Newspaper Chain Drops Righthaven — ‘It Was a Dumb Idea’
David Kravets, Wired’s Threat Level blog:
The new chief executive of MediaNews Group, publisher of the Denver Post and 50 other newspapers, said it was “a dumb idea” for the nation’s second-largest newspaper chain to sign up with copyright troll Righthaven.
The Denver-based publisher’s year-long copyright infringement litigation deal with Righthaven is terminating at month’s end, said John Paton, who replaced Dean Singleton to lead the company on Wednesday.
“The issues about copyright are real,” Paton told Wired.com in a telephone interview. “But the idea that you would hire someone on an — essentially — success fee to run around and sue people at will who may or may not have infringed as a way of protecting yourself … does not reflect how news is created and disseminated in the modern world.”
If you’re not familiar with Righthaven, it’s a company that exists solely to license copyrights for news articles and then sue bloggers for posting parts from them, splitting the damages awards with the licensing newspaper. Really a delightful business model.
Kravets also wrote a piece about Righthaven’s legal setbacks in court that explains a bit more about how they were formed and how they work. I hope they go away exceedingly quickly.