Ballot Access News has reported
One of the two Las Vegas daily newspapers, the Review-Journal, said in an editorial on June 1 that the newspaper would not tolerate any blogs that reprint a few sentences of a Review-Journal news story and then link to that story. A few weeks later, it sued at least 80 blogs for copyright infringement. The link to the story itself is not a problem, but the newspaper didn’t like any part of its story being reprinted. Technically the plaintiff was not the Review-Journal itself, but a corporation called Righthaven LLC.
One of the unlucky blogs was Independent Political Report, which was sued for $75,000 on July 8 in federal court in Las Vegas. IPR had printed a few lines of the Review-Journal story and then linked to the newspaper’s full story. Reportedly the suit was settled by IPR’s paying $4,000. That settlement penalty, in BAN’s opinion, is a grossly disproportionate punishment for a very common practice, and a very unjust outcome. It is possible that IPR itself is muzzled from mentioning this outcome because of the terms of the settlement. IPR did not reveal this news to BAN and has not mentioned the incident.
Reposted fromBallot Access News