as willing to settle as they were. Just shows how desperate Righthaven has become.

What this is saying is that Righthaven has basically been fired and Stevens Media has hired an outside attorney to clean up the mess caused by themselves and Righthaven.

Steve Green. Thank you for highlighting even more victims.

Of all Righthaven cases the ones against Daily Kix, and Mixx.com are the most troubling because Righthaven is going after a major component of the Internet and that is its indexing and search capabilities which facilitates peoples easy access to information particularly news items.

Righthaven's real target are the big ones like Digg, Reddit, and ultimately even Google and Facebook but they are hoping by going after smaller fish with less resources they can get some court precedences in their favor to allow them to go after the big fish.

This is a direct attack on the Internet itself which many powerful interests want to see tightly controlled and changed to a delivery system of controlled information like cable TV rather than a two way system where anyone can participate.

Many lawyers falsely believe that if they make the terms of a contract vague enough that it will leave a wide interpretation but in many cases like this it can cause problems because a judge does not have to follow Righthaven's and Stevens media interpretation of their own agreement and if it is not clear and concise the judge is completely free to follow their own and even the defendants interpretation.

Righthaven says it is clear in the agreement that they own the copyright but the wording of the agreement is very vague. Righthaven and Stevens media are in real trouble.

Steve Green

Thank you for highlighting some of the victims and giving them a voice. It will be interesting to see if some of these questions will be answered and how Righthaven will react.

Righthaven's comedy of errors continues, emphisis on the comedy, in this lawsuit they site a law that does not even exist.

they site 17 U.S.C. 505(b) but rule 505 has no subsection b and even rule 505 only deals with costs and attorney's fees so Righthaven has taken it upon themselves the roll of lawmakers.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/505...

We must not forget Stephens media's culpability on this. Had they initiated the lawsuit themselves then actual damages could have been established but since they decided to go about it underhandedly and going through an entity that cannot be damaged by any infringement, infact it can only benefit from them, it severely weakened their case and damaged all copyrights in the process.

Rock

I think I did answer that if the RJ themselves initiated the suit they may have a case but Righthaven should not be initiating any more lawsuits until issues of ownership are resolved.

And no I don't believe people should post entire articles. Fair use should also be fair to the copyright holder and not diminish the value of their works.