27 July 2010
Members,
There is a legal firm out of Las Vegas called Righthaven who has been making large sums of money on lawsuits aimed at conservative gun blogs and forums. In fact, they are currently in litigation with FreeRepublic.com and ArmedCitizen.com.
Their issue is with anyone who posts a complete web article (even with links) on a discussion board is in violation of intellectual property rights under the copyright laws of the United States.
Posting an attributed excerpt falls under "fair use" and is, therefore, acceptable. Posting the whole article, even with a link, is not. The links make money with their advertisers when people visit the site to read the article. When it's pasted in its entirety, people rarely visit the source site. This costs money, and these guys are making a killing going after forums that do that, both the owners and original poster of the material.
In the future, please refrain from posting a complete article. Instead, post a short excerpt and/or summary, (as to avoid copyright infringement) and a link to the article.Thanks.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/07/copyright-trolling-for-dollars/
