Judge fines Righthaven $120K
From Ars Technica:
Nevada’s homegrown copyright troll, Righthaven, started life with a plan to save the newspaper business through infringement lawsuits—but nearly staggering incompetence has left the company on the receiving end of fine after fine from federal judges. Today, Righthaven was hit with a new fine for $116,718 in legal fees and $2,770 in costs.
The case, Righthaven vs. Thomas DiBiase, was another of the small-time infringement claims brought by Righthaven. The firm generally used the lawsuits to extract settlements of a few thousand dollars, but DiBiase refused to settle up. Instead, he lawyered up—and managed to get the case dismissed on June 22 based on the fact that Righthaven didn’t actually own the copyrights over which it was suing people. (See initial comment about “staggering incompetence.”)
This is good news for Internet users, but the story’s not over yet. The copyright litigation industry is starting to realize that suing users isn’t working, just like going after file sharing services before that was futile. That can be why ISPs appear to be the favored target now.