Righthaven Moves On To Suing Message Board Posters, Rather Than Just Site Operators

Copyright

from the oh-come-on dept

visual77 was the first of a few of you to send in the news that copyright-lawsuits-as-a-business-model firm Righthaven has expanded its targets to include posters on various message boards. In the past, it had focused on suing the various operators of sites, but not the users who often posted the content. For sites that had not registered a DMCA agent, the site operators were potentially (though not definitely) liable for any infringing content posted. However, the posters of such content themselves, of course, have always been potentially liable. In this case, they’re even suing a guy who had forwarded a Las Vegas Review Journal story to a Google Groups mailing list. While this guy will probably settle, I would imagine it would be a fascinating fair use discussion in court.

Separately, that same article lists a number of other sites that Righthaven has gone after, and there’s one surprise: Business Insider, the Harry Blodget-owned blog network that has been growing in popularity quite a bit lately. The site has something of a reputation for copying large segments of articles from other places at times, but you would think that the folks working there would know better than to try that with stories associated with Righthaven, with a primary reason being that Business Insider has had posts (admittedly “aggregated” from other sites) all about Righthaven and its lawsuits against other sites.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, message boards, posters
Companies: righthaven