Las Vegas Review-Journal Copyright Case Tossed. Good.

Here's the story of a hobbyist blogger, who was blogging along merrily, and then got freaked the hell out. Yes, I'd been blogging for a couple of years, careful to give attribution when I used sources, making it clear that not everything at Greenlee Gazette was produced by me alone. As is common practice on blogs, I clearly indicated excerpts and photos and whatnot. I thought everything was cool.

Then one day, a company called Righthaven started buying up the copyrights--so I thought--of articles from The Las Vegas Review-Journal (apparently in cahoots), and started suing bloggers who excerpted from that source, willy-nilly. You could be a big duke like FreeRepublic.com or Democratic Underground, or a little hobbyist like me. Well, I removed everything I'd ever excerpted--maybe 35 posts--except for the links, and one photo that I have every right to show, morally. And thank goodness, they never came after me.

But they did go after Democratic Underground with a vengeance. And they lost. Badly. And DU is going after them for damages. Good.

[Excerpt]

Judge rules Righthaven lacks standing to sue, threatens sanctions over misrepresentations

A federal judge in Las Vegas today issued a potentially devastating ruling against copyright enforcer Righthaven LLC, finding it doesn't have standing to sue over Las Vegas Review-Journal stories, that it has misled the court and threatening to impose sanctions against Righthaven. . .

Read more at: VegasInc.