This is a reputable, effective organization. The OldPossum has been a member for some seven years.
I feel their pain. Cost us a pretty penny too. And it turns out we were in the right. Righthaven has lost every case that made it to court, even the full text postings were found to be fair use. Even the failure of web sites to file a DMCA copyright notice did not help Righthaven. Righthaven lost it all and is now defunct. Trouble is there were no winners. The sites that won their cases are still out their legal expenses because the greedy bastards at Righthaven are now broke and hiding from the courts. We lost a bundle on this case before our lawyers finally advised us it would be cheaper in the long run to just pay them off. They said even if we win, we lose because it could cost us tens of thousands of dollars to fight them and there’d be no way to get it back. They were absolutely correct. Righthaven now owes hundreds of thousands and growing in legal fees, interest and penalties to those who beat them in court and now they’ve skedaddled.
While VDCL believed it would have been cleared on fair use grounds if the case would have continued, it’s now unable to recover its legal fees because Righthaven is “financially defunct,” the VCDL statement said. Righthaven says it has no cash and some of its last key assets — federal copyright registrations and copyright assignments from newspapers that its suits were based on — have been seized by a receiver.
How is this not in-your-face extortion with a get out of jail free card? Can anyone create a shell company, sue for extortion, and then claim bankruptcy when they fail?