Christian Rocker Who Sued Rachel Maddow Now Must Pay her Legal Fees

The triumphant Rachel Maddow.

I feel weird typing "Christian Rocker," but that is allegedly what Bradlee Dean claims to be. And yes, though he is a slimy homophobe, he still spells his name that way. Anyway, a while back, Rachel Maddow reported on one of Dean's nefarious comments about gay people Dean made on his radio show. Yes, so he's a Christian Shock-Jock Rocker, I guess. And he didn't like being made the butt of the joke, so he sued Maddow for  50 million dollars. Which sounds very Dr. Evil, but whatever.

Turns out, Mr. Dean has to pay almost 25 grand to Ms. Maddow to cover her legal bills! I don't know what that means for the rest of the case, but you wouldn't think it could be good. Congratulations to Ms. Maddow.


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Rachel Maddow, Bradlee Dean Lawsuit: Christian Rocker Ordered To Pay MSNBC Host's Legal Bills

Christian rocker Bradlee Dean, who filed a $50 million defamation lawsuit against Rachel Maddow, was ordered to pay the MSNBC host's legal fees last month. . .

Read more at: Huffington Post

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.

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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.

Virgin Sues a Blogger for an Ad Parody

Image from source, Gawker

Why? It's kind of funny, and the US Airways crash into the Hudson turned out to be a good news story. And why would I risk also getting sued by running the parody? Solidarity. Also, so many people have posted it now. Besides, parodies are allowed. Doesn't Virgin know about the Larry Flynt case?

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Virgin Sues Blogger Over Fake Ad, Gives Fake Ad Massive Exposure

Virgin is always making those cheeky ads for itself, right? But when a blogger does it in obvious parody style, Virgin sues them. Scrubs. . .

Read more at: Gawker