Is this the future of the newspaper industry? Not the iPad but courts of law.
That seems to be the implication with this Wired report about a Las Vegas company Righthaven which has begun buying out the copyrights to newspaper content for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that re-post those articles without permission. And the owner claims he's making money. He scours the Internet for copyright infringements from bloggers that have run pieces published by his clients. Since Righthaven's formation in March, the company has filed at least 80 federal lawsuits against website operators and individual bloggers who've re-posted articles from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, his first client.
Exactly how he's going to make money from bloggers, who aren't exactly loaded with cash, remains to be seen.
The Intellectual Asset Management magazine blog raises a very good point: free access to information is regarded as an online right, and a legal right at that, so any move to rein that in is likely to result in resistance. It will be fascinating to watch whether bloggers or aggregators are prepared to take Righthaven on in the courts.
Newspapers will have to come up with something better if they want to survive. They won't be saved by lawsuits, any more than the iPad.
http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1144773/pg7#18405626
PROOF the whitehouse is behind this infringment on free speech, NOONE owns the news!!!