Righthaven: saving the newspaper industry, one lawsuit at a time
The Trauma Intervention Program (TIP) of Southern Nevada is a nonprofit that sends trained volunteers to the site of severe accidents, suicides, fires, and violent theft. The volunteers comfort family members, witnesses, and bystanders—traumatized people who can't be helped by anything found in an ambulance.
TIP might seem an unlikely target for a federal copyright lawsuit, but it found itself hauled into court last week for posting 14 local newspaper articles about TIP and its volunteers to the group's website. In most of the articles, TIP volunteers are the main sources for the reporters, providing plenty of quotes and (sometimes jarring) anecdotes about their work.The lawsuit was filed by a company named Righthaven, an entrepreneurial venture formed by a Vegas attorney and the publisher of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. It was filed without warning or notice, and it seeks more than just statutory damages and attorneys' fees; it asks the court to "direct GoDaddy and any successor domain name registrar for the Domain to lock the Domain and transfer control of the Domain to Righthaven."
